Pacific Views

Healing the Vietnam Wounds

Tom Hayden, anti-war activist, progressive Californian politician and ex-husband of Jane Fonda, has a really excellent article in the Nation. It is am eloquent and convincing piece that disputes the lies told about his ex-wife and definitively shows why she is NOT a traitor to this country.

Erased from public memory is the fact that Fonda's purpose was to use her celebrity to put a spotlight on the possible bombing of Vietnam's system of dikes. Her charges were dismissed at the time by George H.W. Bush, then America's ambassador to the United Nations, who complained of a "carefully planned campaign by the North Vietnamese and their supporters to give worldwide circulation to this falsehood." But Fonda was right and Bush was lying, as revealed by the April-May 1972 White House transcripts of Richard Nixon talking to Henry Kissinger about "this shit-ass little country":

NIXON: We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack.... I'm thinking of the dikes.

KISSINGER: I agree with you.

NIXON: ...Will that drown people?

KISSINGER: About two hundred thousand people.

It was in order to try to avert this catastrophe that Fonda, whose popular "FTA" road show (either "Fun, Travel, Adventure" or "Fuck the Army") was blocked from access to military bases, gave interviews on Hanoi radio describing the human consequences of all-out bombing by B-52 pilots five miles above her. After her visit, the US bombing of the dike areas slowed down, "allowing the Vietnamese at last to repair damage and avert massive flooding," according to Mary Hershberger.

Hayden thinks that John Kerry with his history as Vietnam war hero turned anti-war crusader could finally provide the opening this country needs to heal the seeping wounds opened by Vietnam that have so divided our country. Errol Morris' documentary of Robert McNamara showed the destructiveness of believing those that would start a war based on lies and hubris. Because too many Americans never understood this, we find ourselves in another war justified by hubris and false assumptions that is proving to be as problematic as Vietnam. To heal this country, we must put the false lesson (the anti-war movement hobbled the military) to bed and replace it with the true lesson (wars are clumsy ways to force your will on the world, and should only be invoked if there are no other ways to protect yourself -- and a war based on lies, hubris and greed can consume the warmongers in its chaos). If this election can expose and clarify this distinction, it would be incredibly welcome news and a particular healing that John Kerry is uniquely capable to help bring about.