[lbo-talk] Marc Cooper and the myths that vets make up about being spat on

[joanna bujes]

What's odd to me about these stories is that in the late sixties/early 
seventies army gear was the teen uniform: people who were against the 
war also wore army pants and army jackets. I was virulently against the 
way, but I spent 1970-1974 wearing a canvas green army jacket at all 
times...as did all my friends. So if there was any spitting done, I 
wonder how it was that people would know who to spit on, since everyone 
was wearing this gear.

I also don't remember feeling any animosity against grunt soldiers, nor 
do I remember other anti-war friends being hostile to the rank and file. 
In the late seventies I had a lover who had fought in Nam, and I don't 
remember feeling any conflict about being involved with him. It was 
clear from speaking to him that he had gone there like everyone else -- 
lamb to the slaughter. He had fought in the mountains, and twelve of the 
fourteen men he had been with, were killed. He was a gentle man and, in 
fact, all the men I came to know who had actually fought in the war were 
fairly peaceable and anti-war.

So, I think there are lots of reasons to feel skeptical about these stories.

Joanna

John Lacny wrote:


>Steve Philion writes:
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>>A rightwinger then angrily claimed to have been a
>>vet and proceeded to recount his own tale of being
>>'spat on'. I picked apart his bogus story and Cooper
>>went ballistic, insisting that if the guy said he was
>>spat on, then by golly he was spat on!
>>    
>>
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