More than 40 years after the last American military helicopter left Vietnam, many veterans and patriots have a hard time forgiving the direct slaps in the face.
They don’t have it in their heart, for instance, to forgive actress Jane Fonda, who cavorted with the enemy North Vietnamese, called returning prisoners of war “hypocrites and liars” and, despite various apologies, says she has no regrets about much of what she did.
And they couldn’t ever warm up to Muhammad Ali, the three-time heavyweight boxing champion who died late Friday. Ali had refused to serve in Vietnam due to his Muslim religious convictions, was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from the sport for three years, and then won a Supreme Court reversal of his conviction for draft evasion.
Yet, even President Gerald Ford, who had been a staunch Vietnam War supporter, tossed out an olive branch to the war’s draft evader just days into his abbreviated presidency on the heels of the resigned Richard Nixon.
“Reconciliation,” he said, “calls for an act of mercy to bind the nation’s wound and to heal the scars of divisiveness.”