Open Letter to 'Hanoi Jane'

America's top UN diplomat has high praise for 'Hanoi Jane' | Fox News:

New U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power didn't waste her diplomatic skills on Vietnam veterans at a New York speech, praising actress Jane Fonda for "being outspoken on behalf" of her convictions.

Power, 43, was speaking at the United Nations Association of the USA 2013 Global Leadership Awards in New York Wednesday, where honorees included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head by Taliban thugs and is now an education advocate for girls.

 “Hi everybody,” Power said, according to a transcript. “You know life has changed when you’re hanging out with Jane Fonda backstage. There is no greater embodiment of being outspoken on behalf of what you believe in — and being 'all in' in every way — than Jane Fonda. And it’s a huge honor just to even briefly have shared the stage with her.”

But Vietnam veterans have long held a less charitable view of the Oscar-winning actress, who in her younger days took her anti-war activism to North Vietnam, where she posed with Viet Cong soldiers at a missile battery and earned the derisive nickname "Hanoi Jane." The now-75-year-old actress has since apologized for what she told Oprah Winfrey was an "unforgivable mistake" made in 1972. Fonda told Winfrey she was taken to a North Vietnam military site during the last day of her visit, despite her objections.
"I was an emotional wreck by [then]," Fonda told Winfrey last year. "I don't know if I was set up or not. I was an adult. I take responsibility for my actions.

(This article is way, WAY too long!)


Dear Jane;
I was "an emotional wreck" when I was being shot at by Viet Cong in 1968 and 1969.

The difference between you and me is that you were a stone cold camera-loving BITCH, and I was just a guy who got drafted and wanted to live out my year in Hell, come home to my wife and have babies.

Guess we both got our wish, huh?  I know my two children are happy with the result, and they don't resent you at ALL.  But then ... they weren't "there", were they?  (No thanks to you!)

Here's another difference between us:

You got stardom; I got to live.

You achieved your goal from having your picture taken in an anti-aircraft gun which shot down American airmen.  I achieved my goal by not dying.

It's kind of a Woody Allen thing:
"I don't want to achieve immortality though my work; I want to achieve it by Not Dying!"

Yes, I realize I am repeating myself.  I don't expect YOU to understand the emphasis .. you were never in your whole life threatened with being shot, regardless of the drama in your many, many movies .. which brought you fame, stardom and great good fortune.

Jane, I'm pleased for you in that you are being lauded for "... being outspoken for what you believe in ...".   I think that is just SO sweet!

Forget the definition of "Treason" includes "Aid and comfort to our enemy".  Which you provided.  You were just cute as hell in Barbarella, and so socially significant in "The China Syndrome".

We can almost forget that you were a traitor, that you encouraged the North Vietnamese to continue a war by political means .. even though they could not win it militarily and that thousands of American boys died to support your cinematic career.

Almost, but not quite.  You may count me among the dissatisfied few who still resent your brain-dead gesture of support for the people who were killing American men of your generation.  I'd give you some names of the men in my platoon who died, or who were wounded, by your North Vietnamese friends ... but they deserve more honor than to be linked with YOUR name.

So I will honor them in my heart, because I lived with them and fought with them and trod through the jungle with them every day until they died.  But you will never know their names.  You might be tempted to speak of them, someday, and you would only dishonor them by speaking their names.

I've held this contempt in private for over 40 years, but until I saw you being lauded for "being outspoken about (your) convictions", I never had a reason to publicly excoriate you.

If there is a God in heaven, you will die in pain.   I watched too many young men die, in the jungle, in pain, for reasons which they never understood nor will ever have the opportunity to repudiate  if they would ... as you repudiated your actions, to your everlasting shame.

They never got to say whether or not they thought that their "public service" ... as an infantry man dying in Viet Nam .. was the best way they could serve their country.

I leave you with this one, single word:

Bitch!



Okay, that is not my FINAL word .. but I could not resist the urge to express how thoroughly I detest your actions in Vietnam.

In case you forgot the extend of your perfidy ... here's more:

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The following  was submitted in the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas. [HR16742, 19-25 September 1972, page 761]

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[Broadcast]

This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.
I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.   [emphasis added]
In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.  [emphasis added]
I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.
As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly- and I pressed my cheek against hers- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.
One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.
But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created- being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools- the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.
And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders- and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism- I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.

[recording ends]

 

_________

And ... just how is  that working for them now, Jane?

I was a hunter/killer in Vietnam.  I actively searched out NVA and Viet Cong soldiers, and tried to kill them.  I wasn't always successful, nor were they.   But we were always honest about it;  I wanted to kill them, they wanted to kill me.  We were never "conflicted" about our goals.

I've worked with Vietnamese refugees in America,  helping them to learn how to communicate in the American English dialect and to thrive in the American culture.  The children of the people who tried to kill me in Vietnam became my friends and my students.  ESL (English as a Second Language) classes helped me to resolve my own conflicts with the war, and the people.

What have YOU done, Jane, to help the Vietnamese immigrants to find a place in America?

Nothing!
________________________________________________________

Now ... if you want a more balanced view of Jane Fonda's actions during the Viet Nam War, I suggest that you check out the SNOPES version.

I don't care about the apologies and the regrets and the public repudiations.

I don't care that Jane Fonda says that she was young and stupid (or whatever) when she agreed to pose for photographs in an anti-aircraft gunner's seat in North Vietnam.

All I care about is the young American men who patrolled with me, and who died so she could sit in that seat.

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