The rightwing Freeper crowd seems determined to make an ideological martyr out of Foster Barton, the young soldier on leave who was attacked after a Toby Keith concert by what the Freepers are pleased to described as a hate-filled antiwar assailant.
The Foster Barton case
As of this writing, I haven't come across any news articles that add additional information to what was in the story I previously discussed. The report there said that Barton's assailant "was screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers." It's a measure of how eager the Freepers are to stigmatize criticism of Bush's war in Iraq that they have seized on this incident as evidence of the violent nature of critics of the Iraq War, and of their hostility toward individual soldiers.
The notion was ridiculous when Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew began hyping it during the Vietnam War in 1969. But at least events of those days gave it a more superficial credibility. Some antiwar demonstrations involved clashes between police and demonstrators. And some campus demonstrations targeted military recruiting and ROTC facilities for vandalism to property.
But with today's antiwar dissent largely mostly channelled into more sedate political efforts like registering voters and donating money to candidates and organizations that fund political advertisements like MoveOn.org, the rightwing's inflation of the Barton incident has an almost manic quality to it.
At the risk of giving a tiny amount of unnecessary further publicity to frivolous accusations, I'll quote a couple of these polemics as examples of how desperate the Iraq War fans are to brand the war's critics as unpatriotic and anti-soldier.
Thomas Segel at the GOPUSA.com Web site asks Does This Hate Honor America? 09/24/04.
Vietnam veterans commenting on the attack of this wounded soldier recalled the assaults, the spitting and the hate filled language they encountered upon their return from combat. Those attacks occurred at the same time John Kerry was diminishing their service before the United States Congress. ...
The hate language of the left has translated into violence against a young soldier who wears the same Purple Heart medal so loudly heralded by Kerry supporters. It is the anti-war supporters that are John Kerry's core campaigners who breed such violent outbursts.
As I've discussed in a number of posts this year, the rightwing's preferred image of antiwar protesters attacking soldiers and spitting on them is an ideological fantasy that reflects the Oxycontin haze of FoxWorld, but not reality. Likewise the fantasy that John Kerry or his campaign has in any way encouraged or condoned assaults on soldiers. And, again, the idea that this particular assault was politically motivated is mostly conjecture, so far as any news reporting on it I've seen.
This piece by Jan Barton at the rightwing ChronWatch.com blog site, John Kerry, Peace Protesters, and Young Foster Barton 09/23/04, tries to put it all into a neat Republican package:
He must have thought he was safe, on U.S. soil, at a patriotic Toby Keith concert, walking back to the car with his 21-year-old sister. But he was sucker-punched from behind, knocked unconscious, and viciously kicked and punched--by a ''peace'' protestor.
Once again, shouting something about soldiers does not make the assailant an antiwar protester.
What a legacy for John Kerry. Kerry's ''peace'' protests engendered unreasoning hate for the military that lingers to this day.
That hate is fueled by Kerry's months of flip flopping on his position about the war, depending on his audience or perhaps the wind he is surfing. It is exacerbated by his constant refrain of ''failure'' connected to the war, and the ''lies'' he tries to pin on George Bush about the war.
Barton is apparently under the impression that no Americans committed atrocities in Vietnam. We could be "open-minded" and grant that it's possible she's right. We could also, with a similar level of plausibility, assert that the earth is flat, that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery (a position the Republican Party increasingly embraces, by the way) and that George Washington never existed.
Not surprisingly, she credits the tales of the Swift Boat Liars for Bush group, and actually claims that Fox News is "fair and balanced."
The Jason Gilson case
An earlier incident this year was blown up by an even greater exercise of imagination into evidence that Iraq War critics are anti-soldier. It involved an Iraq War veteran named Jason Gilson, who marched in a Fourth of July parade in a relatively liberal community in Washington state carrying a sign that said "Veterans for Bush."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson gave an account of the incident that the Freepers found congenial: Veteran gets rude welcome on Bainbridge Seattle Post-Intelligencer 07/09/04.
The bucolic [Bainbridge Island's] deep reputation for civility got a gut check this week during the annual Grand Old Fourth of July celebration.
That's when Jason Gilson, a 23-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq, marched in the local event. He wore his medals with pride and carried a sign that said "Veterans for Bush."
Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.
"Baby killer!"
"Murderer!"
"Boooo!"
Jamieson gives the following account of another comment that Gilson and his momma took as an insult to him as a veteran. Jamieson's column neglects to mention that Gilson was carrying a "Veterans for Bush" sign:
Jason's mother, Tamar, says a female parade announcer locked eyes on her son who was walking behind a pro-Republican group called Women in Red, White and Blue. The group supports President Bush and the troops in the fight against terrorism.
According to Tamar, the female announcer sarcastically asked Jason: "And what exactly are you a veteran of?"
The perceived mocking, the mother adds, set off some people in the crowd, loosing a flood of negative comments, "like a wave... a mob-style degrading."
At the very end, Jamieson does relate that the announcer he quoted had lost her father in a previous war. Which perhaps adds a measure of credibility to her comment that she was asking Gilson about his service out of genuine curiosity rather than any sarcasm.
In a follow-up column of 07/16/04, Jamieson writes that the mayor of the town called Gilson and apologized to him. This time he manages to mention the sign:
The mayor of the community, six miles west of Seattle, has apologized for the way a U.S. veteran of the Iraq war was treated during a holiday parade there.
"I called him Monday night," Mayor Darlene Kordonowy told me yesterday. "I felt badly about his experience. He was distressed and distraught about what happened when I talked to him."
