VVAW: Hanoi Jane

[unhappycamper]

Hanoi Jane
By John Zutz


Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal
Jerry Lembcke
(University of Massachussets Press, 2010)

Over the course of her life Jane Fonda has been transformed from a Hollywood darling sex kitten into an icon that is reviled, scorned, condemned and hated by a wide portion of the population. Judging by the outrage she causes in some circles one would think she slept with Ho Chi Minh.

College of the Holy Cross sociology professor, and VVAW member, Jerry Lembcke, progresses through Vietnam War mythology from The Spitting Image, where he showed that Vietnam veterans most likely weren't spat on. In his latest book he bursts the balloon of another popular Vietnam veteran myth by examining the legend of Hanoi Jane, an image that has influenced our current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

After Lembcke's examination of Fonda's actions in Vietnam, and the memoirs of the POWs with whom she interacted, it's clear that Fonda isn't guilty of many of the charges leveled against her by conservative groups.

She didn't commit treason. She didn't betray POWs to their captors. She didn't provide aid and comfort to the enemy any more than the hundreds of other peace activists who traveled to Hanoi during the war.

Though Lembcke's description of Fonda's life is rather superficial, his inspection of the Hanoi Jane myth is quite thorough. Lembcke differentiates Jane Fonda, the person, from Hanoi Jane, the legend. He compares Hanoi Jane to other classical female betrayal myths – Delilah, Mata Hari, Tokyo Rose and others.

Though he doesn't directly refer to Genesis, legends of female betrayal go all the way back to Adam and Eve.

First, Lembcke debunks many of the charges tied to the various historical women. Then he demonstrates how the perceived "wounds" inflicted by them were used to define the warrior cults of their day.

He shows that sex and danger have always mixed in military training and military society. He stirs in other Vietnam era myths like Jodi taking your girl at home, and razor blades in Vietnamese vaginas.

He goes on to show how the Hanoi Jane image was a concoction of the militaristic right wing to help justify losing the war.

The first few chapters of the book have quite a few typos that get annoying, but it's worth reading to help understand the interaction between the sexes and how legends grow.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. I she had taken pictures sitting at a table where IEDs were being built

my husband would probably have a seething hatred for her as well.

And I wouldn't have a reason to tell him not to.

[unhappycamper]

2. Quite honestly I was in the hate-Fonda group until about six or seven years ago.

Howard Zinn changed my perceptions of her.

[deutsey]

6. What did Zinn say that changed your perceptions of her?

I like Zinn a lot. Just curious.

[unhappycamper]

44. He asked me why I hated Fonda.

I told him the picture of her wearing a helmet sitting behind the AA gun was just plain wrong.

Howard reminded me of what she was protesting. I got to thinking about it and came to the conclusion that Tricky Dick's M$M machine pushed this pic and the idea into our consciousness that Fonda was a traitor to American ideals. I still don't agree with that picture but I think her heart was in the right correct place. She wanted the United States out of Vietnam as did most of the US population at the time.


Howard also changed my perception of the Afghanistan occupation.

In 2008 I drove Howard to a Winter Soldier fundraiser in the Boston area. I had him to myself for 40 minutes. I had seen Howard at many of the Iraq/Afghanistan protests we had been having on Boston Common since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I even got to meet his wife Rosalyn before she died of cancer.

Howard asked me "What do you think of the 'good' war?" I told him it was necessary. He told me to look into why the United States got into that war. I have done so and believe the Roosevelt administration orchestrated our entry into that fray. Diplomatically we maneuvered Japan into the Pearl Harbor attack. Our 'Lend Lease' program was just poking sticks in the eye of Germany. And Lend Lease pumped almost 3/4 of a trillion dollars into the armaments companies. Read Smedley Butler's book War Is A Racket and you will see the United States has been in war/protection bidness for a long time.

He asked me about Vietnam. I told him it was a setup from the get go.

He asked me about Iraq - I told him it was just plain wrong.

He asked me about Afghanistan. I told him the 911 attacks were planned in Afghanistan. He reminded me that Afghanistan didn't attack the United States - Al Qaeda did. And the Taliban/Al Qaeda fought to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan. Come on, the CIA was providing Stinger missiles directly to the Taliban/Al Qaeda forces. If that's not taking sides I don't know what is.....

Having been in one quagmire (Vietnam) I can recognize another one when I see it.


The only thing that war is good for is profits. As Smedley Butler said, "WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Looks familiar, eh?

