Book Reviews

Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

As every Vietnam-era activist knows, no antiwar demonstrator ever spat on a returning veteran. Yet the myth has become a prevalent theme in American culture, so much so that today there are Vietnam veterans who in good faith actually believe they were spat upon. How did this egregiously false narrative become part of American life?

Lembcke approaches the question from multiple directions:

1. Exhaustive analysis of primary sources demonstrates conclusively that there were no contemporary reports of antiwar demonstrators mistreating veterans or in-service GIs. While "there were [...] actual incidents of Vietnam veterans being treated abusively, [...] in all the documentable cases it was pro-war people who were the abusers." Lembcke concludes definitively that "the icon of homefront betrayal, the spat-upon veteran, is a figment of the imagination that has been popularized through storytelling. [...] Although it is a picture that thousands of people have in their minds, it simply does not exist outside of their minds."
2. Examination of the actual historical relationship between veterans and peace activists shows that Vietnam veterans in overwhelming numbers supported the movement, while activists went out of their way to build supportive relationships with military personnel both before and after service. Relationships between the two groups were so strong that by 1970 veterans were at the forefront of the movement's leadership. Lembcke's strong account stresses their role, as well as the very widespread support for the movement inside the ranks of in-service GIs. Indeed, Lembcke makes clear that this principled, strategic activist committment to support of the GI movement had enormous impact on the armed forces revolt which eventually ended the war.¹ Lembcke concludes, "We have largely forgotten that much of the energy and inspiration for the anti-war movement came from veterans themselves. [...] In truth, GIs and veterans were an integral part of the anti-war movement. Indeed, by the end of the war, veterans were playing a leading and militant role in opposition to it."
3. Analysis of the political context in which the Nixon-Agnew administration initiated the myth of movement mistreatment of veterans demonstrates that "the keystone of the right wing's strategy was to split the liberal and radical elements within the anti-war movement and to split Vietnam veterans from the movement."² The administration thus initiated "a propaganda campaign to discredit the anti-war movement by portraying it as an alien, un-American, and violent phenomenon." In effect, the Nixon administration suggested that opposition to the war and opposition to the troops were one and the same. They reframed the debate "from this-war-is-about-U.S.-objectives-in-Southeast-Asia [...] to this-war-is-about-the-men-who-are-fighting-the-war. [...] The corollary of the support-the-troops rhetoric was that anyone who opposed the war was, in the eyes of Nixon-Agnew followers, also disloyal to the soldiers and, by extension, disloyal to the country. [...] The singular image of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran thus became the perfecting myth of the Nixon-Agnew administration's strategy to discredit the anti-war movement."³ The Nixon-Agnew narrative remains the basis of right-wing imperial discourse today. As Lembcke stresses,

   The image of the spat-upon veteran is, of course, only the grounding image for a larger narrative of betrayal. The story that the spat-upon veteran is supposed to call to mind is how the unwillingness of the country and its leaders to make the ultimate sacrifices for the war effort robbed our young warriors of their victory and the nation of its honor. It is the story of how those who were disloyal to the nation's interest 'sold out' or 'stabbed in the back' our military. Acceptance of the image of spat-upon veterans entails an acceptance of that larger story of betrayal.

4. Placing the spat-upon veteran myth in broad historical context draws intriguing parallels to experiences of other nations in defeat. Mythological narratives of "spit", "betrayal" and "stab-in-the-back" loomed large in the Nazi story of why Germany was defeated in World War One,⁴ the French experience after defeat in Indochina, and again after defeat in Algeria. "In the stories about American veterans of Vietnam, German veterans of World War I, and French veterans of Indochina, we find elements characteristic of myths. In each, there is some physical act that functions as an icon to elicit an emotional response. In the German case there were actually two such icons, with the 'stab in the back' and 'spat-upon veteran' images both figuring prominently in Nazi propaganda. In the French case, the 'stab in the back' image was the most prominent, while in the American the 'stab in the back' was invoked most frequently during the war years, and the 'spat-upon veteran' gained great popularity during the 1980s. [...] Most important, all the modern stories are about soldiers returning from wars they lost. The fact that we seldom, if ever, hear stories about soldiers in winning armies returning home to abuse suggests that these tales function specifically as alibis for why a war was lost. In the cases cited here, the armies represented the expansionist interests of nations with ideologies of cultural, ethnic, or racial superiority. Unable to deal with their defeat by 'inferior' peoples or societies, the losing colonizers look for the reasons for their defeat at home. The myth of the betrayed, abused veteran is a classic form of scapegoating."
5. Tracing the rise and propagation of the spat-upon veteran myth through its primary medium of dissemination, film, provides a basis for a materialist theorization of Hollywood's role as an "Ideological State Apparatus".⁵ While Lembcke does not explicitly theorize his survey in these terms, his account is a rich source for those interested in a more theoretical approach.
6. Analyzing the gender politics of the myth places it within intriguing sociological and mythological contexts. As Lembcke points out, "in American culture it is men, not women, who spit." Yet in its most widespread form, the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran features a female protester as the hapless soldier's persecutor. Lembcke poses the interesting question, "why were the coming-home memories of war veterans gendered in this way?", answering it with a discussion of gender roles in myths of the evil eye, creation, and the antinomy between humans and nature.
7. Close examination of the context in which the myth first became part of everyday political debate emphasizes the organized way in which it was propagated. "In the United States, the idea that Vietnam veterans had met with malevolence gained prominence during the fall of 1990, when the Bush administration used it to rally support for the Persian Gulf War." As Lembcke emphasizes,

