[WMCoolmon]

According to an interview she gave to 60 Minutes, she feels very sorry she ever went to Hanoi. And i believe her sincerity. She was young, and her political ideals misguided her. Young people tend to do first and think later. The simple fact is Vietnam was a wrong war, and she thought her actions would bring it to a quicker end. But alas she was too naive to see that she was being used as a pawn, played for a fool.

I really have a hard time believing that. That just doesn't mesh with her actions that were presented in the article.

'm really trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here, but I just have a hard time believing that it was just her being young and naive. She was almost twice as old as some of the soldiers fighting the war. And of course the North Vietnamese are going to welcome someone who wants to publicize that their enemy is wrong, and they're just a bunch of friendly guys in a war. It's propaganda that they don't even have to work to get.

Was her hope, then, that everyone would forget about the POWs and go home? Yeah, that sounds real admirable.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
According to an interview she gave to 60 Minutes, she feels very sorry she ever went to Hanoi. And i believe her sincerity.

I believe her sincerity, too. She regrets going to Hanoi. It ruined her career, and her image.

[redmenace]

she is a rich snooty high society type if that helps to clear things up, WMC

[Bobboau]

ok first the only thing she said she was sorry for was getting her photo taken in an AAA gun.

second when the term intelectual is used as it is in this frame of reference, it isn't talking about someone who is smarter, but rather someone who thinks they are smarter, particularly people who think that they are better than everyone else because they like to think of the world in super abstracted terms.

[Ford Prefect]

That's a definition of "intellectual" that is popular among people who, well... aren't. It's nonsensical. To people of lukewarm intellectual prowess, intelligent discourse is going to sound abstract.

The name for people who try and pretend to be smart is "pompous windbag."

[Bobboau]

and yet that is the opperational definition  use by the person you are discussing this situation with, a person detached from reality who passes judgement on those who don't follow there "enlightened" way of thinking, simply saying it's not what the word means is a doge and your just makeing comunication with people on the other side of the issue even more imposable than it already is.

[redmenace]

Originally posted by Raa


I believe her sincerity, too. She regrets going to Hanoi. It ruined her career, and her image.

Really, I wonder how much she has gotten in book deals as a result.

[Taristin]

Point.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally posted by Bobboau
and yet that is the opperational definition  use by the person you are discussing this situation with, a person detached from reality who passes judgement on those who don't follow there "enlightened" way of thinking, simply saying it's not what the word means is a doge and your just makeing comunication with people on the other side of the issue even more imposable than it already is.

I am simply expressing my refusal to acknowledge the use of "intellectual" as a loaded term. To me, that rings of reverse snobbery, because while there are certainly plenty of people who try much too hard to sound intelligent, there seems to be an ever-present tendency to shun people of genuine intelligence. An intellectual is an intelligent person, as far as the dictionary is concerned. To refer to faux-intellectuals as intellectuals in a sincere conversation just screws everything up.

[Rictor]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Socialists and communists are not capable of anything that other people aren't. Joining the communist party does not grant you super powers. More to the point, sympathizing with them is in no way illegal. You can call it immoral all you want but the fact remains that the only person who committed a violation was the man who spit on her.

****. Are...are you sure? No like, super strenght or anything? Hmm. I guess I better go cancel by memership then.

As for Jane Fonda, my thoughts on the matter are:

a) she can do as she damn well pleases, without regard for who some politicians arbitrarily decide to label an enemy. The individual before the state.

b) to anyone who is not an American, there is no more reason to hate the VC and NVA than there is to hate the American GIs. In fact, there is a lot less, since until someone can argue otherwise I will consider the Viet Cong and other related groups as anti-colonialist forces, and the US as an agressive invasionary force. That, and they (the North Vietnamese) have a lot less blood on their hands (less blood, not no blood).

--------------

Lets shuffle the names around a bit and see what comes out the other side:

Hungarian guerillas, fighting to free themselves from Chinese colonial control, manage to drive out the Chinese from most of the country and look to be well on their way to unifying the nation. Then, the USSR starts sending in troops to support the Chinese, calling it an act of self defence, in line with the domino theory (e.g. if one country becomes capitalist, all others around it will surely fall to the same menace). The Soviets occupy South Hungary, and launch a decades long war against both the Hungarian guerillas and the local Hungarian population. After about 15 years of brutal warfare, which kills several million Hungarians, many of them civilians,  and utterly devastates not only Hungary but several neighboring countries, the Soviets are forced to withdraw.

During this time, a famous Soviet actress, in soldiarity with the the Hungarians, takes a few pictures on herself on a Hungarian tank.

See? If you distance yourself from it a bit, she did nothing wrong.

[redmenace]

As per the first part of your post, I won't comment because that is a whole other conversation.

