"Hanoi Jane." Really? I thought she was just telling the truth.

[Kath1]

About the Vietnam war, native American rights, women's rights and other issues. I loved her attitude in the early 70's. Glad she's still around and still involved!

[HassleCat]

1. A child of Hollywood

Like most of us, she watched too many movies where there was a good guy and a bad guy. We tried to apply that sort of western movie thinking to Vietnam. It led most people to conclude we were right and the North Vietnamese were wrong. Fonda concluded the opposite. In fact, both sides were wrong. The people calling for an immediate end to US involvement were correct, although perhaps not for the reasons they believed at the time.

[Kath1]

2. Exactly.

Jane Fonda may have gone too far in her efforts to end that war but I think her heart was in the right place. She put herself right on the shit list for doing it but did it anyway.

[madokie]

10. As a Vietnam vet I have a lot of respect for her

She Helped to bring the wrong in that war to the forefront and helped to get us out of there and leaving the Vietnamese people alone. They never did anything to us to warrant us killing upwards of 5 million of them and totally destroying their country in the process. They still have to deal with agent orange and cluster bombs and all kinds of munitions that didn't explode as planned and they hit them now when their digging whatever, plowing fields etc. Yes I seen within a couple few days of being in country that what we were doing was wrong, all based on a pack of lies just like Iraq and Afghanistan was/is.

[Stardust]

67. I have to say, this thread is blowing my mind. I was under the impression that Vietnam vets

hated Jane Fonda and those of us who were against the war. I wouldn't blame them if they did resent us, but that's another story for another time. You are at least the second response to this thread from Vietnam vets and your insights are stunning.

[jwirr]

22. Both sides were wrong? I seem to remember that we went

in there because the Vietnamese kicked the French imperialists out.

[MADem]

34. I always used to say that if we asked Ho Chi Minh to put on a grey suit and tie and call himself a

Democratic Socialist (and yes, I said this WAY before Sanders coined the term-no 'slur' intended) that we could have welcomed him with open arms. It was said that he liked his time in USA--and in Boston, especially. That could have easily been 'spun' if someone had taken the effort and just massaged the effort instead of drawing the lines harder and deeper as the years progressed, instead of forcing those bastards to come to accommodation and get along. We could have worked with him, and we should have.

It was the proxy war with the USSR that kept us in that shithole. Better them than us, was the attitude, in essence. Stupid attitude. Stupid "domino" games. Diplomacy is more work, and it's longer and slower but it reaps more permanent rewards.

After we left, the Russians enjoyed the use of the beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities we built at Cam Ranh Bay.

[hifiguy]

40. Ho begged Truman to support his struggle for Vietnamese independence

after Truman spoke forcefully and repeatedly against imperialism but Dean Acheson would have none of it. To him a Commie was a Commie was a Commie, even though Ho quoted the Declaration of Independence as one of his inspirations.

[MADem]

42. Yep. We were so immature. Couldn't see past our own noses. Pity.

Wonder how different the world would be, if all those people didn't die?

[Liberal Veteran]

47. True. Look at some of the stuff we lost as a result of the "socialism is bad in all forms" attitude

The biggest being universal health care in the US.

[brush]

59. How were the North Vietnamese wrong?

They were fighting to rid their country of a colonial occupier (us, we took over from the French when they were defeated at Dien Bien Phu) and had been since the 1920s.

They were in the right IMO.

[Stardust]

3. And I think she can be largely credited for the fitness boom. I admire her a great deal. eom.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I thought the same about her fitness till I read her auto biography

in which she admits to use of uppers for a long long time including during the fitness video time.
Diet pills, very very common back in the 60's, Dr's handed them out like candy, Valley of the Dolls and all that.

If you watch her movies, you can see the "wired" effects in her speech and movements.

Still, she looks pretty damn good for her age now, and has been open about her plastic surgery.

Tho Ted Turner....really?

[Stardust]

18. I haven't read her autobiography, but she inspired many of us to get off our asses without speed.

And Ted Turner? That was a big disappointment to those of us who looked up to her as a firebrand. I don't really judge her for the plastic surgery considering the business she's in. In fact, if I had the money...

[Eleanors38]

26. She influenced Ted. Turner has bought many thousands of acres to prevent despoilization

and development.

[Stardust]

28. Good to know, thanks. eom

[Eleanors38]

30. He is the 2nd largest individual land owner in the U.S., and

the lands maintain themselves with compatible business income: outdoor activities, fishing, hunting expeditions, tours, etc. He is re-introducing many endangered and extirpated species. Some 51,000 bison are on his lands.