[deutsey]

48. Thanks...that's right along with my thoughts

I figured that's what Zinn must have pointed out.

I think what Fonda did in terms of the photo itself was stupid and wrong (she's said so herself), but I also agree 100% with what she was protesting against: US imperialism in Vietnam and around the world, and the elite corporate interests that benefit from it.

Unfortunately, the picture completely obliterated in the collective American mind all of Fonda's righteous reasons for opposing the war. Now the issue is "Hanoi Jane" and, according to the rightwing meme, how she and other protesters "stabbed America in the back" and lost the war, instead of acknowledging that the war itself was wrong and morally bankrupt from the start.

Smedley Butler, btw, should be heralded as an American hero. He exposed not only imperialist wars for what they are, but a rightwing industrialist plot in the '30s to overthrow FDR in favor of fascism.

[MadHound]

3. Lots of myths surrounding Vietnam,

Of course the truth that these myths were designed to conceal is heinous. That the US originally support Ho Chi Minh, that the CIA got our own soldiers strung out on heroin, that it was the CIA who provoked and created the wider war by relocating a million plus Tonkinese from the North to the South, and so much more.

Much like Afghanistan, Vietnam is war designed not to be won, but to chew up military supplies and thus make great profits for the MIC.

[Rebubula]

4. Youthful folly

Many people were disgusted by the war in Vietnam. Jane Fonda was certainly one of them and she had the power\money\time to go in country and voice her opposition. I am in full support of her until she gets behind enemy lines.

By sitting on the AA gun and making absurd statements, she DID give comfort to the enemy and DID consort with the people that US troops were fighting (right or wrong, US soldiers were being killed by the same people that she was dealing with).

I can and have forgiven her (my father, who served 2 tours in country with the 1st Cav, never did) for the actions of an idealistic, yet sheltered, young person. However, to say that what she did was not hurtful or quasi-treason is white washing the whole event.

[deutsey]

7. I definitely agree about the AA gun stunt.

Just plain callous and stupid.

I was a child during the Vietnam War; my family was working poor and I remember the war being unpopular among my family and class in general.

Still, I don't think Fonda laughing with NV went over very well, either.

[CTyankee]

9. Fonda has apologized for that photo...she did so several years ago.

She said she was wrong.

You need to know that as an update to the story you outlined...times change, people mature and take second looks. It happens.

I worked with the interdenomination anti-war movement called Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam with folks like Bill Coffin and a rabbi whose name escapes me just now. I never recall there being any disrespect for ordinary grunts, apart from the Lt. Calley's of the war, and indeed there was sympathy for them. Mostly, it was pro peace and serious moral misgivings about America's role in the war.

We should also remember that NV did not have an air force. They didn't have planes. It doesn't surprise me that they had AA weaponry and that doesn't make me callous and stupid...the real culprits here were the politicians who sent our troops over there in the first place to fight what was essentially a fight for Vietnam's right to be a sovereign nation.

[deutsey]

13. I'm aware of that. It was still stupid. n/t

[CTyankee]

23. And she agrees with that assessment! nt

[deutsey]

24. Exactly.

"I know the power of images," she said in the 1988 interview. "To have put myself in a situation like that was a thoughtless and cruel thing to have done. ... I take fullresponsibility for it."

I guess my larger point was that many people in the working class and poor (where I'm from) did not like the war. I don't remember anyone when I was growing up protesting the war (they were too busy working and trying to hold their families together), but the sentiment was definitely against it and Nixon. Because of her stunt, I think Fonda helped to distance a lot of working class people from the anti-war movement in general, something the Right has only been too happy to exploit.

[IBEWVET]

15. NV did have jets

They had migs and fought several air battles with our planes.

[CTyankee]

16. I'll do research on this. Were they Soviet planes? Who piloted them?

[pinboy3niner]

17. North Vietnams's MIGs were shot down or grounded early in the war

Overmatched, any planes they had left were not deployed.

[CTyankee]

22. By the time Fonda and the anti-war effort here got fully underway, was there a NV air force?

Because I was involved in the late 1960s and into the early 70s and we believed that there was no NV air force. I am remembering the "carpet bombing" and don't recall if there was any engagement by NV planes...

[pinboy3niner]

27. No

You're right. North Vietnam's jets were so completely overwhelmed by USAF fighters at the very beginning of the war that they didn't even attempt to fly any they had left.

