It's High-Time for a Moratorium on Comparing People to Muhammad Ali

The fact that Bill Simmons apparently seriously believes Tiger Woods faces a bigger uphill battle than Muhammad Ali ever did clearly demonstrates several things, including: A) Simmons has apparently dived headfirst into the pool of stupid so deeply he's never coming out; B) Simmons either completely ignores or has completely forgotten the landscape of racism in the 60s (when Ali was repeatedly attacked for his race) vs. the 90s and 00s (because clearly, the threats Ali faced were nothing compared to Fuzzy Zoeller's comments); C) obsession with the lives of celebrities in America has taken such a perverse turn that this is treated as front-page material on the biggest sports website in the country; and D) that it's high time comparisons of anybody to Muhammad Ali stop, unless those individuals are willing to give up their career to stick to their principles and fight for what's right politically.

But hey, having sex with a lot of women and insisting (correctly) that the Vietnam War was racist and that you were not going to participate for political and religious reasons? Totally the same thing. Just ask Bill Simmons.

Historical Image of the Day

Women of the South Vietnamese Women's Armed Forces Corps with female U.S. Air Force officer, 1968

Herbicides and Their Effects on Vietnam Vets

I'm less than surprised to find that the herbicides, such as Agent Orange, used in Vietnam may be linked to Parkinson's disease, in addition to heart disease and cancer. Obviously, a further study into this connection should be a must, but I would be equally unsurprised to learn the government will do little about it. After all, it didn't seem to bother the government too much when we put troops way too close to atomic tests, and our recent treatment of veterans in the hospitals is just the most recent reminder that while many rhetorically "support our troops," in practice our treatment of veterans is one of the United States' biggest sources of shame.

RIP - Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite is dead at 92. A good run, no question. Still, the world of journalism is worse for it, and there may never be another Cronkite, not only for who he was, but for how television news (and news media more generally) has shifted. He'll be remembered for plenty, but for my money, his reporting on the Vietnam War and his shift against it is a highlight in a career filled with highlights.

McNamara

Well, the world's population is significantly less self-serving this morning.

While McNamara tried to rehabilitate his reputation in later years, the evil he caused and the vigor in which he defended it make him of the great architects of 20th century death. His behavior was utterly amoral. His later apologies only made it worse. Both his autobiography and Errol Morris' Fog of War gave him opportunities to explain himself. But his apologies never felt from the heart. He was explaining away his actions as being part of the time. This is not 100% untrue, but the fact was that few people in the United States played a bigger role in creating that time.

The Spitting on Vietnam Vets Myth

There are certain battles I know I will spend the rest of my life fighting. One is that Merle Haggard is a superior artist to Johnny Cash. Another is that the Confederacy committed treason in defense of slavery and that there leaders should have been executed. Sometimes these battles kind of come up on you--like the idea out of certain areas of the progressive blogosphere that Ulysses Grant was a good president. That's some crazy talk right there.

Another of these battles is the urban legend that antiwar protesters spat upon Vietnam veterans as they returned to the United States. This of course is central to conservative mythology about why we lost Vietnam. According to these ideas, we could have won easily in Vietnam if it wasn't for the hippies and the media. That we were invading a country where we had few interests, even less knowledge of, and intervening in a civil war we didn't really understand on the side of a clear loser plays no role in this mythology.

Naturally, the thing to do when examining these ideas is to turn to the evidence. Sociologist Jerry Lembcke did just this in his 1998 book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Lembcke, a Vietnam vet himself, examined about 500 news stories from the time concerning soldiers returning from Vietnam. Not a single story mentioned spitting on soldiers. Surveys done at the time found a whopping 3% of returning soldiers who found their welcome unpleasant, as opposed to 93% who described it as "friendly." There is not a single piece of evidence of anyone even talking about spitting upon soldiers until the early 1980s. Every single time Lembcke pushed those who claimed someone had spat upon them, they admitted that it hadn't actually happened to them, but to friends or relatives.

This is overwhelming evidence that protesters spitting on soldiers was extraordinary rare, though you couldn't prove that it never happened. On the other side, there are thousands of veterans saying it happened to them and millions of Americans who believe it.

Tomorrow, in my survey class, we are reading a chapter out of a source book that presents a series of first-person accounts from veterans. One of the interviewed veterans claims he was spat upon, an assertion that goes unchallenged by the book's authors. This disturbed me. Now, I have to tell my students that this a myth. Going against me is not only the fact that they believe it happened and that there family members say it happened, but that it's in the book too. Frankly, I don't think they'll believe me. It's even possible (though I'm not worried about this) that it will show up on evaluations. Nonetheless, I can't let this go.

One obvious question that might be asked is this: Are you calling my father, uncles, grandfather a liar?

While I wouldn't use that term, yes. Yes I am.

