"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." U.S. Constitution, Art. III, Section 3, Clause 1.
In 71 I was stationed at Ft Sam. The FTA Show (need I define that?) came to San Antonio. I attended out of curiosity. I recall Donald Sutherland, Eliot Gould and Jane Fonda being the primary actors. It was stupid. Junior high level stuff. Lots attended. I did not get the sense they succeeded by any measure. I was a Pvt 1st class draftee then. I've considered her an idiot ever since. In retrospect, the FedGov should have taken action against her but she was a consequence of war fighting without a declaration of war. At least she knows that she's universally loathed by vets and most other Americans. She's getting rewarded in the blue bubble the the rest of us know the score. Excellent post! Most Americans are unaware of this history these days. Good to remind us all.
In early 1970, I was stationed at Fort Carson. The commanding general was Bernie Rogers, who had previously been Commandant of Cadets at West Point and later was the NATO commander. I knew him from West Point days, due to my interaction with the disciplinary system at the Commandant level. (That story is better left for another day, perhaps after I am gone. Suffice it to say that it involved the defense of a classmate’s girlfriend who was being harassed and threatened by some New York party boys who fancied themselves as tough guys.).
Jane and her FTA contingent were making the rounds throughout the West. One of their favorite causes was how dreary the military stockades were. I had a personal one-on-one meeting with General Rogers, where he described to me how he handled her.
When Fonda and a mass of demonstrators showed up at the Fort Carson gate, they were met by General Roger’s’ aide. When Fonda loudly demanded to be allowed to inspect the stockade, the aide quickly agreed. He invited her and one other person with her to join him in his jeep. They drove off in the open jeep, leaving her mass of supporters standing outside the gate, wondering what the hell was going on and why they had been abandoned.
They then drove to the Post Stockade where she was given a VIP tour. They then proceeded to division headquarters where General Rogers personally briefed her on the stockade and other issues that she had complained about.
When they left the post, Fonda was swarmed by reporters asking her what had happened (they had not been allowed to accompany her.) She replied that the stockade was very clean and really didn’t seem like that bad a place, given its purpose.
Needless to say, her supporters were dismayed by her comments. Bernie Rogers had played her like a Stradivarius.
In my conversation with General Rogers, it was clear that he had a dim view of her intelligence. Her performance that day is best explained by the last picture at the bottom of my article.
45-50 years ago the author sent me a car bumper sticker that I have treasured all these years: "I will forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive Hitler."
Jane Fonda almost literally boils my blood. She is the poster child for what's wrong with celebrity culture. Her other claim to infamy with me is shutting down commercial nuclear power with an idiot movie. I imagine her eternity spent, "No Exit" style, locked in a facsimile of the Three Mile Island control room with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from the National Mall.
Excerpt from John Schindler's "Top Secret Umbra" Substack, "Deconstructing the Hybrid War Waged on America's Campuses" -- which I highly recommend -- "You might think there would be outcry from Congress, where allegations of Russian interference in “our democracy” have been heard nonstop since 2016. You would be wrong. In 2020, there was a brief kerfuffle when it turned out that Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was being considered as a possible vice-president nominee by Joe Biden. In her youth, Bass was an enthusiastic VB [Viceremos {We Will Win} Brigade] member, rising into Brigade leadership (a tell that she was a likely DI [Drection de Inteligencia, Cuba's version of the KGB] agent at some point), an unabashed fan of the Havana regime. She effusively praised Fidel Castro on his death in 2016, indicating that her affection for communist Cuba wasn’t merely a youthful indiscretion. That seems to have caused Biden to pass on selecting Bass as Veep, but the mainstream media paid the spy scandal no attention. It didn’t come up during her successful 2022 run for Los Angeles mayor either."
I understand the sentiment behind the stickers. A bit politically incorrect, but their widespread use (which I never saw for anyone else) is a statement. So even though I chose not to mention it in my article, your comment stands.
I’m writing this from my hotel room in Thailand, at the end of my 10-day tour of Vietnam. It seems I’ve had to leave Vietnam before I could get to typing. A little distance to gain perspective apparently.
