Just give her 5 yrs working in a V.A. hospital,in a non glamorous location, tending to all the patients needs. She must live in the hospital, and eat what they eat, and live as they live.
The United States never declared War against the North because it would have been political suicide…[/quote]
Do you mean political suicide within the US or internationally ?
Internationally I think that Congress would have placed themselved between a rock & a hard place by making a formal declaration of war as the Charter of the UN had been signed by the US in 1945.
I believe the United States have only ever made five of these declarations, (all prior to the ratification,) the War of 1812, the Mexican-US War, the Spanish-US War, and the two World Wars.
Due mainly to this Charter formal declarations of war have fallen by the wayside since '45, and just because one is not made doesn’t mean that the military Op is illegal, otherwise many thousands of US politicians and soldiers would be waiting for trial.
That troops of one sovereign nation are engaged in normal Mil Ops against what it has made clear to be an opponent is normally seen as a war, unless very specific boundaries and tight ROE are obviously the case.
As I understand you allude, political considerations may well put the mockers on an ‘old fashioned’ declaration of war if it could be perceived to hold the entire country responsible for the moves of it’s political masters. (Hardy something anyone would wish on their worst enemy ! 
)
I’m not that well up on US law so am ready to be corrected, but should this have gone to trial wouldn’t the onus ave been on the prosecuting counsel merely to prove that the defendant had given “aid and comfort” to the enemy* ?
That there my have been a drawdown in progress at the time is neither here nor there as the state of the war is not mentioned in the law.
- ‘Enemy’ with reference to the Congressional authorisation.
In the US. Although I’m sure you’ll recall the anti-War movement was very strong in Europe and Asia as well…
Internationally I think that Congress would have placed themselved between a rock & a hard place by making a formal declaration of war as the Charter of the UN had been signed by the US in 1945.
I believe the United States have only ever made five of these declarations, (all prior to the ratification,) the War of 1812, the Mexican-US War, the Spanish-US War, and the two World Wars.
Maybe. But there is significant evidence that the United States has rarely given a shit about UN Resolutions when they contravened its supposed interests…
For instance, the US canceled elections in Vietnam and wouldn’t recognize the North in 1956 (I think?) despite a UN Resolution declaring they should be held and the division was only temporary.
Due mainly to this Charter formal declarations of war have fallen by the wayside since '45, and just because one is not made doesn’t mean that the military Op is illegal, otherwise many thousands of US politicians and soldiers would be waiting for trial.
So, US soldiers can’t be tried for war crimes, but its civilians can be tried for providing aid and comfort in time of war? Sounds rather like having one’s cake and eating it too to me…
That troops of one sovereign nation are engaged in normal Mil Ops against what it has made clear to be an opponent is normally seen as a war, unless very specific boundaries and tight ROE are obviously the case.
As I understand you allude, political considerations may well put the mockers on an ‘old fashioned’ declaration of war if it could be perceived to hold the entire country responsible for the moves of it’s political masters. (Hardy something anyone would wish on their worst enemy !
Yes, but, I think both the US and Europe has held others accountable for their war crimes in say the Baltics even when the Serbians had not only not officially declared War, but denied direct involvement in the fighting until the end…
I’m not that well up on US law so am ready to be corrected, but should this have gone to trial wouldn’t the onus ave been on the prosecuting counsel merely to prove that the defendant had given “aid and comfort” to the enemy* ?
That there my have been a drawdown in progress at the time is neither here nor there as the state of the war is not mentioned in the law.
- ‘Enemy’ with reference to the Congressional authorisation.
