George,

As one who taught on the Berkeley campus from 1963-72, and attended anti-war rallies and other events in the Bay Area during that period, I recall substantial hostility toward the armed forces, and especially toward troops who had recently returned from Vietnam. 

The irony, as I look back, was that most such people were involuntarily in the armed forces by reason of the draft, and even the small number who had enlisted could seldom choose their assignments. Yet somehow many in anti-war movement during that period openly blamed the troops, perhaps because taking on the Johnson and later Nixon administrations seemed remote and elusive. 

What is baffling, in retrospect, is why we were so ready to place blame on those who were simply dispatched to fight in what they must have known was an already quite unpopular war.

Bob O'Neil (electronic mail, March 23, 2004)

Editor's Note: I asked Bob O'Neil to comment on the war in Vietnam in response to Patrick Coy's article Myth Making and Spitting Images from Viet Nam. See also Bob O'Neil Comments on Dissent and Support of Troops in Time of War.