Memory is a tricky thing. Historians want to honor and respect the memory of people. But of course memories cannot serve as the only source base. [Note: this is why I could never ever work on Native American history.] And with Vietnam, memory gets really weird because veterans want so bad to recast the war to place their actions in a positive life. They are ashamed because they lost the war. They are ashamed because they didn't match the experiences of their fathers in World War II (this I think is really important and plays right into another annoying myth---that of the "greatest generation."). Some are ashamed because of the atrocities they committed. Others are trying to create a reason for fighting a pointless war. Many are angry because the nation didn't honor their experiences. There are many reasons and it is a quite complex issue. But the image of hippies spitting on honorable men fighting for our freedom has stuck like no other. It provides an enemy, it explains why we lost, it allows veterans to honor their own actions by shifting fault for the whole catastrophe. It is a story with legs.

The problem is that there's not an ounce of truth to it.

So tomorrow I'll explain this whole situation to my students. I'll have to tell them that what their fathers have said to them is not true. A few might come around to what I have to say. Others will probably be offended. Many will dismiss me as a left-wing kook. And I will go on to fight the exact same losing battle next year.

Couple of interesting links. Jack Shafer had a 2000 piece in Slate on this myth. We don't necessarily see eye to eye on why the myth continues, but he makes many good points. And if you want to go into the heart of the beast, in 2004 the Free Republic site posted a story about this. The comments are as frightening as you'd expect from freepers.

Historical Image of the Day

John Birch Society president Ralph Westfall speaking in favor of the Vietnam War, UCLA, 1965.

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John F. Kennedy discussing Vietnam, 1961

I also want to note that I miss the days of gigantic maps that dwarfed the president.

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Vietnam War protest. Washington, D.C., 1967

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The body of South Vietnamese dictator/president Ngo Dinh Diem, November 2, 1963

I got the picture off of this amusing pro-Diem site. Awesome.

The Immorality of American Wars: Vietnam

I cannot recommend highly enough the fantastic Nick Turse article about Vietnamese amputees at Asia Times Online. Turse allows these two amputees, Nguyen Van Tu and Pham Van Chap, to tell their stories of life as amputees. Both had a leg torn off by the Americans or South Vietnamese in the war.

Pham Van Chap asks a basic question of American readers: "Americans caused many losses and much suffering for the Vietnamese during the war, do Americans now feel remorse?"

Turse writes:

I wish I could answer "yes". Instead, I tell him that most Americans are totally ignorant of the pain of the Vietnamese people, and then I think to myself, as I glance at the ample pile of tiny, local potatoes on his floor, about widespread American indifference to civilians killed, maimed, or suffering in other ways in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Precisely. Americans don't care. I don't think they ever did. Just like we don't care today about what happens to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the fundamental immorality of modern American war. It is one thing to not care about the wounded of your enemies. No one expected us to worry about the wounded of Nazi Germany. They were our enemy. Of course, geopolitical concerns led us to care an awful lot about reconstructing Germany, but that's an issue for another day.

Beginning in the Cold War though, we supposedly fought wars around the world to help the people we were fighting for. Central America, Vietnam, Korea, endless CIA operations around the world. In name at least, these were about protecting the people from some sort of oppression. Yet, not only did we promote oppressive dictatorships on our own, but we showed no interest at all in how our wars affected average people.

One might argue that is not the job of a nation at war. OK, perhaps. But what about when that war is over? Don't we have some kind of obligation to the people we were fighting for? Shouldn't we at least provide them prosthetic legs or arms? Help them eat?

But no, we don't care. Most war supporters sit at home and see the wars through the eyes of America kicking ass. The people on the ground aren't people, they are video game people. The U.S. government is playing a giant video game for them and they love watching it. They don't care any more about an Iraqi, Vietnamese, or Salvadoran than they do about the nameless characters they blew away on their video games.

Nothing is going to change in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if we win these wars, if we can win such conflicts, does anyone really think there will be the slightest interest in reconstruction? The tiniest amount of money to putting people's lives back together again?

I sure don't believe we will. And that cuts to the fundamental immorality of American wars since 1945.

Let me close by quoting Turse again:

I wish I could tell Nguyen Van Tu that most Americans know something of his country's torture and torment during the war. I wish I could tell him that most Americans care. I wish I could tell him that Americans feel true remorse for the terror visited upon the Vietnamese in their name, or that an apology is forthcoming and reparations on their way. But then I'd be lying.

Historical Image of the Day

Cover of Life Magazine, February 11, 1966

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Victims of My Lai Massacre, March 16, 1968

Koreans in Vietnam

Check out this article at Gusts of Popular Feeling on the story of Korean soldiers fighting for the U.S. in Vietnam. Quite a fascinating story. Of particular interest is a link to a 1972 story on My Lai-esque Korean massacre of Vietnamese peasants.

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USO show, Long Binh, Vietnam. December 25, 1967

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Dwight Eisenhower meeting with Ngo Dinh Diem, 1957