NOT THAT YOU ASKED
Vietnam vets were flooding Facebook with outrage because Jane Fonda has been nominated as one of the 100 Most Influential Women of the Last Century. You can't really blame them. While history has vindicated her opposition to the Vietnam War, nothing can excuse her trip to Hanoi during the war, showing support for the North Vietnamese. Most of the soldiers over there, and a lot of people here at home, wanted her charged with treason. That wasn't possible because since we never declared war on North Vietnam, it wasn't a crime for Fonda, or anyone else to go there and meet with its leaders.
While what she did wasn't criminal, it was unbelievably stupid. The anti-war movement was having enough trouble trying to change public opinion about the war. When Fonda showed up in Hanoi, and even posed for a picture sitting on an anti-aircraft gun, she outraged the country. She made everyone against the war look bad, even legitimate critics like George McGovern and John Kerry. She probably prolonged the war because of the damage she did to those opposed to it.
Fonda herself has admitted that going to Hanoi was wrong. She has even apologized for doing it. Still, for the men who fought over there, especially the ones who spent time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, she could apologize every day for the rest of her life, and it still wouldn't change their minds about her. As I wrote above, you can't really blame them.
That said, I've often wondered why Vietnam vets don't have the same hatred they have for Fonda also for Lyndon Johnson, Robert Macnamara, and Richard Nixon. The things they did back then were far worse than what Fonda did.
LBJ used a minor skirmish in the Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to send combat troops to Vietnam. He and Macnamara devised the Vietnam strategy, sending more and more troops over there. They kept telling the soldiers and the American people that we were winning the war. The truth was that they knew almost from the beginning that there was no way we could win a land war in Asia. If it hadn't been for them there wouldn't have been any Americans in the Hanoi Hilton, and Fonda wouldn't have made her ill-advised trip there.
As for Richard Nixon, he may have kept the war from ending in 1968. In the autumn of that year he was locked in a tight race for the presidency with Hubert Humphrey. He knew that if LBJ were to make peace before the election, Humphrey would likely win. He sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks by sending word to the South Vietnamese through a third party to boycott the talks. He told them that if he became president he could get them a "better deal." What he got them and us was four more years of war. To me that was a far greater crime than any of the others he committed as president.
Despite what these men did the mention of their names doesn't get near the same reaction as Fonda's does.
I have to add this. None of us should ever feel very smug about how we acted during and after that war. The way the veterans of that war were treated when they came home was a national disgrace. I understood why people protested the war, but I never could understand protesting the men who were drafted into it. Those guys faced three choices when they got their draft notices, Vietnam, Canada, or prison. They didn't want to be over there. As far as I could tell, the only soldier that wanted to be over there was Gen. Westmorland, and nobody was shooting at him.
As for that award, neither Jane Fonda or any other actress deserves to be on that list. It should be reserved for humanitarians like Mother Teresa, or heads of state like Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir.
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