[Stardust]

36. That is amazing! I don't know why I've misjudged him all these years. eom

[hifiguy]

41. For a billionaire, Turner is a pretty OK guy.

He takes conservation extremely seriously.

[Dont call me Shirley]

44. He has a great deal of land in New Mexico.

[TexasBushwhacker]

48. He was also a huge supporter of the pro-choice

movement and Planned Parenthood. They even gave him their Margaret Sanger award.

[brush]

60. Ted Turner wasn't all bad

He created CNN, the first all news network. When he ran it it had great credibility as it didn't become FOX lite until it was wrested from his control.

He also hired Bernard Shaw, one of the first African American anchors.

[MADem]

43. I think she liked Ted's brain (scrambled as it was) and his money.

She was never one to shy away from a vociferous argument, and Ted, especially when he was cycling UP, could give her one. He is not an easy guy to deal with, and he's got some whacko ideas, but what he isn't, is stupid--and I think that is what she found appealing. They stayed friends, so there's that.

[Liberal In Texas]

4. Sometimes to stop war and stuff...

...you do things that aren't popular.

Just saying.

[MADem]

5. Her problem was meeting with the enemy in the midst of a shooting war.

Not her views on the war.

If she'd stuck to demonstrations, she'd have been fine.


She has acknowledged the optics problem she has:



http://www.today.com/id/7349099/ns/today-today_entertainment/t/fonda-hanoi-jane-visit-was-mistake/

NEW YORK — Jane Fonda says her 1972 visit to a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun site, an incident that brought her the nickname “Hanoi Jane,” was a “betrayal” of American forces and of the “country that gave me privilege.”
“The image of Jane Fonda, ‘Barbarella,’ Henry Fonda’s daughter ... sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal ... the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine,” Fonda told Lesley Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview that will air Sunday night.
Fonda, whose memoir “Jane Fonda: My Life So Far” comes out next week, said she did not regret meeting with American POWs in North Vietnam or making broadcasts on Radio Hanoi. “Our government was lying to us and men were dying because of it, and I felt I had to do anything that I could to expose the lies and help end the war,” she said.

[Octafish]

19. Was she a traitor?

She was not a member of the U.S. military or U.S. government. She was a citizen. Was she not free to express her views and show support, even in support of those the State classified as "enemies"?

[Bucky]

29. No knowledgeable person calls her a traitor. It was a police action, not a war--legally deep gray.

But as stated above, an absolute "optics" nightmare.

I think her defense could assert the illegitimacy of the war, and by association of the government that waged it (especially in how it was waged) when it was against the will and the interests of the people who held sovereignty over the government.

Unfortunately that defense falls apart when you look at the human rights record of the North Vietnamese government and its Viet Cong puppets, which were even worse than that of South Vietnam. The whole business was a tragedy without heroes.

[Octafish]

31. Optics is Right. There'd have been no US involvement were it not for Dulles Brothers.

JFK did not continue their policies. I do know after his death, US foreign policy reverted from the democracy for all -- whether Vietnam or Congo or Brazil -- back to the Dulles Brothers covert and overt action plan. Oh, and the rush was on for war in Vietnam.

Do you think JFK would have fallen for the Gulf of Tonkin casus belli? I think not.

The Nation magazine wanted to know "Why don't Americans know what really happened in Vietnam?" Interesting read, it brings up how much USA uses the volunteer military and observes the corporate owned news media don't want to bring that up so that people continue to thank the troops for their service without wondering why they're tasked with missions in 133 countries around the world. What the article missed and people need to know:

JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...



The 1,000 advisors were the beginning. All US military personnel were to be out of the country by the end of 1965, reported James K. Galbraith.

Then in NSAM 273, four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ changes the policy to stay and support South Vietnam in its "contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy."

Hanoi Jane was ticked off about bombing civilians in the north. Imagine what she said when the truth about Operation PHOENIX came out during the Church and Pike hearings.

[MADem]

35. John Kennedy was a President/War Hero who swam a million miles with one of his wounded

subordinates in his teeth--well, not quite that dramatic, but very close. He had his PT boat run over by a Japanese destroyer, and displayed stunning qualities of leadership that were blown up into The Greatest Story Ever Told, replete with coconuts.




LBJ was an "in the rear with the gear" kinda guy, who never saw any harm's way worse than having to use the outhouse behind the school where he taught in his younger years.