Are the hungarian rebels being supplied by capitalist nations and receiving military training for say F4-Phantoms and Intruder aircraft among other military hardware such as SAM hardware and AAA?

Second it wasn't limited to a single photo but a series of acts, some considered in light of such people as "Tokyo Rose" who was later pardon, to be acts of treason. Be careful in your analogy to make sure not to over simplify the situation.

And to answer your analogy further; if the said Russian actress had in fact done the exact same things that Jane Fonda had done, I would see nothing wrong with bringing her under charges of treason.

[StratComm]

And if that actress returned to her homeland, I would expect nothing less than her being summarily executed.  Granted, that's USSR vs USA stereotyping (though you know good and well that its true).  However, point taken until you neglect to address anything but the tank photo.  That I can't really say I have a huge problem with, it's her life.  It's the interviews with American POWs and the subsequent attempts to keep the truth from getting out about what the treatment was actually like that I take issue with.  Even if she wanted to dispell the image that American propoganda was spreading about the North Vietnamese, the way to do it was not to lie about what was actually happening.  There is no justification for her betrayal of the POWs, no matter how you look at it.  And for that, she should rightfully be publically shamed for the rest of her life.

Nevermind the fact that, wrong or not, it was treason to go participate in North Vietnamese propaganda (willingly, no, voluntarily) and she should not have been allowed back onto American soil, but again it was her decision.

Also, the spitting on soldiers issue was just stupid to begin with; the soldiers getting spat on and those trying to scorn them were only seperated by random chance.  The difference between a young hippie and a young draftee was only whose number came up, and that is one of the greater injustices of the whole political fiasco around the war.

[redmenace]

well the thing about the slips of paper was a manufactured rumor BTW.

[StratComm]

That's actually not what I mean by betrayal.  I'd almost buy that she legitimately was duped by the statements that they were forced to make under duress on the grounds that she's an idiot, were it not for all of the other deliberate acts that she participated in for NV PR.  Plus the way she not only refused to accept the statements made by returning POWs after the war, she resorted to personal attacks on their character and encouraged people to take their statements as blatent lies.  That is a betrayal of those men, and she should deserve no sympathy for it.

[redmenace]

ok, but those act, despicable as they are, are not grounds for treason. It is ground for me to declare she is a few cards short of a full deck.

Her participation in other acts in collusion with the NVA however, as a said before, might be considered legally treason.

[StratComm]

Yeah that was sort of my point.  I thought that I made that sort of explicit, but maybe it needs a little clarification.  The treasonous act, voluntarily participating in enemy propoganda, is one I don't find as morally offensive, though by strict definition it was treason.  The things that she did that technically were perfectly legal did more harm to more people though, emotionally and to some degree (how much is debatable) physically.

[redmenace]

ok my mistake.

on a side note, I am suprised this thread hasn't degraded to name calling and ax throwing.

[WMCoolmon]

Wrong tab.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by redmenace
but then many intellectuals underestimated what socialists and communists were capable of,

ie. Fredrick Hayek

*Points at Guantanmo Bay*

I hear lots of glass braking in your house. You should stop throwing those stones.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Rictor


****. Are...are you sure? No like, super strenght or anything? Hmm. I guess I better go cancel by memership then.

As for Jane Fonda, my thoughts on the matter are:

a) she can do as she damn well pleases, without regard for who some politicians arbitrarily decide to label an enemy. The individual before the state.

b) to anyone who is not an American, there is no more reason to hate the VC and NVA than there is to hate the American GIs. In fact, there is a lot less, since until someone can argue otherwise I will consider the Viet Cong and other related groups as anti-colonialist forces, and the US as an agressive invasionary force. That, and they (the North Vietnamese) have a lot less blood on their hands (less blood, not no blood).

RE: b) both sides (US / NVA) comitted war crimes, so the issue of who has more blood is possibly debatable; the Hue massacre (2500-6000 killed by NVA upon taking the city) stands out as an example as a counterpart to the My Lai massacre, for example.  I don't think it'll ever be possible to decide who was 'worse' in terms of blood on hands.

It's probably worth noting that the Vietnam war could be considered as partly / wholly a civil war, although the US was seeking to start / inflame the situation as a 'valve' to release tension between the USSR and themselves by using the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government to create the eventual proxy-conflict.

IIRC both sides -  North and South - received support from the Russians and US(and others) respectively, so it isn't as simple as being due to colonialism.  I believe the independence of South Vietnam (i.e. US puppet state or democratic country) is still debated with respect to the issue of colonialism; AFAIK the main positions often reflect support or opposition for the war.

Oh, and an interesting converse-point could be if a Russian actress had campaigned in support of the Mujahadden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  In both that case and this one, of course, your opinion would likely be changed by your overall opinion of capitalism/communism in the Cold War.