Prerequisite background before I comment on Ray Dorbolo’s letter regarding Jane Fonda (“How do we define the word traitor?, April 14): I joined the Navy in the early 1960s when I was 17. Most of my four years active duty was spent on a troop transport ship in the Pacific.
I didn’t protest America’s incremental involvement in Vietnam when I got out. That would have taken more understanding and imagination than I had .
Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one. The involvement became a country’s silently complicit sleepwalk into a war that became an embarrassment.
Lyndon Johnson told us to stay the course. Richard Nixon did and went on a bombing and killing spree. They lied. The most you can say about them is that they were not as bad as the Bible-preaching, witch-hunting elected officials in charge now.
Fifty-eight-thousand Americans died in Vietnam. Between 2 million and 3 million Vietnamese died on the other side. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than on all of Europe in World War II. This because of an attack on an American ship in waters off that country’s shores – that did not happen.
But facts or reality is not the point. Being a traitor has to do with identity, to turn against your own. An implicit argument of “vets” betrayal by the anti-war movement : If “we” had just killed more, finished the job, we could feel good about ourselves. How many more? A million? All ? Whatever it takes.
It was only recently on “60 Minutes” that I saw the actual footage of Jane Fonda in Hanoi. I had only read about the event before.
This young woman was pleading with “us” (America) to stop bombing and killing these people she obviously included as part of her identity. Flaky? I sure hope so because: Pray tell, what is the definition of a human?
Wayne C. Evans
Bothell
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