As you may or may not know, my brother, Gerald E. Corlett (Jerry) was killed by a sniper on a mountain in Vietnam on March 16th, 1970. He’d seen a little action and had been in the country just over 100 days. He was 22 and I was 14 at the time. It remains the single biggest traumatic event in my life. I was determined to visit Vietnam so I could see what he saw, smell what he smelled, and find out what the weather was like at the same time of year. Since I sold a controlling interest in my business recently and I had the money and the health to make the trip, now was as good a time as any. I haven’t had two weeks off in over a decade. I’m spending money to pick at an old wound; hoping for healing the second time around.
I wasn’t sympathetic to the movement to remove monuments honoring and remembering those who fought and died for the Confederate States of America during the civil war until I realized that those people, mostly men and boys, were in fact traitors fighting to preserve slavery. Were they good honorable men? Of course. Did they love their wives and dogs like we do? Sure. You could probably say the same about many other soldiers in other wars who ended up on the wrong side of history.
And please spare me the pacifist “No one wins in war” bullshit. You’d be reading this in German or Japanese if my dad and his buddies hadn’t kicked the shit out of people that had it coming to them. There is a time and place for war, unfortunately, Vietnam wasn’t it. And like the Confederates, America fought on the wrong side. I realize what an explosively contrary opinion this is, considering the dominant narrative of selfless unappreciated heroes returning from Southeast Asia, many maimed internally and externally.
It isn’t like South Vietnam was its own country for several thousand years and mean ‘ole North Vietnam decided to invade. Again, it’s much more like the Confederacy announcing a new country out of an old one. Vietnam was a whole country until 1954 when the Geneva Accords left Ho Chi Mihn in charge of North Vietnam with promises of elections to determine the country’s fate. When it became obvious that Uncle Ho was going to win the reunification elections in a landslide, the United States and the leaders in the south made sure they were never held. Like attempting to keep Trump off the ballot in Colorado, perhaps this is when, 70 years ago, the United States developed its appetite for denying citizens their choices of candidates.
I sat in the living room of the pilot who spent 3 ½ years in Russia learning to fly a MIG so he could be the first North Vietnamese pilot to shoot down an American. In 2012, he came to the States and had dinner with the pilot he downed. Amazingly, on the same trip, he met the American pilot who shot him down. Although that broke both his arms, all three survived and came to terms with their respective roles.
An NVA soldier and his wife greeted me warmly into their home. We picked fresh tea at their plantation and dried it. He told the authorities he was 18 to be able to join the war when in fact he was just 17. Contrast that with guys like my brother who had no desire whatsoever to attend the event and another brother of mine who wisely fled to Canada.
Nxon (Yun), 68 years old like me, was Vietcong. She provided food and ammunition to the snipers shooting at my brother, but said she was terrified while she did it. We, along with her son-in-law, daughter, and my English-speaking guide enjoyed the tea, fruit, and candy she provided. She loved the Americans, but hated their government, a trait we share.
When I posted on Facebook that I would probably buy the sniper who killed my brother a beer if I met him, my sister and brother were incensed. How could I? My brother didn’t deserve to die, did he? My sister defriended me. Ahh, Vietnam. Tearing families apart for 60 years and still going strong, figuratively, and literally as the mines we left have claimed over 43,000 victims since the war ended. (My South Vietnamese boat driver has half a right foot.)
So the American pilot can have dinner with the guy who shot him down, but my buying a beer for the guy who killed my brother is somehow a bridge too far? I’m supposed to continue hating the 80-lb. waif that supplied my brother’s killer 54 years ago? That’d be like jailing the bank robber that put the gun to the teller’s head but letting his getaway driver go free. We are going to forgive and move on, or we’re not. I’ve tasted forgiveness and dished some up; it’s the elixir of catharsis.
Did my brother, the invader, deserve to die? Unfortunately, yes, as painful as that is to say and hear. No, returning vets, you aren’t heroes. You fought to support a puppet regime. Several in a row. All your firepower, bombs, strategy, tactics, and sacrifice only to lose to stone-agers living in tunnels and battling you with sharpened bamboo shoots.