The problem would have then we would have had to put the legality of the US involvement in Vietnam on trial (according to US law) and then proven that Jane had given tangible “aid and comfort.” But the point is that you can’t have all the benefits of an undeclared War and then try to keep your dissent in line by taking the advantages of a Congressionally declared one
Then we would have asked ourselves if the nature of “aid and comfort” is to include freedom of speech, of which case the gov’t could theoretically round up a lot of people who had never bothered to travel to Vietnam…
The trial of ‘Hanoi Jane’ would have been both legally dubious at best and a political impossibility by and increasingly beleaguered Nixon regime that had failed in its challenge to prevent the “Pentagon Papers” by Daniel Ellsberg and prosecute the newspapers that published them. We could also go on and on how the US gov’t was routinely breaking its own laws during that period and ignoring certain instances such as the Chicago Police Dept. “rioting” (their words, not mine) and never putting anyone on trial for that…
I have been notified before about posting on “old threads”. Is it wrong to post on them? If so, why not just close them?
I lived through the Vietnam era and remember a good deal of it vividly. Because of it, LBJ declined to run for a full 2nd term, and Richard Nixon got to tell us that he had a “secret plan” to end the war. He didn’t. Nixon turned the phrase ‘Peace with honor’ into a much maligned slogan.
With the distance of time, it seems abundantly clear that Jane Fonda was right and Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon were about as wrong as they could be. Most of the troops (as opposed to the officers and non-coms) we sent over there were drafted (conscripts) who had no choice in the matter. They fought bravely in spite of the horrendous conditions they found themselves in. I would agree with those who say that Fonda should never have visited North Vietnam - at best it was in extremely poor taste and at worst it was very stupid, but she was hardly the only American who vigorously and loudly opposed the war. If she was guilty of ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’, then there were - literally - millions who were and are guilty of the same thing, instead of just expressing their right to express their opinions and viewpoints. This unfortunate and poorly-thought-through war was brought to an end thanks to those demonstrators.
I would disagree that she was right in her actions while in North Viet Nam. Many U.S. Citizens were against that War, but unlike Hanoi Jane, they did not produce audio tapes urging U.S. troops to throw down their arms, and turn against their N.C.O.'s and Officers whom she had deemed to be criminals, or at least acting in a criminal way. nor did they upon being given messages from U.S. prisoners, hand these messages over to the Prison authorities. The photographs of her at an A.A. gun site were nothing in comparison to those other actions.
It would be a different matter had she been told by the North Vietnamese Authorities that unless she did these things, the Prisoners would suffer even more heinous treatment, but this has never been stated as being the case. By making the tapes, and handing over the messages, she did (In my mind at least.) physically give aid, and comfort to the Enemy.
You may hold whatever opinion you wish, but you will if you open the subject of Hanoi Jane, certainly hear mine.
I don’t have a problem with it, personally or as a mod, if it’s advancing a discussion, although some boards regard it as poor form to do it. This is, after all, a historical discussion site. It seems a bit contradictory to deny the right to revive a bit of history.
I attended a live performance of Hair around 1970 which included actors as protesters running up the aisles with placards. The most memorable one was “Pull out Nixon, like your father should have”, which deserved wider publication at the time. (I also missed the nanosecond nude scene, which was a major disappointment.)
There is a huge difference between aligning oneself with and supporting the enemy, as Fonda did, and opposing the involvement or actions of one’s government in Vietnam or anywhere else.
I was at university in the last few years of the Vietnam war and, while by then like most Australians I had swung around to oppose our further involvement in it despite having been willing to serve there as a conscript a few years earlier and as a volunteer a few years before that (and thank Christ I didn’t), I vigorously opposed and would still oppose the idiotic and effectively if not legally treasonable actions of student representative councils, trade unions, and sundry other bodies passing resolutions in support of and sending money to aid North Vietnam and the Viet Cong.
Just because one’s government is wrong in one’s opinion at the time or in hindsight does not automatically mean that the enemy is right or deserving of support. The Viet Cong were a brutal, ruthless bunch of murdering, torturing, extortionate thugs who terrorised their own villagers and village chiefs in appalling ways to compel support for the VC and the North’s cause. No VC ever stood trial, or were even charged for their countless atrocities, because it was encouraged by their leadership to advance their cause. Calley was charged (albeit only after the press and others got involved, but that in itself distinguishes America from the VC and North Vietnam), stood trial, was convicted, and was punished, and that’s one of the things which distinguishes America, and Australia, from NV and the VC. And it’s one of the reasons we didn’t win, because we fought by different rules. Where the VC disembowelled a village chief’s son in front of him and the villagers to compel compliance, America and Australia built wells and provided medical treatment and so on to encourage support. You don’t have to be Einstein to work out which method was most likely to get support.
