Service outside of the war seems to be generally beneficial to most the people I have known who have served. Most veterans I have known who have served in combat (been shot at and/or shot back, not even the majority of those who serve in war time) generally seem to either be in worse shape for what they have gone through or just wish they had never had to gone through the horrors of war. Maybe you think the past few american wars were glorious feats of national triumph, but personally I think they were wastes of good men and treasure (first Iraq War is an exception to this). I regret all the lives lost and ruined by these misadventures, I am not grateful that they served, I am sad for them. I have an uncle that blew his head off a few weeks after he got back from Vietnam, everyone really loved him, he was a man of remarkable talents who I never got to meet. The vast majority of homeless men I know of my fathers age are Vets. I don't think all of them would have ended up in the condition they are in if they hadn't chosen or been forced to serve. I have fed them from the backdoor of jobs, given them 5 or 10 dollars to help them get by when I could afford it. I don't do it because they "served" their country, I do it because they they are suffering. All military members are brainwashed, they have to be to survive on the battlefield. Most people don't come out of the womb prepped to handle the stress of war effectively. Military psychologist don't hide the fact that the goal of training a soldier is to brainwash them so that they can safely and effectively do their jobs. I didn't say anything about brainwashing, but it just seemed that you didn't realize what it takes to make a soldier in your post.
If such incidents were common police would have made a habit of being there to arrest and kick the shit out of anti-war protesters, the FBI would have made sure of it. We would have a nice public record of the assault charges against the anti-war demonstrators and this kind of thing would have gotten big media coverage.Ok, I think we can agree that, do to lack of news coverage, there probably was no regular, and likely no instances at all, of groups lining up and spitting at returning soldiers. However, we cannot discount the possibility, the likelihood, that individual acts of spitting did occur. Some of the accounts likely have been conflated...individuals relating bad treatment including spitting even though it didn't actual occur (when telling stories to relate a general principle, such as bad treatment of vets, individuals will often include as happening to them incidents they had heard from others). For example, I served in Desert Storm, returned to Germany afterwards and personally was not present at any parades or celebrations, but when talking about general treatment of troops it wouldn't be dishonest of me to say that "after Desert Storm we were greeted with parades" because such parades did occur and "we" meaning returning vets were greeted with them, even though I personally did not participate. So even a few isolated incidences could be honestly spread so that it appears to be more.
-XC