Let’s Have a Trial

Jane Fonda is still hated by a lot of veterans groups for her trip to North Vietnam. They argue, and I admit they have a case, that she was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I say let’s put her on trial for treason. And if she’s guilty… 

Let’s put this matter to rest once and for all. I’m sick of hearing imbeciles say we could of won the war in Veetnam if we could of dropped a nucular bomb.

Clearly Jane Fonda gave aid and comfort to the people of North Vietnam, which was then designated as an enemy of the United States by the executive branch of the United States government.

There was no declaration of war by the US Congress, and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was based on proven lies — you could make a defense there, but to get to the heart of the matter, let’s take it a step further:

North Vietnam was designated an enemy of the United States by a bunch of idiots who were living in a cartoon universe that had no relation to reality. Don’t ask me.  Ask Robert McNamara. North Vietnam and South Vietnam were two cartoon entities — Kurt Vonnegut would call them “granfalloons” — which existed exactly as long as the United States poured money and weapons into the area.

With all this money and all these weapons, we created an elite. Voila! The brave people of South Vietnam, struggling against the ruthless communists of North Vietnam. So then we asked the elite who the enemy was. We had no other way of knowing. Their answer, of course, was, anyone who posed a threat to their authority, which was everyone else.

As a result thousands of people died horribly and thousands were gravely wounded. Tragic idiocy.

As soon as we stopped pouring money and weapons into the area, these two granfalloons disappeared utterly and completely. Nothing was left but the people of Vietnam.

Does anyone remember the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in Saigon? There was a full-page photo in Life magazine. That was the enemy. The people of Vietnam.

Jane Fonda was guilty of residing in France, where she saw footage of the carpet bombing of  Vietnam, and spoke with American soldiers about the atrocities they saw there.

France was not being high and mighty about American involvement in Vietnam. They had just fought a tragic, stupid war there themselves. and they were trying to tell us how stupid we were being in turn, like a good friend would.

Jane Fonda was guilty of listening to people like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and she was guilty of standing up for American ideals as exemplified by Clarence Darrow and Tom Joad and Abraham Lincoln and Mister Roberts — all roles her father played in the movies.

And let’s remember she had plenty of codefendants. The great American sculptor Alexander Calder harbored deserters and conscientious objectors at his farm in France, and, I seem to recall, a guy named Dwight D. Eisenhower declared that American intervention in Vietnam was “nothing short of sheer folly.”

Let’s put him on trial, too.