Partly.
But mostly because we weren’t winning and couldn’t see any prospect of winning.
And also because it wasn’t fought by an all volunteer army as has been the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, which didn’t generate opposition to conscription for a dangerous foreign war and bind that up with the distinct issue of whether or not one’s nation should be involved in that war.
Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution reads as follows -
"Section. 3.Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."
It is true, however, that the effect of the passage of US legislation and issue of Government ordnances from time to time dealing with what might be described as specific areas of “treason”, often drafted in somewhat vague terms, has tended to undermine the practical protection intended for citizens that appears to have been intended by the drafters of the Constitution. Recent use of the espionage legislation, not to mention the creative nonsense (in legal terms) of the establishment of an “unlawful combatant” are examples of this. Also, I would doubt whether the category of “enemies” can safely be regarded as including only those delineated as such by a declaration of war. In fact, in the Common Law tradition, the fact that the Constitution itself does not speak to that point should allow the Federal courts considerable leeway in what constitutes an “enemy” in the circumstances of a particular case.
One very forward-looking (at the time) feature of Article III.s3 is the abolition of the obnoxious medieval relic in the British legal system known as attainder. This was essentially a procedure in which Parliament, without engaging in any judicial process, had the power to pass an Act “attainting” an individual. Attainted individuals were automatically subject to a sentence of death, their property forfeit, and their heirs and relatives subject to a number of long-term legal disabilities in the absence of a pardon (hence the provision of the Section forbidding the application of the “Corruption of Blood” concept. This barbaric practice had been used by the English Parliament as recently as 1798, but its heyday was in the medieval period when, on one occasion during the Wars of the Roses, a Lancastrian parliament attainted virtually the whole Yorkist nobility of England, only to find themselves attainted in turn by a Yorkist parliament the following year following a change in military fortunes. The “Mother of Parliaments” certainly had its peculiar features. Britain only got around to abolishing Acts of Attainder in 1870, during a major campaign of legal system of reforms undertaken there in the late 19th century. Best regards, JR.
And, most conveniently for the Crown, the attainted subject’s property was forfeited to the Crown.
Not, of course, that this could ever have influenced any monarch’s desire to see a troublesome subject attainted and his or her property forfeited to the Crown. 
:rolleyes:
I’m not sure that this really changed anything in a practical sense by limiting attainder etc to the life of the person attainted.
The essence of attainder etc was that it forfeited the attainted person’s property to the Crown and cut off all claims by issue and potential successors in title.
If one is attainted etc during one’s lifetime, doesn’t that have pretty much the same effect so far as issue and potential successors in title are concerned in succeeding to the attainted person’s property which has already been forfeited to the Crown / State?
Perhaps there was a symbolic, but probably not much in reality, advantage to the reputations of issue in not being attainted by corruption of blood from their ancestor’s act of treason.
I see the point, RS - it is possible to argue that Congress could still have prescribed a procedure of personal attainder for the punishment of treason, even if the application of the Corruption of Blood principle was ruled out. This would, however, appear contradictory to the principle embodied in the preceding paragraph - although this itself is somewhat ambiguous, turning on the meaning of the word “convicted”. (An obscure drafting compromise, perhaps ?)
Attainder was, after all, not strictly speaking, a “conviction”; more like a declaration that “we think that you are traitor, so there !”. This is shown by what happened to the unlucky (not to mention foolish) King Charles I’s star minister, the Earl of Strafford. Strafford was put on trial before the House of Lords for various (in their view) treasonous crimes, but his defense of the legality of his actions in the King’s service proved so good, and so vexatious to his Parliamentary prosecutors, that they dropped the prosecution, passed an Act of Attainder on Strafford, and pressured Charles to sign the perfidious document, thus throwing his most effective Minister to the wolves. Strafford’s last words from the scaffold were said to have been “put not your trust in Princes”. Best regards, JR.
