Quote :

"American Legion Declares War on Protestors -- Media Next? By E&P Staff Published: August 24, 2005 4:20 PM ET NEW YORK The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war. "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu. The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism." In his speech, Cadmus declared: "It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction.” "

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001020671

Isn't one of the freedoms that are fought for is the freedom of speech?

9/1/2005 8:38:17 AM

so only the protestors are welcome to freedom of speech?

9/1/2005 8:39:28 AM

No, but they're not advocating the use of "any means necessary" to silence those who speak against them.

9/1/2005 8:40:56 AM

you faggots LOVE to abuse the rights and freedoms that people have died for. you could care less what the ramifications are of your stupid shit as long as you get to make asses out of yourselves. you exemplify personal responsibility.

9/1/2005 8:47:24 AM

those old guys aint gonna do shit

9/1/2005 8:49:38 AM

Quote :

"No, but they're not advocating the use of "any means necessary" to silence those who speak against them."

theres a group you need to talk to.

they had piss and shit and dead fetuses hurled at them as they got back from vietnam.

i think they know something about being the victims of "any means necessary"

oh those noble protestors are always right, arent they?

9/1/2005 9:01:32 AM

^The spitting and crap being hurled at returning troops incidents may well be revisionist history. These stories only came to light years after the Vietnam conflict was over. Noone that I have seen has pointed to any reports at the time this was allegedly occurring.

9/1/2005 9:09:02 AM

mark, only liberals use revisionist history

conservatives don't get history wrong.

9/1/2005 9:13:47 AM

^^ It may be untrue, if you ignore all eyewitness testimony. I can use the same logic to say that the Holocaust never happened.

9/1/2005 11:15:16 AM

^^^ maybe that's because of the hyper liberal fucking media back then

9/1/2005 11:23:15 AM

Would it be revisionist history to say that Nixon never did anything illegal, and those who blew the whistle on him are liars and unpatriotic?

9/1/2005 11:27:00 AM

^^^There are tons of photographic records and documents confirming the Holocaust. Not quite the same thing.

I'm not saying these incidents NEVER happened, but I find it very skeptical that noone has produced any photos, police reports, news reports, court records, etc. to confirm this alleged "widespread phenomenon".

Quote :

"Published on Saturday, April 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe Debunking a Spitting Image by Jerry Lembcke STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on. What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us." Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge. The exaggerations in Smith's story are characteristic of those told by others. ''Most Vietnam veterans were spat on when we came back," he said. That's not true. A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war. The persistence of spat-upon Vietnam veteran stories suggests that they continue to fill a need in American culture. The image of spat-upon veterans is the icon through which many people remember the loss of the war, the centerpiece of a betrayal narrative that understands the war to have been lost because of treason on the home front. Jane Fonda's noisiest detractors insist she should have been prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, in conformity with the law of the land. But the psychological dimensions of the betrayal mentality are far more interesting than the legal. Betrayal is about fear, and the specter of self-betrayal is the hardest to dispel. The likelihood that the real danger to America lurks not outside but inside the gates is unsettling. The possibility that it was failure of masculinity itself, the meltdown of the core component of warrior culture, that cost the nation its victory in Vietnam has haunted us ever since. Many tellers of the spitting tales identify the culprits as girls, a curious quality to the stories that gives away their gendered subtext. Moreover, the spitting images that emerged a decade after the troops had come home from Vietnam are similar enough to the legends of defeated German soldiers defiled by women upon their return from World War I, and the rejection from women felt by French soldiers when they returned from their lost war in Indochina, to suggest something universal and troubling at work in their making. One can reject the presence of a collective subconscious in the projection of those anxieties, as many scholars would, but there is little comfort in the prospect that memories of group spit-ins, like Smith has, are just fantasies conjured in the imaginations of aging veterans. Remembering the war in Vietnam through the images of betrayal is dangerous because it rekindles the hope that wars like it, in countries where we are not welcomed, can be won. It disparages the reputation of those who opposed that war and intimidates a new generation of activists now finding the courage to resist Vietnam-type ventures in the 21st century. Today, on the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, new stories of spat-upon veterans appear faster than they can be challenged. Debunking them one by one is unlikely to slow their proliferation but, by contesting them where and when we can, we engage the historical record in a way that helps all of us remember that, in the end, soldiers and veterans joined with civilians to stop a war that should have never been fought. Jerry Lembcke, associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College, is the author of ''The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam." © 2005 Globe Newspaper Company"

[Insert predictable comment about liberal pansy academic sociology professors or Massachusetts]

[Edited on September 1, 2005 at 11:43 AM. Reason : .]