[caraher]

38. From Nov. '68 through Mar. '72 there was a bombing halt

At least over North Vietnam proper. We did, of course, continue to bomb elsewhere, but the NVAF only defended their own territory (where it had a radar and ground control network that could give hope of success).

If you're on the ground, for all practical purposes there was no North Vietnamese air force, because their jets were dedicated to interception and not bombing. And even when they were active, the weight of numbers was so extreme in favor of the US that it's not as if they could actually turn back a raid - at best, they sought to cause some losses and score "mission kills" in the form of US aircrew jettisoning their bombs to meet a threat.

[caraher]

36. Untrue

There were certainly days when they stood down, but they were flying MiGs right on through to the end of the Linebacker II bombings of Hanoi in Christmas 1972 (and took a serious toll on the B-52s).

[caraher]

20. NV certainly did have an air force!!!

It was much smaller than what the US fielded, and had essentially no offensive capability, but North Vietnam had a rather sophisticated Soviet-style integrated air defense system based on interceptors, SAMs and antiaircraft guns.

They flew simple jets under tight ground control, and caused such an embarrassingly high loss rate against technologically superior American aircraft that they forced a massive reappraisal of fighter pilot training that led directly to the Navy's "Top Gun" school and the Air Force's adoption of similarly realistic air combat training exercises.

The air war in Vietnam was highly asymmetric, but it was no walkover for the US...

Here's a nice site on North Vietnamese aces.

[deaniac21]

28. The NVA had a large air force featuring the MIG-21. They shot

down 266 American aircraft with the Americans claiming only 204 MIG's destroyed. By far the worse kill ration the American Air Force has had in any war. They also had tons of nasty Russiam surfacr to air missles. Here is a chance to educate yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_People's_Air_Force

[CTyankee]

31. how active were they in 1970? Why hadn't we heard about them, if they were "large"?

I'm not doubting they had planes at some point...

[caraher]

35. They had as many as 200 planes

Their activity levels varied substantially. First, bear in mind that the US air war over North Vietnam was itself highly variable. Between the end of 1968 and early 1972 there was essentially no bombing of the north, so in 1970 they wouldn't have been flying much. When the US wasn't flying, neither were they. Second, North Vietnamese tactics varied. During some phases of the war there were either "MiG days" and "SAM days" where the North Vietnamese relied primarily either on aircraft or missiles.

As to why you haven't heard of them, I'd imagine you've simply never had an interest in the details of the air war over Vietnam. It's not exactly a secret!

[CTyankee]

39. I'm sure it was not a secret, but the anti-war community had a different view.

In 1970 and 1971, we had a high interest in what was going on in Vietnam. The "air war" was not part of it.

Do you have an idea as to why this was the case?

[caraher]

40. I'm not sure exactly what you're alluding to...

but I would agree that the exact size of North Vietnam's combat air fleet was never among the most important things to know about the war for most people.

My main goal is to correct an admittedly minor factual point - the North Vietnamese did indeed have (thanks to Soviet and perhaps Chinese support) jet fighters, and they were never simply swept aside but remained a significant threat to American planes bombing the North throughout the war. I've never before seen people make the claims made here about the nonexistence or utter impotence of the NVAF, and I don't think its existence in any way invalidates the case against the war - if anything, it's completely defensive character is telling!

[CTyankee]

41. Well, the antiwar left (or at least the nondenominational religious part of it

such as CALC must have been misled. We were more concerned about the massive U.S. bombings going on at the time. And your last statement DOES prove a case we always made against the Vietnam War, that of U.S. aggression against a people who wanted to once again reunite as a country, as it had been for centuries before the French and then the U.S. had attempted to divide in two.

[caraher]

55. We were certainly doing plenty of bombing in that period

but it was in South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia... just not places the NVAF could fly (for tactical and probably also political reasons).

I agree overall with your assessment of the war, that the US propped up corrupt regimes while persistently miscasting the struggle for reunification in terms of "Communist expansionism." The use of US air power in Vietnam had many facets; over North Vietnam, it was shaped by theories about the ability to coerce policy changes with bombs (in "Rolling Thunder" Johnson tried moving "bombing lines" north and south according to the progress of diplomatic initiatives; Nixon and Kissinger bombed Hanoi around Christmas 1972 specifically to win certain terms in the peace accords) and constrained by political fears (such as worries of retaliation should US bombing kill significant numbers of Soviet advisors). Elsewhere, it was generally less constrained, leading to tactics such as the "Arc Light" carpet-bombing missions using B-52s to flatten mile-square areas at a time.