   analysis of news stories gleaned from the press accounts of fall 1990 reveals that the administration had put forth one reason after another for U.S. involvement, to the point that nobody could reason about the rightness or wrongness of the war. [...] In all, the administration put forth six reasons for U.S. involvement in the war: the defense of Saudi Arabia; putting military teeth in the economic blockade of Iraq; freeing the hostages; the liberation of Kuwait; the removal of Saddam Hussein; and jobs. [...] With the ends always changing, reasoning within a means-ends framework became paralyzed. At that point, public decision-making defaulted to levels of emotion, symbolism, and myth. [...] It was the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran that galvanized the sentiments of the American people sufficiently to discredit peace activists and give George Bush his war.⁶

8. Examination of the myth's function underscores its directly political purposes. "In his study of political apathy on today's college campuses, Paul Loeb (1994) found that the image of the spitting anti-war activist of the 1960s is an icon of 1990s conservative ideology and is used to intimidate would-be activists. Many of today's students prefer to remain inactive out of fear that activism will lead others to associate them with the 1960s types who spat on the veterans."
9. A materialist analysis of the ways in which myths are constructed and propagated in contemporary societies stresses their historicity. Throughout his text Lembcke offers numerous insights, arguing for instance that "myths are made of something [...]; [they] involve the assembly of pieces of real events for the construction of stories that, taken as a whole, are not true." He stresses the role of concrete ideological apparatuses in the real-life propagation of myths, noting in this context that "journalists, academics, and other influential spin doctors of the day were making real choices about how the war in Vietnam would be remembered. There were choices, and what is interesting from our turn-of-the-century vantage point is that some interpretive voices got amplified by the academic establishment, news media and cultural institutions, while others were ignored."

Lembcke's book is an important resource not just for activists but for those interested in studying the specific mechanisms through which the narratives which define a culture are produced and disseminated. These processes are political: their outcomes will in large measure shape future history. Lembcke's conclusion is a call for struggle:

Reclaiming our memory of the Vietnam era entails a struggle against very powerful institutional forces that toy with our imaginings of the war for reasons of monetary, political, or professional gain. It is a struggle for our individual and collective identities that calls us to reappropriate the making of our own memories. It is a struggle of epic importance. Studies of the twentieth century will shape America's national identity for decades to come. How Vietnam is to be remembered looms large on the agenda of turn-of-the-century legacy studies. Remembered as a war that was lost because of betrayal at home, Vietnam becomes a modern-day Alamo that must be avenged, a pretext for more war and generations of more veterans. Remembered as a war in which soldiers and pacifists joined hands to fight for peace, Vietnam symbolizes popular resistance to political authority and the dominant images of what it means to be a good American. By challenging myths like that of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran, we reclaim our role in the writing of our own history, the construction of our own memory, and the making of our own identity.

-- Mark Phillips, 3/7/03

ENDNOTES

¹ "To begin with, veterans of previous wars were an integral part of the anti-Vietnam War movement from its inception. Veterans' groups led some of the earliest protest marches against the war, and tactics such as draft card burning, which became emblematic of the anti-war movement, and the turning-in of service medals as an act of protest, which became the hallmark of anti-war Vietnam veterans in the early 1970s, may have been foreshadowed by similar actions taken in the mid-1960s by veterans of previous wars."

"[In 1966-7] the link between the anti-war movement and Vietnam-era veterans, made through Veterans for Peace, was secured through work on behalf of serving soldiers. By helping soldiers who were in service, especially those in Vietnam, the anti-war movement established a record of caring about soldiers' needs. Later, those soldiers, turned veterans, viewed the anti-war movement as a credible ally for veteran-related struggles."

"As the anti-war movement was reaching out to help soldiers, soldiers extended their voices and credibility to the movement. The archives of anti-war organizations contain hundreds of letters and petitions recording the widespread support of GIs for the anti-war movement. They began coming in long before the peak of campus protest activity in 1968 and 1969..."

