well i didnt really mean spit. dont be so sensitive. i just figured you smoked some reefer and toted your canoe within protesting distance.
Well it is damned serious in my generation and the spitting thing is an urban legend. I know a lot of Namvets and not one of them ever was spit on. None of them remember any protests against them. They just begrudge that they did not get a heroes welcome home, which was true. But they trickled home over a decade, there was no big victory and a big homecoming parade. When the thing finally was over everybody has already been home for a while. You also have to understand, that the protests were over the government decision to go to war and the endless, half-assed way the war was conducted. It was never protesting about the soldiers fighting the war. It was them that we wanted back home safely. Hell, many of the protesters were Namvets themselves. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were huge on campus, one was elected SGA president. They were friends, relatives, and neighbors. 58,000 men in my generation were killed and three times that many disabled. I know you were joking, but it ain't very funny, Hondo.
it is because i got you going. which is all i was going for. my apologies. i should know better, paw.
Hey I thought I was Hondo. I'm named after a kid from Cottonport who was killed in Nam. Wasn't around for it, but I imagine it was like Iraq on a massive amount of steroids. Met a lot of Iraq Vets in Crawford protesting W and the war. People on the other side like to spin it as we are protesting the troops or disrespecting the troops, but I always thought it was more disrespectful to send them to die in an unjust war than it is to protest the war itself and the officials who sent them there but kept their own children safe and snug back stateside.
It was the main reason that the Army in the 1970's started fully integrating the National Guard into their fighting forces, instead of them being just reserves who would only be called up in a declared war. Now any conflict that we engage in will activate and engage the National Guard. They wanted to engage the whole nation in any fighting, not just the regular army. Make everybody a stakeholder and perhaps they would not be sent off to fight unpopular wars. Get every military unit into the fight, so that well-placed sons of politicians could no longer evade going to war by simply joining the Texas Air Guard. It worked in that regard, but the flip side is that the Guard units are never well-trained or well-equipped enough to be ready to ship out quickly. The Gulf War and Bosnia showed that clearly. Many generals were fired and many Guard units had to train up for 6 months or more before being deployed.
Well, they threw objects, feces and spit on ships sailing out under the Golden Gate Bridge. I will take my father's word for it since he was on the USS Coral Sea during the Vietnam War. It was California, not Louisiana so I can understand the difference.