[deaniac21]

50. What you mean we kemosabe? Everyone else alive had.

[CTyankee]

51. It was probably the effect of working in New York City where folks are

notoriously poorly informed and badly educated...or maybe we weren't "alive." Could be...

[LeftinOH]

5. Misplaced aggression: It's easier for some folks to channel all the anger and frustration over the

Vietnam conflict onto one easily recognizable person (a woman, of course) whose name and image represents all that was "bad" about the war. Robert McNamara? William Westmoreland? Who?

I had a high school history teacher (early 1980s) who periodically went off on a rant about Jane Fonda's so-called traitorous anti-American exploits.. and how he would never see any of her films. We learned precious little about the Vietnam war, but we learned plenty about ill-informed right wingers like him.

[pinboy3niner]

10. You've hit on an important point

Vietnam War policy was made over many years, by a succession of public officials, through a succession of administrations and Presidents from both parties. In retrospect, there truly was no one discrete place to focus our blame and anger--not for the antiwar movement, and not for the veterans and bereaved families who struggled to deal with the war's traumatic aftermath.

Having a legitimate scapegoat would have made it easier to come to terms with that experience, to heal, and to get past it. Instead, we were only left with our frustration, and for years after the war no one wanted to even talk about it. Left or Right, no one was satisfied.

[deutsey]

8. What was the "Jodi taking your girl at home" myth?

Was that about the anxiety that some guy was making moves on your girlfriend back in the States? If so, why "Jodi"? Or is that a typo?

[PassingFair]

11. Jody....

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jody

[SpiralHawk]

19. Jodys: Bush, Cheney and the vast phalanx of Republicon chickenhawks...

all Jodys...

[SoCalDem]

34. I dated a "Joby"..from Connecticut

plopped smack-dab in the middle of Kansas..in 1967.. He had a rich Daddy & bad grades (by Eastern college standards), so he ended up at Kansas Wesleyan in Salina Kansas..

He was a cute guy, but a big bore:)

[aikoaiko]

12. Yes, I cannot see how he can claim Jody was a myth. It happens.

but I'll wait until I read the book before passing judgment.

[pinboy3niner]

18. WTF does that have to do with Jane Fonda?

[deutsey]

25. WTF are you asking me for? Ask the person who wrote the book being reviewed

"He shows that sex and danger have always mixed in military training and military society. He stirs in other Vietnam era myths like Jodi taking your girl at home, and razor blades in Vietnamese vaginas."

Did you read the review in the OP?

[pinboy3niner]

30. I apologize

You're right--'Jodi' is in there. I just don't understand how the bugaboo we knew in the service as 'Jody' relates to Jane Fonda.

Seriousy, I'm sorry. It's not your problem, it's Lembke's. One more among many problems with everything he writes...

[deutsey]

32. No problem...and I just read your response re: Lembke below

Nicely said.

I have to say, I share your thoughts on him. I heard him in a couple interviews when his "spitting" book first came out and wanted to believe he had debunked these accounts as myths. But his argument just didn't hold up for me under scrutiny, especially when vets would call in and challenge him with their stories of being spat upon. He dismissed them has having false memories. :shrug:

I was very young during Vietnam (elementary school), so I was really oblivious to a lot of what was going on then. Still, Lembke's argument sounded bogus to me.

:hi:

[WilliamPitt]

37. "Jody's in your girlfriend's rack"

[leftyladyfrommo]

14. I like Jane Fonda.

She made a mistake 40 years ago. Lots of us made mistakes back then.

She has paid an awful price for that mistake.

I wish people would just get over it.

[Bigmack]

21. Nonsense.... everybody knows...

we lost the war because of Jane and some hippies. All the modern weapons, huge numbers of troops, and endless supplies just couldn't prevail against those two giant opponents.

The fact that NV and the VC were totally committed and generally more strategically sound than the US has nothing to do with it.

It was those dope-smoking hippies and one young dumbshit Hollywood starlet that did us in.

[pinboy3niner]

26. Lembke is an apologist--I don't trust anything he writes

An apologist on OUR side, but an apologist nonetheless. I'm a bit rusty on it, but I read his book that tried to prove that spitting on VN vets never happened. Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene aided and abetted Lembke in trying to prove that antiwar activists spitting on veterans was a myth.