Kennedy, war hero, had the juice to end that war. LBJ didn't want to be the first POTUS to "cut and run" and he allowed himself to be pushed into an untenable policy that distressed him daily, worsened his existing heart disease, and shortened his life.

[Stardust]

66. You are a really gifted writer, MADem. Great post. eom

[MADem]

68. Why thank you! nt

[MADem]

45. SHE says it was a "betrayal." Not me. I am quoting her, you see.

I say, from a PR standpoint, it conveyed the opposite of the message that she was trying to convey. When people do stuff like that, their efforts are a failure.

This isn't about what she is "free" or "not free" to do. As others have pointed out, that was an undeclared war. The "T" word has no legal standing.

She ended up being used by the North for their own propaganda purposes. It looked like shit, it didn't give her the result that she wanted and she has had to live with it ever since.

[ryan_cats]

20. At least she didn't meet with Kim Davis. n/t

[MADem]

46. Can you be certain of that.....?

Maybe her "people" just haven't made the announcement yet ...?

[Eleanors38]

27. Ms. Fonda did make a bad move, though she was no traitor. I have puzzled...

over why someone so versed in the impact of visual arts would slip on that peel. Maybe too much art and too little politics?

[MADem]

32. Coke, weed, and the invincibility of youth? And sure, a little bit of artsy-fartsy attitude, too,

why not?


The younger people are, the more certain they are of their rightness and their bullet-proof-ness.

It's only as we age that we come to terms with things like fallibility and mortality. We also start to become better judges of how words and behaviors are received.

I know she meant well, so I've not ever been on that "Hanoi Jane" bus. It's just a waste of time for people to get so huffy over the well-meant missteps of another individual. She wasn't trying to "help" the enemy, she was trying--with that sometimes bonehead youthful attitude of invicibility and certainty-- to end the war. She sure got people to pay attention, in any event!

[Eleanors38]

37. Tru nuff.

[Smarmie Doofus]

58. Constitutionally, there was no "war" and therefore no "enemy".

Lots of brave American antiwar activists , not just Jane, went to VN and YES, North VN in an effort to deescalate the conflict and bring about peace.

I don't understand why some people on DU seem to think they have to have.... much less VOICE an opinion about absolutely EVERYTHING.

Even ... ESPECIALLY... when they have no idea what they're talking about.


Good god.

[philosslayer]

6. And I love her sweater

Great shade of red

[Dont call me Shirley]

50. And I love her haircut, super cool!

[Kath1]

55. I actually got the same kind of "shag" haircut.

Because I thought she looked so cool. Jane rocks!

[Dont call me Shirley]

71. I have a similar cut. She has the perfect hair for that cut though.

[tecelote]

8. But today, we love war.

Too bad the idea of PEACE was so fleeting.

[jtuck004]

9. Peace? When was this?

Not in the ongoing bondage of mind and body of people of color - and everyone else by extension. Not in the way our fascist dictatorship used it's brownshirt brigades and the IWW opposition to WWI to remove the only union that every fought for worker control for everyone. Not in the civil war. Certainly not in the genocide of the indigenous people...

Peace. Maybe it was just for a handful of the more white among us. Kind of like the economy is today.

[reddread]

11. you know those peace signs that pro-aggression people like to sport?

American swastika

[tecelote]

13. Not saying that our government practiced it.

But it was at least in our collective consciousness. Now it's a bad word only hippies used to use.

You even brush it off. It should be on everyone's mind.

[jtuck004]

15. "You even brush it off." < You mischaracterize my words for your own amusement. I don't

brush it off at all.

But I have lived through several decades, and invested a lot of time into reading the history of this culture and others, and, mostly, never seen it, except at the expense of someone else. It never really exists, except in fairy stories. Because it doesn't exist for everyone. Not enough to sit on one's lazyboy ensconced ass and have it for oneself, while others are in servitude, or worse.

In my philosophy, an injury to one is an injury to all. So I evaluate for "peace" like I do "freedom"

It doesn't really exist until it does for everyone.

[jwirr]

23. I think one of the saddest things today is that we no longer

believe that there is any hope that we will ever achieve it.

[jtuck004]

70. I know. n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. Look how they talk about Dennis Rodman....

But then, look how they claim talking to your "enemies" is wrong.

[MADem]

49. I think someone working for John F. Kerry is a better bet to talk to L'il Kim than

Dennis Rodman. And given that NK is a client state of China, those kinds of meetings would probably be better off happening in China.

He's not a diplomat, and he can't speak for the government.

