Iraq is not Vietnam, but our soldiers are still being spat upon, only this time it's by their own President and government.
The individual G.I. in Vietnam did not have the support of his fellow citizens, today's Iraq soldier does; it's the war that's not supported.
The Vietnam vet was spat upon by the public; today's soldier in Iraq is being spat upon by the very government that sent him to Iraq to be killed, maimed and emotionally traumatized.
I've been told that it's not nice for person of the female persuasion to use the "F" word, and I'll try to be polite, but U.S. service men and women are being royally F**KED over by the Bush Administration in big CAPITAL letters.
The truth is Bush doesn't give a damn about the fighting forces. They're only of value to him when they're either in the womb or he's flagrantly using them for photo-ops.
Bush spat in their faces when he originally sent them into battle underarmored, underequipped, undermanned and based on a gross pack of lies.
It's fine with Bush to send them into battle with promises of winning and glory and welcome them home with a spit in the eye by denying them the medical treatment they deserve. It's not the initial medical treatment; it's the post-treatment that they have to fight their way through, which can go on for months and years.
If they are really injured the government is more than willing to house them in a facility across from Walter Reed where the conditions are so horrific that none of us would board our pets there. Worse, the Pentagon has known about this for at least three years. But that's okay, after all soldiers are the dogs of war.
We've all heard or used the expression, this wait is killing me; for the injured who require ongoing intermittent care this is literally true. They're faced with never-ending cuts in service and interminably long waits for appointments.
Now Bush is adding insult to severe injury and expectorating all over them with a thousand more cuts by further slashing the VA's budget and making the vets pay even more for their ongoing care. Then the Administration lies about the number of deaths and injured, so we'll never know what the war has cost in terms of lives wasted by both death and injury.
Nobody gets punished except the soldier and his family. So what if the head of Walter Reed was fired and will be forced to retire? What a punishment! Then he was replaced by a man who appears to be just as culpable and who may get fired and retire on a nifty pension, too.
Need psychological help because of what you've seen and done in Iraq?...tough, because the government is in denial that such conditions exist and has left 40 percent of the positions for psychiatrists and psychologist vacant.
It's estimated that one out of three returning vets will need some sort of mental health care.
VA facilities are closed while those remaining open are understaffed, and if you're a vet living in a rural area you're s**t out of luck and faced with long trips to the doctor, because there is a dearth of satellite facilities.
The spit list compiled by Bush, the aficionado of effronteries, goes on and on. Bush rips up the Geneve Conventions, the brass orders them to torture, and the grunts go to jail. Where's the justice?
Hardly a word is spoken about all the returning vets who find themselves estranged from family and friends, jobless and homeless.
Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, 10-minute newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspapers in Burbank. She is currently a guest columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News and contributor to ronkayela.com
Vietnam veterans were not spat upon, according to thorough research. It needs to be remembered that this myth likely originated within the administration as an effort to discredit the anti-war movement.
"Images of long-haired antiwar protesters, almost always women, spitting on returning Vietnam veterans have become a shameful part of America's collective memory. Lembcke [Vietnam vet, professor of sociology, Holy Cross University), a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, here presents a stunning indictment of this myth - an illusion created, he maintains, by the Nixon-Agnew administration and an unwitting press to attribute America's loss in Vietnam to internal dissension. In fact, the antiwar movement and many veterans were closely aligned, and the only documented incidents show members of the VFW and American Legion spitting on their less successful Vietnam peers."
"The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam," by Jerry Lembcke
From Library Journal's review quoted by Amazon.com
This is a good story but it perpetuates a grotesque libel against the Vietnam era peace movement. As one who was active in that movement from 1987 to the end, I know of no instance where returning veterans were "spat on". This is just right-wing garbage and urban legend-spinning. We did not blame the troops for the crimes of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in Southeast Asia. We knew they had it tough just trying to survive.
No one should be perpetuating this calumny.
We wanted to bring the troops home then, just as now.
Dave Lindorff
author: "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
www.thiscantbehappening.net
by
Dave Lindorff (340 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 157 comments)
on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 3:51:39 PM
Most myths have a strand of DNA truth running through them. From Noah's flood to the flood in Gilgamesh, all the Greek, Mayan, Norse and everybody else's myth, tale, legend.
We'll never know how they got started; which tiny element in each one of them contains the bit of truth upon which they're based; or why they are perpetuated.
I don't have a clue how the Vietnam spitting legend got started. Who knows, maybe some soldier was walking though an airport and someone sneezed or coughed and he accidently got in the way. Perhaps it was a fight between a soldier and his girl and a little drool got caught in her angry words as she spat them at him. A stranger espied it from afar and mistook what he saw. Or maybe it was Nixon.
Regardless, what ever happened to literary license, imagery and metaphor? Bush is spitting, albeit figuratively, on all of us and our Constitution.
Myths come, but they rarely go. Bush's WMD myth that he foisted on half of us will be here forever, as well as all the others he created and the new ones he's hatching.
by
Sandy Sand (140 articles, 0 quicklinks, 193 diaries, 1360 comments)
on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 11:13:22 PM
This Time It's Bush Spitting on the Soldiers -True this time
Vietnam soldiers were never spit on. We loved our troops then and we still love them today. It is criminal that we have a president that is treating our troops and us as well so badly.
Hey - has anyone out there read book: "Soldiers in Revolt" by David Cortright? I did not know that soldiers were openly challenging authority while in the service (WWII and Vietnam)- such as not flying their planes to attack Vietnam ... Check it out. We should all organize and challenge authority. Now is the time for Bush and administration to leave the White House and for our troops to come now. Now.
Aimee DataOptions.com
by
Aimee (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 100 comments)
on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 11:26:46 AM
4 comments
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