Jason Gilson, 23, was booed and called names such as "murderer" during the island's recent Fourth of July celebration. Ignoramuses in the crowd took umbrage with Gilson, who was disabled in battle near Nasiriyah. During the parade, Gilson wore his medals and carried a sign: "Veterans for Bush."
Steve Gardner wrote about the incident in "'Murderer' comments spark national outrage," The Sun (Bremerton WA) 07/10/04 (this is a link to a version copied, apparently accurately, to a discussion group. I was able to find a cached version of the Sun article earlier this weekend, but the link doesn't seem to be working). Gardiner's account is notably different:
Jason Gilson of East Bremerton, who as a Marine corporal was wounded in Nasiriyah early in the Iraq conflict and is now in the inactive Ready Reserve, marched in Bainbridge's July 4th parade holding a sign that said "Veterans for Bush." [my emphasis]
He was toward the rear of a group of Bush supporters in the parade, which featured several political groups. Along the route, he heard booing aimed at the Bush supporters, he said.
On Winslow Way, however, he said a man and a woman approached him and called him a "murderer," a charge reminiscent of events that occurred to Vietnam War veterans when they returned home.
Once again, Gardner's matter-of-fact reference to what supposedly happened to Vietnam War vets reflects how widely the folklore version of "the spitting image" has penetrated. But Gardner apparently paid a little more attention to verify the facts of the current story than Jamieson did:
"You don't need to be attacking individuals for their partisanship," [Gilson] said. "I was very unimpressed with the way the people of Bainbridge Island were." [my emphasis]
Kevin Dwyer, executive director of the Bainbridge Island Chamber of Commerce, the event's sponsor, said the booing is widely acknowledged, and he's not certain he can deny the "murderer" comments happened. But he hasn't found anyone else who witnessed them.
Bill Knobloch. a Bainbridge city councilman and former Navy commander, said he was in the area and heard the booing, but didn't hear anyone insulting veterans specifically.
He also said that earlier in the parade American Legion veterans acting as the parade's color guard were saluted and applauded. [my emphasis]
Given what the Freepers made of it, it's particularly noticeable that Gilson himself said he was booed for his partisanship, not his veteran status. And, in contrast to Jamieson's description, apparently the shouts of "murderer," etc., were not heard by everyone present. And veterans who were appearing in the parade as veterans and not as Bush partisans were evidently regarded politely and who no insults shouted at them. (NavyTimes.com carried an Associated Press story of 07/15/04 that contains similar reporting to Gardner's article.)
Of such raw materials are urban legends made.
Thinking about folklore in the making
In the Foster Barton case, the one news account of the incident I've seen, from the local NBC affiliate's Web site, indicates that the guy was attacked by someone who knocked him unconscious and broke his nose. There were multiple witnesses to the event. The reported facts are at least not inconsistent with the possibility that Barton was attacked because the assailant was antiwar and singled him out as a soldier because of his t-shirt. It certainly sounds like a cowardly and unjustifiable assault, whatever the attacker's motivation.
But it would be gross understatment to say that the Freepers, in using this as an illustration of supposedly pervasive anti-soldier hatred among Iraq War critics, are asking the skimpy facts of this news report to bear a burden it can't begin to carry. Can't these folks at least pin down whether the attacker actually was antiwar or whether he supports John Kerry before they start blaming the Kerry campaign for it?
As for the Jason Gilson incident, I find it hard to take the Freepers' outrage about that one seriously at all. It's not clear to me from the reported facts that the guy was insulted for being a veteran at all. In fact, it sounds pretty unlikely, since he himself told Gardner that he was being heckled for his "partisanship."
By the time I was Gilson's 23 years of age, I had taken place in a number of protests large and small, and organized some of the smaller ones myself. I would routinely advise people not to engage with hecklers or let them create an escalating argument by insults. But any time you take a political stand in public, especially in an event like a holiday parade where people of different political persuasions are going to be present, you're going to get some opposing comments or heckling, some of it possibly not very polite. If you're too thin-skinned for that, you shouldn't be carrying political signs in public.
Now, I don't recommend that hecklers call people they don't even know "murderers" (although it's by no means clear that this really occurred in this instance). But let's get real. Gilson was carrying a pro-Bush sign in an election year in a public parade. Did he really imagine that no one would have a negative comment? That everyone would say, oh, his sign says "veteran" so we have to cheer for his pro-Bush sign? From Gardner's report, it sounds very likely that if he had marched in the American Legion contingent without any current partisan signs, he wouldn't have encountered anything but polite applause and affirmation of his service.
"You don't need to be attacking individuals for their partisanship," Gilson told the Sun reporter.
All I can really say to that is, "Grow up, dude."
As I said in my earlier post, I don't expect this to convince any Freepers that it's pretty pathetic, not to mention dishonest, to be scrambling for incidents like these to prove a nonsense ideological point. But there will likely come a time, years after we've found a way to declare "peace with honor" in Iraq and leave, that people will claim to be outraged at the "shameful treatment" returning soldiers allegedly received from antiwar critics. The fact that it mostly occurred in their Oxycontin dreams will get lost down the memory hole.
I'll make a very safe prediction: if Kerry wins the election, most of these same foaming-at-the-mouth war fans will begin on or about November 3 to blast Kerry unmercifully for anything he does to resolve the Iraq War. And most of them will not even pretend to worry that attacking the incumbent administration's foreign policy might in any way give "aid and comfort to the enemy" or might be perceived as somehow dishonoring American soldiers. No, this is fevered political polemicizing, not patriotic fervor.
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