I think his trips to NK were a freak show and an horrific mistake.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

52. I feel anything that prevents killing is a good thing.

[YabaDabaNoDinoNo]

14. In the early 90's I sat next to her on a flight, we stared chatting in the boarding line, she was

in front of me, standing on line like a regular person.
At first I did not recognize her, yes I am of the age when her first movies came out I was old enough to go see them, I even remember when she went to Vietnam, but I am like that with famous people IRL. I have had about a dozen interactions with the famous over the years and I had no idea they were famous every time, except one and that was C Everett Coop when he was Surgeon General. The beard and uniform gave it away!

So back to Jane, anyway she was a nice person and we spoke about well nothing specific, no politics no movie making or even her being famous. She was interested in what I did and my past jobs so we chatted about that too. No I did not get an autograph or picture, did not even ask, why because I find it rude to ask the famous for that unless they are working. I know I would not care for strangers walking up to me when I am trying to do my day to day business or just minding my own business wanting pictures and autographs. I also find it kinda silly too.

Anyway the point being she was totally a normal person which was cool.

Fame, Power and Wealth does not impress or intimidate me either just because you have a good job or hit the lucky sperm club does not make you better then anyone else.

I know not a real interesting story about Jane, my interesting stories are not fit for this site!

[Scuba]

16. This Viet vet has great respect for Jane.

[Stardust]

21. Wow. I never thought I'd hear that. Kudos. eom

[bemildred]

17. She was. nt

[Rex]

24. It took a huge amount of courage to do what she did and she got ridiculed for it.

Typical The Man bashing a self-empowered women...should be shelves full of books about this huge problem. That still exists and is worse than ever.

The only people that call her Hanoi Jane are repukes.

[G_j]

33. +1000

[AnnieBW]

38. She's still getting bashed to this day

45 years after the meeting, and she's STILL getting bashed for it by most people who lived through that era. I don't get it. Let it go, people!

[yeoman6987]

51. I ca imagine the day she dies is going to be ugly.

I'll stay off social media for a few days. Many said they'd urinate on her grave. Yes some are that pissed at her. It's going to be a long week when it happens and I want no part of even looking.

[brush]

62. It's ridiculous as the North Vietnamese were in the right . . .

in trying to rid their country of colonial powers — the French who were defeated in 1954 then we moved in and they had to fight another imperial power for their independence.

Ho Chi Minh had been fighting for independence since the 1920s.

[Eleanors38]

25. I met her in 1973 when the only legislator to vote "no" on a censorship resolution

aimed at Fonda passed the Texas Legislature held a meet & greet at Scholzgarten. She had just given birth to her daughter and was with Tom Hayden, rather petite in stature. Packed house! Kegs of beer! Plenty FBI in unmarked sedans with infrared cameras right across the street! We randy-smellin' rads did a dance for 'em.

[Blue_In_AK]

39. Jane speaking out against the Iraq War in DC, 1/27/07

I've always been a big fan.

[Kath1]

56. I was there!

I loved when she said silence is not an option. She was great. So were Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.

[Blue_In_AK]

61. Yes, I have some nice photos of them, too.

That was a great march. I was glad I made the trip down there to participate.

[YOHABLO]

53. I admire Jane very much. She's one of the very few ''Hollywood" actors back then that used

her celebrity to try and make a difference. I understood her intentions for going to N.Vietnam during the war. She wanted to put a human face on the N.Vietnamese people. The same people that we were mercilessly bombing day in and out. Of course she was vilified by the Right in this country. She talks about regret for her actions back then, but I think her heart was in the right place.

[Kath1]

57. Her heart was certainly in the right place!

She wanted to to end that costly and illegal war. Joan Baez went to North Vietnam, also. They both deserve a lot of credit for being right.

[Malraiders]

63. LBJ had the truth about Nixon being the traitor during the Vietnam war. eom

[jeremyfive]

64. I Adore Jane.

Jane was a ray of light in the 60's, reflecting the intense need of the American people to end the ridiculous war and secure peace. She embodied that sentiment well. Her thinking was completely aligned with the vast majority of the American people at the time. If she made a few tactical mistakes along the way (ones that she has acknowledged), it does not cancel out all the good she did. She was the embodiment of hope at the time. Was, am and will be a fan of Jane! (The fact that she evolved into a brilliant actress with many truly unforgettable performances, as well as a keen businesswoman, is just icing on the cake! Peace, Jane.)

[Kath1]

65. And she is till speaking out for peace!

I have to love her for that!

[NobodyHere]

69. She called tortured POWs liars

Fuck her.