As I watched the morning news, a story about an anti-war protest in Washington, D. C. grabbed my attention. There was an element of humor to this protest, which was led by a chorus of grandmothers, as they sang a catchy song that claimed that Bush’s motivation for going to war in Iraq was revenge for an attempted assassination on his father. I am usually very uncomfortable watching Americans denigrating our President on T.V., but this seemed harmless, so I watched a while longer.
And then she appeared: the person whom most Vietnam veterans think of as a traitor, Hanoi Jane. There she was, once again, on T.V., protesting another war, and it was as though forty years had disappeared. I just can’t help it; her actions and words enraged me then, and they enraged me again today, as I believe they infuriate the vast majority of those millions of men and women who served our country in the military during that tragic era. Before I could seize the remote and change the channel, my ears caught these words, “We have not learned the lessons from Vietnam!”
Although I have a hard time saying this, after I calmed down and considered what she had said, I found I happen to agree with her. Besides the obvious fact that Ms. Fonda has learned nothing from her Vietnam War experiences, and from the forty years of castigation and loathing she receives every day from Vietnam veterans, I know that her idea of the important lessons from Vietnam (we were wrong to go there; we must leave at all costs; etc., etc.) are much different from mine. Have we learned the important lessons of the Vietnam War? That remains to be seen, but I fear that we, as a nation, have not. We are beginning to see symptoms of our ignorance of the naked truths that emerged during that era in our history.
Read Full Article »