Yesterday I toured the Vietnam war museum in Saigon, Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Mihn City. I have never been so ashamed to be an American. The carnage we inflicted was unspeakable, even sub-human. Our soldiers slit the throats of children, then got elected to the United States Senate. We poisoned the countryside with Agent Orange, killing humans and wildlife indiscriminately, its curse continuing to this day with birth defects and genetic damage. And we poisoned our own. Karma’s a bitch ain’t she?
The worst of this is how little we’ve learned. Being the greatest nation the world has ever known breeds arrogance and when you mix that with indignance and patriotism, you’ve created political C-4 explosive. I offer up our 20-year Afghanistan misadventure as Exhibit A. The parallels to Vietnam are striking. Justification going in, building and supporting a corrupt puppet government, and leaving 13 dead and billions of dollars’ worth of equipment as we exited with our tail between our legs. Again. Ukraine anyone?
Some readers may be really pissed at me by now and think I deserve a good ass-whuppin’. They could be right; maybe I do. But before it’s administered, may I beg a favor please? A straight-up ass-kickin’ is the lazy way out for you. Please do the difficult job of articulating where and how I’m wrong. Before you turn my brain to mush, please fill it with the knowledge of how 58,000 American and several million Vietnamese lives were worth the cost of the war. Please explain how the Domino Theory, the idea that if we didn’t stop communism in Southeast Asia it would spread worldwide, wasn’t complete bullshit. Tell me how it’s unlikely that we’ll repeat our mistakes and this time we’ve really learned from this tragedy. Let’s hear how we shouldn’t embrace our former enemies and how the cancer of unforgiveness is really a healing tonic.
I have never wanted to be proven wrong so badly in my life. Indulge me please. I’m begging.
In 71 I was stationed at Ft Sam. The FTA Show (need I define that?) came to San Antonio. I attended out of curiosity. I recall Donald Sutherland, Eliot Gould and Jane Fonda being the primary actors. It was stupid. Junior high level stuff. Lots attended. I did not get the sense they succeeded by any measure. I was a Pvt 1st class draftee then. I've considered her an idiot ever since. In retrospect, the FedGov should have taken action against her but she was a consequence of war fighting without a declaration of war. At least she knows that she's universally loathed by vets and most other Americans. She's getting rewarded in the blue bubble the the rest of us know the score. Excellent post! Most Americans are unaware of this history these days. Good to remind us all.
In early 1970, I was stationed at Fort Carson. The commanding general was Bernie Rogers, who had previously been Commandant of Cadets at West Point and later was the NATO commander. I knew him from West Point days, due to my interaction with the disciplinary system at the Commandant level. (That story is better left for another day, perhaps after I am gone. Suffice it to say that it involved the defense of a classmate’s girlfriend who was being harassed and threatened by some New York party boys who fancied themselves as tough guys.).
Jane and her FTA contingent were making the rounds throughout the West. One of their favorite causes was how dreary the military stockades were. I had a personal one-on-one meeting with General Rogers, where he described to me how he handled her.
When Fonda and a mass of demonstrators showed up at the Fort Carson gate, they were met by General Roger’s’ aide. When Fonda loudly demanded to be allowed to inspect the stockade, the aide quickly agreed. He invited her and one other person with her to join him in his jeep. They drove off in the open jeep, leaving her mass of supporters standing outside the gate, wondering what the hell was going on and why they had been abandoned.
They then drove to the Post Stockade where she was given a VIP tour. They then proceeded to division headquarters where General Rogers personally briefed her on the stockade and other issues that she had complained about.
When they left the post, Fonda was swarmed by reporters asking her what had happened (they had not been allowed to accompany her.) She replied that the stockade was very clean and really didn’t seem like that bad a place, given its purpose.
Needless to say, her supporters were dismayed by her comments. Bernie Rogers had played her like a Stradivarius.
In my conversation with General Rogers, it was clear that he had a dim view of her intelligence. Her performance that day is best explained by the last picture at the bottom of my article.
