Dear O Sung Wu,

Of course no one will fully understand unless
they experienced what you guys did both over there
and when you came home. The best
anyone can do is empathize with all our hearts
and give you support - which is what I'm trying to do.

Dear Joe,

Thank you for sharing your experience and it's
great to see you posting again.
Missed you.

o sung wu,

Maybe some of this rings a bell?

<It only took 40 years. But finally, actress-turned-workout-specialist Jane Fonda has apologized for sitting on a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun during her 1972 visit to North Vietnam. Fonda, who used her fame to push her radical leftism during her heyday, traveled to Hanoi in 1972 in solidarity with the Viet Cong. While there, she proceeded to blame the US for supposedly bombing a dike system, and did a series of radio broadcasts stating that US leaders were “war criminals.” Those broadcasts were replayed for American POWs being tortured by the Viet Cong. Later, when POWs spoke about their experiences of torture, Fonda would call them “hypocrites and liars,” stating, “These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed.” She explained that these POWs were “careerists and professional killers.”

Now, four decades removed, sitting in the lap of luxury, Fonda has decided that the pictures on the anti-aircraft gun were a mistake. Not the actual visit – she stands by that. “I did not, have not, and will not say that going to North Vietnam was a mistake,” she said. “I have apologized only for some of the things that I did there, but I am proud that I went.”

But when it comes to those gun photos, then she wishes she’d done something different: “Sitting on that gun in North Vietnam. I’ll go to my grave with that one.” Of course, as John Nolte of Big Hollywood points out, that’s “a step up from what we learned in Patricia Bosworth’s biography, ‘Jane Fonda,’ where the star reportedly said: ‘My biggest regret is I never got to f..k Che Guevara.”

She’s a deep human being, you see.>

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/jane-fonda-finally-apologizes/

Hi ONTHEBEACH Ms FONDA'S apology is a little too late for those of her countrymen who died there. To 99.9% of ALL Vets. she was and is a traitor. No amount of regret will ever heal the wounds of those men she betrayed.

My mother didn't agree with Australia's involvement in Vietnam, but she kept her feelings to herself without pointing an accusatory finger at those who simply did their duty by going over there. When people like DAVID F. declare the Vietnam war was not a war, because some politician failed to declare it a war, it shows what little understanding he and his kind have.

My final comment on this whole sorry mess - When we arrived home, I was absolutely dumbfounded at the hostility, the accusations and the complete lack of a 'welcome home', when we got in at mascot airport. I was totally confused, and very very hurt by the BASTARD Australian people, I never dreamed it possible. The only true welcome home I got personally, was from my beloved grandfather a WW 1 Veteran.

Dear o sung wu,

You wrote: "When people like DAVID F. declare the Vietnam war was not a war, because some politician failed to declare it a war, it shows what little understanding he and his kind have."

The Vietnamese War was a very real war. All wars where people kill and are killed are real. However, it was not a war legal under US law, and no US citizen is obligated to support an illegal act of the US government. I understand that fact.

I have great sympathy for the Vietnamese people who suffered under that war and for the sufferings of the soldiers on both sides.

"he and his kind". What are me and my kind? There are those who drag their country into war for no good reason. I regard it as the duty of a citizen in a democratic country to oppose those monsters.

o sung wu,

Jane Fonda was born into wealth and privilege and to top it off she was an extremely attractive young woman when arguably the positive stereotyping of women was at its highest. She could have shot a man point blank in front of the Commissioner of Police and been excused for it. Few could comprehend the path that is cleared by being a beautiful, young and rich woman, with dad and all of his contacts to ease her path even if she made a complete *rse of herself.

I don't imagine that many would ever have criticised her for her opposition to Vietnam, and she could have achieved much more, if she hadn't been a far left attention-seeking jackass.

I don't say she was courageous either. In her privileged position extremism was easy. What risks did she run, really? It was not as though she could lose her income, be tossed out into the street or be without the finest lawyers money could buy.

She isn't the first young attractive woman from a privileged background to be oppositional against authority and buck the system. Much safer for her to do it of course.

I don't think that Jane Fonda was ever capable of comprehending (and feeling) how cruel she was being to those who served, or came home damaged and the families who lost loved ones. Maybe to someone rich, famous and privileged, soldiers and their wives are non-people, collateral damage eh Jane?

She has discovered religion now I believe. Move over, God!

Jane Fonda is a very flawed individual. She is the product of wealth and privilege and quite possibly not especially aware of the sufferings of ordinary people.

However, she did not put the US in Vietnam. She did not lie about why we were there. She did not orchestrate the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. She did not send troops to kill and be killed.

It was wrong to attack in any way the soldiers coming back from Vietnam. They were not responsible for the war either.

If we want to have peace we must focus on what leads us into war and prevent it from happening where it can be avoided. How did the Vietnamese War happen? Did it have to happen? Could it have been avoided?

I think the answer to the last two questions are no and yes. President Eisenhower was subject to pressures to get the US into war in Vietnam. He knew what war was, saw no reason for the US to get involved in a land war on the Asian continent and resisted those pressures.

The presidents who succeeded him were not as wise or caring as Eisenhower. They got the US in an unnecessary war in which many suffered. It seems to me that learning how and why it happened and using that knowledge to keep it from happening again is a much more worthwhile enterprise than discussing the failings of Jane Fonda.