war & myth

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:09:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Meury <dmeury at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: war & myth

<As a Marine in the early 70s, I was spat on by a young woman who apparently didn't
<like my uniform.  So much for the "myth" myth.

The myth involves organized heckling of returning vets, as typified in this bit of dialogue from the movie Rambo:

"But somebody wouldn't let us win. I come back and see all these maggots at the airport. Protesting me, spitting, calling me a baby-killer. Who are they to protest me? Huh?"

Jerry Lembcke researched this and could find no newspaper or FBI reports of organized heckling of veterans by anti-war groups.

http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/717/

There are always individuals who do screwed up things, but that doesn't translate to the demonizing anti-war groups (Vietnam era or present-day), which is how it was used by Nixon and Agnew then, and Bush and Cheney now.

There were probably stray individuals who actually did put an animal in a microwave.  But that doesn't validate the huge number of second-hand accounts of "the dumb lady who tried to dry her poodle off in the microwave." 

Laura