BTW my NCO told us it was ok to go.
45-50 years ago the author sent me a car bumper sticker that I have treasured all these years: "I will forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive Hitler."
I'm not at all religious. But every once in a while, the concept of hell has some appeal to me. Right now is one of those times.
I always value your input, Martin, and am happy to contribute to your conversion! 😇
Jane Fonda almost literally boils my blood. She is the poster child for what's wrong with celebrity culture. Her other claim to infamy with me is shutting down commercial nuclear power with an idiot movie. I imagine her eternity spent, "No Exit" style, locked in a facsimile of the Three Mile Island control room with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from the National Mall.
Excerpt from John Schindler's "Top Secret Umbra" Substack, "Deconstructing the Hybrid War Waged on America's Campuses" -- which I highly recommend -- "You might think there would be outcry from Congress, where allegations of Russian interference in “our democracy” have been heard nonstop since 2016. You would be wrong. In 2020, there was a brief kerfuffle when it turned out that Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was being considered as a possible vice-president nominee by Joe Biden. In her youth, Bass was an enthusiastic VB [Viceremos {We Will Win} Brigade] member, rising into Brigade leadership (a tell that she was a likely DI [Drection de Inteligencia, Cuba's version of the KGB] agent at some point), an unabashed fan of the Havana regime. She effusively praised Fidel Castro on his death in 2016, indicating that her affection for communist Cuba wasn’t merely a youthful indiscretion. That seems to have caused Biden to pass on selecting Bass as Veep, but the mainstream media paid the spy scandal no attention. It didn’t come up during her successful 2022 run for Los Angeles mayor either."
(John, please feel free to delete my comment if it's too spicy to be posted here.)
I pee'd on that traitor's image in urinals in O Clubs across the free world.
Her being honored by the Commie wannabe political hacks of LA County is unsurprising.
I understand the sentiment behind the stickers. A bit politically incorrect, but their widespread use (which I never saw for anyone else) is a statement. So even though I chose not to mention it in my article, your comment stands.
March, 2024:
I’m writing this from my hotel room in Thailand, at the end of my 10-day tour of Vietnam. It seems I’ve had to leave Vietnam before I could get to typing. A little distance to gain perspective apparently.
As you may or may not know, my brother, Gerald E. Corlett (Jerry) was killed by a sniper on a mountain in Vietnam on March 16th, 1970. He’d seen a little action and had been in the country just over 100 days. He was 22 and I was 14 at the time. It remains the single biggest traumatic event in my life. I was determined to visit Vietnam so I could see what he saw, smell what he smelled, and find out what the weather was like at the same time of year. Since I sold a controlling interest in my business recently and I had the money and the health to make the trip, now was as good a time as any. I haven’t had two weeks off in over a decade. I’m spending money to pick at an old wound; hoping for healing the second time around.
I wasn’t sympathetic to the movement to remove monuments honoring and remembering those who fought and died for the Confederate States of America during the civil war until I realized that those people, mostly men and boys, were in fact traitors fighting to preserve slavery. Were they good honorable men? Of course. Did they love their wives and dogs like we do? Sure. You could probably say the same about many other soldiers in other wars who ended up on the wrong side of history.
And please spare me the pacifist “No one wins in war” bullshit. You’d be reading this in German or Japanese if my dad and his buddies hadn’t kicked the shit out of people that had it coming to them. There is a time and place for war, unfortunately, Vietnam wasn’t it. And like the Confederates, America fought on the wrong side. I realize what an explosively contrary opinion this is, considering the dominant narrative of selfless unappreciated heroes returning from Southeast Asia, many maimed internally and externally.
It isn’t like South Vietnam was its own country for several thousand years and mean ‘ole North Vietnam decided to invade. Again, it’s much more like the Confederacy announcing a new country out of an old one. Vietnam was a whole country until 1954 when the Geneva Accords left Ho Chi Mihn in charge of North Vietnam with promises of elections to determine the country’s fate. When it became obvious that Uncle Ho was going to win the reunification elections in a landslide, the United States and the leaders in the south made sure they were never held. Like attempting to keep Trump off the ballot in Colorado, perhaps this is when, 70 years ago, the United States developed its appetite for denying citizens their choices of candidates.
