Forget? Hell! Forgive? Never!

Just when I think the years have made the issue go away, there she is again, flogging her tell-all book and being fawned over by Letterman, Jennings, and all of the talking heads of “main-stream media.” Hanoi Jane is back and the headlines roar that she has finally “apologized.” But, if you read the fine print, assuming of course that anyone reads anything critically these days, you’ll see that she doesn’t apologize for giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the US in time of conflict. She doesn’t apologize for causing hundreds of my peers in the fighter pilot business who were prisoners of war being held by the North Vietnamese additional pain and suffering. She doesn’t apologize for supporting the regime that led to millions of Southeast Asians being killed because they opposed communism. She only says that it was poor judgment sitting in the gunner’s seat of a 37MM anti-aircraft cannon, laughing and grinning as she mimes shooting down an American aircraft. That was an error in judgment! A public relations gaffe, if you will. Bullshit!

I was at Korat Air Base Thailand in 1972, flying the F-4E and going to Hanoi nearly every day as an instrument of national policy. My specialty was killing SAM sites—those “flying telephone poles” that were radar guided and flew at Mach 2, tracking down airplanes and adding to the terror of war in the air. It was a definitely risky business, but it also was a satisfying mission. When we got the job done right, our force came home with fewer losses and we felt that maybe we were going to get the war done at last. Usually on the post-strike tanker, taking a bit of gas to help us get home from the mission, the other flights would offer a quick “thanks” to the guys who flew the Hunter/Killer missions, seeking out and hopefully destroying the SAM sites before they could destroy us.

When Fonda went visiting, we all knew it. We got briefed when she and her fellow-traveler, Ramsey Clark, arrived in Hanoi. We got photos showing where these noble dignitaries were probably housed. They accompanied the other warning info we had regarding probable location of the POW camps. We got explicit warnings not to attack near these locations.

But, we knew she was there and we knew what visits like that meant to the friends we had lost during all those years. We knew that Fonda and those like her were telling our enemies that they were winning. She was encouraging the North Vietnamese with tales of the war resisters and the lack of American political will to bring the war to a successful conclusion. She was urging them to continue their resistance and reminding them of the glories they would bring to the region when they were all one big, happy Marxist-Leninist family. And, when we saw the picture of her on the gun, we vowed to never forget it and knew that there was no possibility of redemption, ever.

Now, she’s written a book. Hell, I’ve written two. And, there’s no doubt in my mind that the American penchant for wallowing in the swill of celebrity excess will insure success of the book. She’ll make a couple of million dollars, her tawdry list of films will be resurrected and in high demand at Blockbuster and maybe some women will even envy her sequence of husbands, her threesomes, her self-inflicted eating disorders and her abject historic ignorance in embracing a failed economic system inimical to American principles.

I still see her as being an unconvicted traitor and I wonder that no one else has noticed that she seems to be type-cast throughout her film career as a whore.