Greene asked vets to send in their stories of being spat upon--but they only counted if, many years after the fact, they were accompanied by affidavits from witnesses. Predictably, out of hundreds of responses, I think only one spitting account was accepted--the rest were dismissed as lies.

Lembke's book was debunked by critics but it still is taken as gospel by many on the Left. My conclusion, after reading the book, was that Lembke was promoting his own agenda--not the truth.

I remember Grene's columns and Lembke's book. As I said, I'm a bit rusty on it, but one thing that struck me at the time is that Lembke created an argument that returning troops could not possibly have been accosted by antiwar activists because they returned to airports on military bases, where activists could not have gained access.

That's when I knew that Lembke was lying to make his case. Even Lembke--a veteran, himself--had to know that troops returned from VN to military airports--and then went OFF BASE to civilian airports to return home. He set up a straw man and knocked it down--even though he knew it was a lie.

I know VN vets who were spat upon--mostly at airports on the West coast--but to focus on spitting incidents is a mistake. Many Vietnam vets--including me--were abused by some in the antiwar movement. I forgave them long ago, but some insist on picking at that scab.

Lembke is a revisionist who is only interested in painting the antiwar movement as somehow 'pure'. That ought to be a real joke to those who were actually there, but some prefer his revisionist version of history.

If Lembke is now writing about Fonda, I know very well what to expect, and it's not going to be the truth.

For myself, I know Jane Fonda made some horrendous mistakes (for which she has apologized). I know it's a highly emotional issue for some vets--especially VN POW's. But I forgave her long ago. It's time to move on...

[eridani]

45. I figure that statistically, spitting incidents pretty much had to have happened

Just about every antiwar activist I knew at the time was a lot more into supporting GI coffee houses, though. I myself would never have known enough about Vietnam to protest the war had it not been for the college speaking tour of Green Beret Donald Duncan.

[Major Hogwash]

46. Buy the DVD "Sir, No Sir". There are a lot of facts in that one movie.

And the men that gave interviews for that movie are Vietnam veterans.
They tell the tale, and I really think that the spitting stories were made up.

[Cyrano]

29. It's amazing how people can hate Jane Fonda and admire Dick Cheney.

Jane Fonda never outed a CIA operative like Cheney and his henchmen outed Valery Plame. Cheney endangered the lives of each and every operative with whom Valerie Plame came in contact.

For anyone who wants to talk about war crimes/traitors, etc., how about moving Dick to the top of your list?

[MisterP]

33. why don't people ever give Marlene Dietrich crap for opposing her home country

because it was acting the aggressor in WWII

and, by the standards of many, each and every USO tour done in SE Asia should be ashamed of themselves

the only way out of this is American exceptionalism: Fonda is bad because she sided against the US and Dietrich good because she sided with

[Jamastiene]

42. My aunt still hates her to this day.

She was a WAC back in the late 50s through mid 60s. She still hates Jane Fonda and would not accept her apology a few years ago. She's not a right winger on many things, but on the few that she is, it is guttural and it is completely ingrained.

[ttwiddler]

43. He's wrong

The publicity work she did for North Vietnam almost certainly fits the constitutional definition.

[inna]

47. and you prove his point

:shrug:

[ttwiddler]

54. No

I would prove his point if I claimed she lost the war. Would I prove the point that poets are subversive by pointing out that Ezra Pound committed treason in WW2? Not at all. Neither one had much influence on the war of their time. The stories of both are interesting because they illustrate that celebrity is probably the best defense to a deserved punishment.

[GoCubsGo]

49. If Jane was a republican...

...the whole incident would have been written off as "a youthful indiscretion". Granted, if Jane was a republican, she'd be cheering on the war, instead of protesting it. It never ceases to amaze me how she continues to be pummeled for a mistake she made when she was young and stupid, and for which she apologized. Yet, when some repug does something far worse, like desert his National Guard post, he's held up as a hero and elected President.

[Erose999]

52. She shouldn't have posed like that with the AA gun. I am sure her intentions were good, but when

when she took a seat behind that gun she should have thought about the symbolism people would have seen in that. I don't think she was given a fair hearing by the media to explain her motivations for the trip to Hanoi.

My dad (1st cav. vet 65-67) always cringes whenever he sees Jane or someone mentions her name.

[Pavulon]

53. Her picture was on the urinals at SJAFB

and in Skopje as recently an 95. Its an international and unsettled issue within the USAF.