I sat in the living room of the pilot who spent 3 ½ years in Russia learning to fly a MIG so he could be the first North Vietnamese pilot to shoot down an American. In 2012, he came to the States and had dinner with the pilot he downed. Amazingly, on the same trip, he met the American pilot who shot him down. Although that broke both his arms, all three survived and came to terms with their respective roles.
An NVA soldier and his wife greeted me warmly into their home. We picked fresh tea at their plantation and dried it. He told the authorities he was 18 to be able to join the war when in fact he was just 17. Contrast that with guys like my brother who had no desire whatsoever to attend the event and another brother of mine who wisely fled to Canada.
Nxon (Yun), 68 years old like me, was Vietcong. She provided food and ammunition to the snipers shooting at my brother, but said she was terrified while she did it. We, along with her son-in-law, daughter, and my English-speaking guide enjoyed the tea, fruit, and candy she provided. She loved the Americans, but hated their government, a trait we share.
When I posted on Facebook that I would probably buy the sniper who killed my brother a beer if I met him, my sister and brother were incensed. How could I? My brother didn’t deserve to die, did he? My sister defriended me. Ahh, Vietnam. Tearing families apart for 60 years and still going strong, figuratively, and literally as the mines we left have claimed over 43,000 victims since the war ended. (My South Vietnamese boat driver has half a right foot.)
So the American pilot can have dinner with the guy who shot him down, but my buying a beer for the guy who killed my brother is somehow a bridge too far? I’m supposed to continue hating the 80-lb. waif that supplied my brother’s killer 54 years ago? That’d be like jailing the bank robber that put the gun to the teller’s head but letting his getaway driver go free. We are going to forgive and move on, or we’re not. I’ve tasted forgiveness and dished some up; it’s the elixir of catharsis.
Did my brother, the invader, deserve to die? Unfortunately, yes, as painful as that is to say and hear. No, returning vets, you aren’t heroes. You fought to support a puppet regime. Several in a row. All your firepower, bombs, strategy, tactics, and sacrifice only to lose to stone-agers living in tunnels and battling you with sharpened bamboo shoots.
Yesterday I toured the Vietnam war museum in Saigon, Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Mihn City. I have never been so ashamed to be an American. The carnage we inflicted was unspeakable, even sub-human. Our soldiers slit the throats of children, then got elected to the United States Senate. We poisoned the countryside with Agent Orange, killing humans and wildlife indiscriminately, its curse continuing to this day with birth defects and genetic damage. And we poisoned our own. Karma’s a bitch ain’t she?
The worst of this is how little we’ve learned. Being the greatest nation the world has ever known breeds arrogance and when you mix that with indignance and patriotism, you’ve created political C-4 explosive. I offer up our 20-year Afghanistan misadventure as Exhibit A. The parallels to Vietnam are striking. Justification going in, building and supporting a corrupt puppet government, and leaving 13 dead and billions of dollars’ worth of equipment as we exited with our tail between our legs. Again. Ukraine anyone?
Some readers may be really pissed at me by now and think I deserve a good ass-whuppin’. They could be right; maybe I do. But before it’s administered, may I beg a favor please? A straight-up ass-kickin’ is the lazy way out for you. Please do the difficult job of articulating where and how I’m wrong. Before you turn my brain to mush, please fill it with the knowledge of how 58,000 American and several million Vietnamese lives were worth the cost of the war. Please explain how the Domino Theory, the idea that if we didn’t stop communism in Southeast Asia it would spread worldwide, wasn’t complete bullshit. Tell me how it’s unlikely that we’ll repeat our mistakes and this time we’ve really learned from this tragedy. Let’s hear how we shouldn’t embrace our former enemies and how the cancer of unforgiveness is really a healing tonic.
I have never wanted to be proven wrong so badly in my life. Indulge me please. I’m begging.