Vietnam veteran, antiwar activist and sociologist Jerry Lembcke began researching the stories of spat-upon veterans when they were spreading like wildfire during the buildup to the first Gulf war. Not only did he find no documented cases of such incidents actually occurring during the Vietnam War, but his research revealed the deep connections between the antiwar movement and thousands of veterans and active-duty soldiers. It is this reality, he contends, that the spitting myth was created to conceal. The Spitting Image is a fascinating exposure of the origins and impact of this myth, including a telling description of how it was used by the emerging Nazi movement in Germany following World War I.
The Spitting Image gets to the root of the real connections between the experience of soldiers 35 years ago in Vietnam and today in Iraq and Afghanistan.