9/1/2005 11:39:40 AM

Quote :

" GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site?"

And yet, how many times do we see stories on the local news of people comming home from Iraq at the reunion with their families at airports and such. Does this guy honestly think that soldiers don't use civilian airports?

9/1/2005 12:09:29 PM

I was spit on in the 1990's in NYC when I was up there in uniform. Oh well.

9/1/2005 12:11:47 PM

So stupid.

So incredibly stupid.

Yet another organization claiming to be "American" that is in fact "dividing America" further.

The ends do not justify the means.

9/1/2005 12:20:09 PM

Quote :

"I'm not saying these incidents NEVER happened, but I find it very skeptical that noone has produced any photos, police reports, news reports, court records, etc. to confirm this alleged "widespread phenomenon"."

1) Photos? "Hey can me and my friends get pictures of us spitting on you?"

2) Go spit on 100 men and see how many of them file a police report.

3) Go spit on someone and see if it makes the N&O tomorrow.

4) How many people actually go to court for being spat upon?

9/1/2005 12:20:15 PM

Look, there are assholes everywhere. People spit at other people when they're mad on occasion. I don't see why it's a big deal (well, I do see why it would be, but like it's stated above, how many people who have been in a war are gonna give two shits at the moment someone spits on them). I had just finished my freshman year at the Academy and got spit on and it rolled off my back.

I wore a uniform for 9 years...if I had a nickel for every time someone made some sort of baby-killer-like reference, I'd probably have about 10 bucks. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. Why should Vietnam be any exception?

[Edited on September 1, 2005 at 12:34 PM. Reason : .]

9/1/2005 12:33:07 PM

Quote :

"Why should Vietnam be any exception? "

Didn't you read the article? Because:

Quote :

"in the end, soldiers and veterans joined with civilians to stop a war that should have never been fought. "

9/1/2005 12:56:00 PM

Has anyone actually determined that protestors have "demoralized" any troops?

9/1/2005 4:49:53 PM

the fact that it gives comfort and bolsters the enemy's morale is not in question.

whether it demoralizes our troops or not is slightly debatable, but most servicemen would say that it bothers them.

9/1/2005 4:52:12 PM

Quote :

"HA HA, stupid hippie protestors. There's almost nothing worse than the overly-idealistic college student. 20 years old, doesn't know shit about the world or about real life, but that doesn't stop them from thinking they have all the answers. Luckily, most of them will grow out of it in the next 5 years. The ones that don't will go on to start websites like infowars.com and influence a whole new generation of dipshits. Yes. Uninformed, overly-vocal children protesting something they don't even fully understand. Having been through college, I know the type firsthand. Ovepriveledged white kids from upper class families who wear Che Gueverra t-shirts, and the only thing they know about the guy is that he's some type of political prisoner and that bands like Rage Against the Machine support him, so hey, the guy must be a hero! OK, maybe they do have a right to protest without getting thier asses beat. Doesn't mean they aren't idiots. Also doesn't mean that I can't laugh at them when they do get thier asses beat. Wrong, maybe. Deserved, probably."

9/1/2005 6:24:29 PM

So I asked my dad about this whole getting spit on thing. He got back in 69 after 3 tours in vietnam, so I guess it wasn't as bad then. Anyways, he said most people were friendly to him, and he hitched all over out west, getting rides cos he was in uniform. But that out in san francisco he quickly learned not to wear a uniform around. Not so much hatred towards him, as people calling out to him and such. I wasn't there so I don't know what the general feeling was, I'm just relaying what he had to say about it.