"Interviews conducted by Hal Wingo, a reporter for Life magazine, supported [the] perception that dissent was widespread among soldiers in Vietnam. Wingo (1969) interviewed one hundred GIs from I Corps in the north to III Corps in the south. His findings, as reported in Life on October 24, were that ';many soldiers regard the organized antiwar campaign in the U.S. with open and outspoken sympathy,' and that 'the protests in the U.S. are not demoralizing troops in the field.' Pfc. Chris Yapp, a Fourth Division civil affairs team member in a Montagnard village told Wingo, 'I think the protesters may be the only ones who really give a damn about what's happening.' Pfc. Jim Beck, a 101st Division medic, who had gone to Vietnam partly to avenge the death of his brother at Khe San a year earlier, said, 'The demonstrators are right to speak up because this war is wrong and it must be stopped.'" (Back to article.)

² As Nixon aid H.R. Haldeman put it, "The trick here is to find a way to drive the black sheep from the white sheep within the group that participated in the Moratorium yesterday." (Back to article.)

³ "On October 19 [1969], Vice President Agnew made his signature statement on the anti-war movement calling the moratorium leaders 'an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.' According to an account in the New York Times, he criticized them for refusing to 'disassociate themselves from the objective enunciated by the enemy in Hanoi' and warned that 'hardcore dissidents and professional anarchists' within the peace movement were planning 'wilder, more violent' anti-war demonstrations [...]. Then governor of California and experienced cue-taker Ronald Reagan charged in an October 22 speech that some leaders of the moratorium 'lent comfort and aid' to the enemy and that 'some American will die tonight because of the activity in our streets' [...]. Within days after the October moratorium, it was clear that debate over the war would never be the same. The conservatives had managed to reframe the debate from this-war-is-about-U.S.-objectives-in-Southeast-Asia (that is, assuring the freedom of the Vietnamese people, the repulsion of communism, etc.) to this-war-is-about-the-men-who-are-fighting-the-war. It was a twist on the McCarthyite theme of loyalty, with support for soldiers standing in for patriotism." (Back to article.)

⁴ "The most dramatic instance in which the treatment of war veterans figured in the politics of a country occurred in Germany after World War I. [...] During World War I Hitler had gained notoriety for his oratory against Jews, Marxists, and other 'invisible foes' who he said would deny the German people their victory. While recuperating from a war wound he found 'scoundrels' cursing the war and wishing for its quick end. 'Slackers abounded and who were they but Jews' [...]. To ground the idea that German soldiers had been betrayed on the home front, the German right popularized the image of war veterans being abused when they returned home. Hermann Goering [...] described how 'very young boys, degenerate deserters, and prostitutes tore the insignia off our best front line soldiers and spat upon their field gray uniforms.' [The truth was that soldiers in revolt had ripped insignia off the uniforms of counterrevolutionary officers.] [...] The legend of the 'stab in the back,' as William Shirer calls it in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, became 'a fanatical belief...which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler's ultimate triumph.'" (This is idealist historiography: in reality it was the right-wing's need to crush the insurgent workers' movement which "more than anything else" undermined the Weimar Republic; people's beliefs, fanatical or not, were products, not causes. (Back to article.)

⁵ "Film was the most important medium through which the history of the Vietnam War was rewritten as a story of veterans coming home. Mediated by film, American memories of the war in Vietnam changed during the 1970s and 1980s to the point that details of the war itself were forgotten and memories of the abuse of veterans were constructed. Anti-war GIs and veterans made it to the screen in very small numbers and then almost always as characters whose mental and physical disabilities overshadowed their political identity. The image of the violent and emotionally dysfunctional veteran dominated the films made about Vietnam during these decades." (Back to article.)

⁶ Lembcke sardonically quotes Democratic Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who said that on a visit to the Gulf, "troops repeatedly asked whether 'the folks back home' supported them. 'The aura of Vietnam hangs over these kids.'"

"The 'aura of Vietnam.' It was not the loss of the war, not the massive destruction of Vietnam itself, not the death of 58,000 Americans and 1,900,000 Vietnamese, not any of the myriad other things the war was more evidently about that was the issue. The aura of Vietnam as framed in this story -- what the war in Vietnam was about -- was the level of support that soldiers and veterans had received from the American people. To make sure that nobody missed the point, the Times linked the package -- Vietnam veterans, the Gulf War, and hostility for the anti-war movement -- with reports from the Gulf like the following:

One soldier asked that his name not be used and also asked that an officer step away to permit the soldier to speak freely to a reporter... 'When we deployed here, people cheered and waived flags,' he [said],'but if I go back home like the Vietnam vets did and somebody spits on me, I swear to God I'll kill them.'"

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