I don’t mind hearing your opinion on the subject, Tank. Millions agree with your viewpoint. Millions disagree as well. Few things divided the American people quite so much as the Vietnam war. My point about the hysteria surrounding Jane Fonda is that she was only one of millions who opposed the war. Her celebrity gave her prominence and access but one doubts if anyone could prove her antics changed anything regarding the war’s outcome to even the smallest degree. A lot of people focus on her as a locus of their loathing, but, honestly, what many loathe is that their sons, brothers, uncles and nephews - not to mention mothers, sisters and daughters - were also marching in the streets against this conflict, and that is perhaps harder to accept.
I would be reluctant to characterize the citizens response to Hanoi Jane’s actions as hysteria, Moral outrage might be more accurate. A good portion of the younger populace did oppose the war, and not few of the older generations all very true. They however did not deliberately travel to, and meet directly with the Enemy, and give tangible aid to their efforts at the expense of those imprisoned at Hanoi. Nor did they produce audio recordings in their own voice urging U.S. troops to turn on their leadership. This alone sets her apart from your cited Millions who protested the war on U.S. soil. Had Hanoi Jane done only as those others had done, there would be no Hue and Cry for her to be prosecuted, or added to the rolls of the traitorous of U.S. History. Her deliberate, and chosen actions have brought about the consequences she has since experienced. She is a pitiable creature, best left in history’s dumping cupboard. (And the occasional late night talk show, or home shopping segment )
We will I guess, have to remain in disagreement concerning Ms. Hanoi.
I’m skeptical that the Vietcong were more brutal than the South Vietnamese. Didn’t South Vietnamese forces routinely commit atrocities. As far as punishment for atrocities go, I’d be curious to know how many Americans were punished for committing atrocities. People bring Calley up, was there anyone else?
I also think people might be better served to direct their anger at politicians who got the U.S. involved in the Vietnam in the first place…like Johnson and Nixon and perhaps the people who voted for them. Fonda and other anti-war protesters were not the ones responsible for sending troops there.
True, they did not send them, but that does not relieve them from responsibility or accountability for their individual actions under Federal, State, and local law. Neither does it from our Cultural traditions concerning Rats, or Traitors.
You need to get a couple things straight.
Viet Cong WERE South Vietnamese.
They were the National Liberation Front who initially wanted independence from French Colonialism and others.
They waged brutal warfare, much based on terrorist tactics against the rural population which exploited them for resources and draftees.
The Governmment of the South we recognize fielded ARVNs-Army of the Republic of South Vietnam.
The NVA were North Vietnamese Army who actually were invaders and their intent was to consolidate the country under Communism.
The NVA and VC used atrocities and terrorism to a great extent.
The ARVNs are not innocent.
The VC and NVA used these tactics as everyday business.
This separates them from random isolated and rare incidents bu American troops.
There were certainly GIs prosecuted for crimes. My Lai simply stood out as a media event and was not representative of our actions my a long shot.
We never declared war on the North as the basis for our involvement was to eqip and train the South to take over the fight on their own. They failed and our mishandling of the process resulted in weak politicians forcing our withdrawal.
A bad day for all.
We drug our feet and the ARVNs never stepped up.
All this was based on the “Red Tide and Domino Theories” prevalent in the 50s and early 60s.
It was felt that Commies were growing to big worldwide and a stand had to be taken to counter their expansion.
It is kind or amusing that the North claimed none of their troops were ever in the South the whole time.
I personally saw a lot of evidence contrary to that claim.
