2006 VFW Magazine - Veterans of Foreign Wars

New generation subjected to ‘Wacko-Vet’ myth
Portraying Contemporary
War Vets in Popular Culture
Afghanistan and Iraq vets have received mixed
treatment by various media outlets.
Much of it is not encouraging.
More than four years have
passed since launching the
first of our two current
wars.
In that time, their veterans have seen
newspapers, films and television shows
portray them as victims and villains,
but seldom as victors on the battlefield.
A sampling of headlines reveals how
they have fared in newspapers: “Iraq Vets
Snap Under Traumatic Stress of Memories
from War,” “Some Marines Mentally
Ill After Iraq, Documents Show,” “Back
from Iraq—And Suddenly Out on the
Streets,”“2 Iraq Veterans Stationed at Fort
Hood Kill Themselves” and “Iraq Veteran
on Trial in Carjacking Case.”
This trend has not gone unnoticed
within the publishing industry itself. A
New York Post editorial tackled the topic
by Richard K. Kolb
under “Return of the ‘Wacko-Vet’ Myth.”
“That stereotype [of the Vietnam vet]
was also a news-media lie to begin
with,” declared the newspaper. “The
myth of the dysfunctional vet that
began with Vietnam has been created
and spread, in large measure, by groups
bitterly opposed to all U.S. military
action. Using American soldiers who
are risking their lives daily as pawns to
score political points is despicable.”
A favorite from day one has been the
atrocity story—American, of course. In
three prominent cases, the names of
officers accused, unjustly as it turned
out, were spread in nationwide headlines
without regard to the personal
repercussions.
By now Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay have become synonymous with
infamy in the public mind. Dedicated
American interrogators at the latter were
accused of working in the “gulag of our
time.” On top of that, an illustrious senator
from Illinois compared U.S. interrogation
techniques to those of the Nazis,
Stalin’s Soviets and the Cambodian
Khmer Rouge.
The media saturated the public with
coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Stories were never-ending. One Los
Angeles Times headline screamed, “Military
Must Squarely Face New ‘My Lai.’ ”
Such charges were more than just ludicrous.
Anyone affiliated with the 372nd
MP Company, the unit in charge of the
prison, was publicly tarred and feathered.
“Made infamous by the abuses at Abu
Ghraib prison,” wrote Jonathan Turley, a
public interest lawyer at George Washington
University, in USA Today, “they
[unit members] have been caricatured as
a bunch of thuggish yahoos from the
hills of West Virginia and Maryland.”
Yearning for the days of Vietnam, the
media also made the most of a handful of
deserters who fled to Canada. Wishing
this were the vanguard of a wave to
12 • WWW.VFW.ORG • © 2006 VFW Magazine
Newspaper headlines such as these create the myth that Iraq and
Afghanistan vets are emotionally unstable and thus a threat to society.