Behind the “spitting image”: Author Jerry Lembcke traces the evolution of a wartime myth

By April Howard and Benjamin Dangl

posted January 13, 2006

When 600 Vermont national guardsmen and women returned home from the Middle East in December, none of them were spat upon by anti-war protestors. In the Vietnam War era, reports of such actions abounded. But are these infamous stories true? Or was the idea of people spitting at vets concocted to damage the anti-Vietnam War movement? With U.S. public opinion deeply divided over the Iraq War, getting to the bottom of this “spitting image” has again become timely.

Not only did the stories of spitting anti-Vietnam War protesters conflict with sociologist Jerry Lembcke’s own experiences as a veteran and member of the anti-war movement in the 1970s, but his investigation did not find any documented cases of veterans being spat upon. In his book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, Lembcke argues that the manufactured stories served the Nixon administration as political tools with which to undermine the anti-war movement.

Lembcke also questions the diagnosis of “post-traumatic stress disorder,” and argues that it serves to discredit the political opinions of veterans. And he contends that bumper stickers saying “Support Our Troops” (rather than the war itself) are a way of de-politicizing the war.

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