Not defending Jane Fonda, but recently she stated yet again that she deeply regretted mounting the AAA gun and said the picture in no way conveyed her sentiments and she never wished anyone shot down. As much as what she did annoys me, it’s hard for me to get angry with enormous bastards like Kissinger sending troops to die in a war they knew they no longer could win with the waning budgets…
There were brutalities committed by all sides. But I think historians tend to agree that the NLF/PAVN (NVA) tended to be far more ruthless overall. The VC carried out large scale massacres during the Tet Offensive and used terrorist bombings against the civilian population. The NVA also liked to indiscriminately fire ordnance into civilian areas solely to terrorize or test morale of the civilian populace. The South Vietnamese forces varied widely, from the often incompetent and corrupt to units that were as good or better than anything we fielded. It should be noted that there were separate and distinct force structures which changed dramatically after Gen. Westmorland handed command over to Gen. Creighton Abrams, greater emphasis was placed on the reserve or militia components such as the “Regional Forces,” sort of a mobile reserve, and the Popular Forces, as local self-defense militia akin to an anti-Viet Cong/NLF.
I’m curious if people have any thoughts on the reported Tiger Force atrocities…they sound pretty bad
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/us/report-on-brutal-vietnam-campaign-stirs-memories.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
http://www.toledoblade.com/assets/tigerforce/BigMap.pdf
http://boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/10/20/vietnam_atrocities_revealed_in_report_boston_globe/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Force
All crimes, war or otherwise, should be dealt with.
Very few are.
That’s life.
As for your links and question about them, this raises the interesting question to which I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer:
Why is it that there is considerable and justifiable criticism of proved and alleged war crimes by Americans in Vietnam in the Western press and from other commentators such as academics and the usual rent-a-crowd of leftist anti-everything-that’s-not-them professional protesters and whingers, but never a word from those morally superior and indignant quarters about the proved and alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Viet Cong and NVA?
If it was alright for the VC to go regularly into villages to terrorise the inhabitants by all sorts of vile conduct, commonly involving huge and protracted violence no different on a small scale from the Rape of Nanking, against the citizens of South Vietnam to the extent that this still doesn’t excite the moral outrage of the press and usual rent-a-crowd etc, then why are Americans judged on a different standard?
After all, if a villager’s life taken by the VC in profoundly brutal circumstances to encourage support for the VC isn’t worthy of moral outrage and condemnation of the offender, why should a different standard be applied to the Americans responding to a village of perceived VC supporters? If peasants tortured and killed by the VC aren’t important enough to warrant moral outrage in the West, what makes them important enough to warrant moral outrage in the West just because they were tortured or killed by Americans?
The problem here is not in selectively ignoring the nature of the crime but in choosing to ignore one set of offenders while choosing, on no rational basis, to get wound up about another set of offenders involved in the same sort of crimes but based purely upon their nationality.
What gives the North Vietnamese NVA and South Vietnamese VC a ‘get out of jail free’ card but denies that to the Americans?
How many civil aid programs, from improving water supply, sanitation, health and education were run by the VC compared with those run by the Americans?
What motivated the VC to target and disrupt or destroy such programs by the Americans which were of benefit to the local people to whose advancement, such as by improved health etc, the VC were supposedly devoted?
Any serious examination of conduct and moral equivalence will, in my view, demonstrate that the VC, and NVA via its ruthless leadership in Hanoi in pursuing the invasion of what amounted to another country in pursuit of its politically doctrinaire aims, routinely engaged in a policy driven campaign of war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of its general strategy, while the Americans engaged occasionally in roughly equivalent conduct as an aberration from American policy.
But I’d still like to see evidence of American troops sneaking into a village at night and rounding up all the villagers to witness the head man or his son being tortured and disemboweled in front of the assembled villagers to demonstrate the fate of all them if they supported the VC and, on pain of death if not paid, levying a tax on all the villagers to support the American military effort.
And the fact that Jane Fonda wasn’t aware of, or chose to ignore, these aspects before publicly supporting the NV regime and therefore the NVA and VC shows just how dumb and uninformed she was, like so many other celebrities whose dumb and uninformed opinions have excessive influence on the unformed minds of morons who think that being a celebrity (e.g. fat Kardashian sheilas, anorexic English sheila married to Beckham soccer bloke) makes celebrities’ opinions more important or accurate than the shambling drunk at the bus stop.