9/1/2005 6:58:25 PM

Quote :

"2) Go spit on 100 men and see how many of them file a police report."

didn't someone call campus police the other day cause a biker spat on him?

9/1/2005 7:04:10 PM

What crime is that?

I'm just asking in case I see somebody spitworthy.

9/2/2005 2:35:40 AM

Quote :

"Why I'm Leaving the American Legion An Open Letter to the National Commander by Sean T Lewis Thomas P. Cadmus National Commander The American Legion 700 North Pennsylvania St. P.O. Box 1055 Indianapolis, IN 46206 By Post and E-mail Dear Commander Cadmus: I write today as a very distressed member of The American Legion. I enlisted into the Regular Army in 1988 to fulfill my idealist's sense of duty -- a duty to do my part to preserve the freedom of my nation and the liberties of my countrymen. After five years of service, including duty in the Persian Gulf War, I was discharged in 1993 to join the swollen ranks of America's disabled veterans. With my ideals and optimism mostly intact, I joined The American Legion. My membership lapsed a few times over the intervening years, but a few months ago, I started pushing those renewal notices to the top of my to-do list, and renewed my membership in The American Legion with my June paycheck. I have been paying attention to all of the good things The American Legion does: community service, veterans' advocacy, and lobbying for veterans' issues. Despite the Legion's support for European Fascism and Benito Mussolini 70 years ago, I felt that those sympathies of the past were just that: the past -- a dark chapter in the otherwise stalwart history of The American Legion. Yesterday, you proved me wrong. That your address to the National Convention this week repeated as fact the lies by which this country was led down the path to war in Iraq is despicable, but of only secondary importance to me. Passage of Resolution #3, and your statement that anti-war demonstrations should be suppressed "by any means necessary" is taken directly from playbooks written by Goebbels, Marcos and Duvalier. I cannot speak for you, but I enlisted, trained and fought with the ideal and willingness to protect and defend the rights of all Americans, not only the ones who agree with me. First among these rights, enumerated appropriately in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, are the freedoms of Speech, of Assembly, of Association, of Religion and of the Press. Now The American Legion has taken an official stand against The Constitution of the United States. You should be ashamed. The American Legion's stance, and your attitude that Americans opposed to the war should be silenced as "unpatriotic," is an affront to great Americans whose lives and sacrifices I have lived to honor. General Smedley Butler: "War is a Racket." President George Washington: "My first wish is to see War, this plague to mankind, banished from off this earth." President Dwight D. Eisenhower: "When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." President Theodore Roosevelt: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." I see too great a difference between the words of Great Americans and those you spoke this week in support of Resolution #3. It is therefore with a heavy heart and great anger that I must separate myself from The Legion's anti-American beliefs. By this letter, I rescind my membership in The American Legion. From this time forward, I shall do all I can to spread the knowledge that the American Legion does not speak for me and many other veterans. Sincerely, Sean T Lewis Disabled American Veteran Persian Gulf War Veterans for Peace Veterans of Foreign Wars Iraq Veterans Against the War NOT American Legion"

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/08/con05305.html

9/2/2005 7:41:53 AM

yes, pryderi. clearly the letter of one hippy liberal who was in the American Legion who got pissed off by the AL means that the AL is horrible

9/2/2005 8:15:36 AM

Quote :

"What crime is that? I'm just asking in case I see somebody spitworthy."

Spitting on someone? Probably misdemeaner assault.

9/2/2005 9:58:16 AM

Quote :

"yes, pryderi. clearly the letter of one hippy liberal who was in the American Legion who got pissed off by the AL means that the AL is horrible "

So are you saying you agree with the AL's stance that anti-war protestors should shut up?

[Edited on September 2, 2005 at 10:19 AM. Reason : sidk]

9/2/2005 10:16:32 AM

Typical...someone presents a clear, spelled out argument, along with strong quotes from some very important figures to back everything, and it is quickly dismissed as, "the letter of one hippy liberal."

9/2/2005 10:20:06 AM

Quote :

"didn't someone call campus police the other day cause a biker spat on him?"

The police were called because someone tried to run the biker off the road after he spat on their car.

9/2/2005 11:17:52 AM