09 Aug Al Martinez: Ending the War
It’s hard to believe that almost 40 years after the humiliating end of the Vietnam War Jane Fonda is still held responsible. Not for our defeat but for committing what a small group of veterans regard as a treasonous act in her visit to Hanoi during the height of the losing battle.
Despite the passage of years and Fonda’s numerous apologies there are still bursts of vitriol as caustic as any we leveled at the Japanese and Germans during and after World War II. We forgave them for the sins of warfare far quicker than the noisy few have forgiven Fonda.
What brings this to mind is a new resending of an old email message that begins, “Yes she was a traitor” in capital letters and recycles Fonda’s selection years ago as one of the “100 Women of the Century” on a Barbara Walters ABC network special.
This rekindled memories of Fonda’s 1972 trip to Vietnam on a “peace mission” that turned her into an iconic representation of those who took to the streets of America to protest a war that was even later declared wrong by a U.S. Secretary of State who was considered to be the architect of the war.
If Robert McNamara, who died recently, could do an about-face and declare the war a mistake, then Fonda and her legions must have been right. The fact that she took her feelings to the enemy during the war and lobbied for the North Vietnamese was admittedly thoughtless and stupid, but thoughtless and stupid acts are often the measure of a free society.
As a newspaper columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, I was witness to the emotional protests to the war, the street marches, the flag burnings and the confrontations with authority, not just by college students but also by veterans, scholars, housewives and statesmen. The emotions splashed over to those in show biz, and many took up the banner that urged us to get out of Vietnam, which we ultimately did, running like dogs in the face of an advancing army.
All of our bombs and napalm and defoliating chemicals proved useless in the face of a people’s will. We saw scenes of panic during the war’s fading minutes and a final salute to the blood of the dead that still stained a useless battlefield. Today, the war is history and Hanoi a tourist stop on a journey through the killing fields.
If it is history and we’ve forgiven old enemies, why can’t we forgive Jane Fonda? I’ve pondered this question for many years, partially because the war I was in — the so-called “Korean conflict” — created so little fuss and the war in Vietnam such high emotion. Jane Fonda was one of the many celebrities to assume a role in the anti-war movement, and it is because of her high profile that we remember her most.
She took activism from the streets to the enemy, and it wasn’t Joe Blow doing it but a well known, instantly recognized celebrity who was out there being photographed with the men who were killing our people. That’s hard to forget, I’m sure, especially if someone you loved was an ill-treated prisoner of war at the time who was paraded before cameras with Fonda for the world to see.
Because of her celebrity status, she remains the postergirl for treason. Couple that with the fact that we lost the war and the impact continues like the Super Bowl loss by a favored championship team and you have the enduring hatred of a woman who neither deserves nor warrants it all these years later. War is an emotional journey, high drama that plays forever in the hearts of its participants. They cling to the adventure by parading about in their camouflaged dungarees, displaying their campaign ribbons and gathering together in a brotherhood that still needs an enemy.
War, not Jane Fonda, is the real enemy, along with what it does to each of us who trod the killing fields. But the Vietnam War is history and so are the old enmities. Take off the uniform, boys. The battle’s done. The war is over.
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(almtz13@aol.com)