A Quote by Jane Fonda

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.
For a long time, it was believed that war was waged by armies which could not be identified with the nation itself. Professional soldiers took upon themselves the job of defending national interests, and it was understood that the war affected only them; the country itself went on living and working.
It is time to acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifice of all of our veterans. While many Massachusetts soldiers served our nation in a period technically dubbed 'peacetime,' they restored American pride in the wake of Vietnam and helped bring a successful end to the Cold War. The service of these men and women was not without cost. There are countless stories of soldiers who served with great distinction only to be denied veteran status after returning home. Every man and woman who volunteered to serve this country should be treated with the same degree of respect, gratitude and dignity.
What could I do but go with them Civil War soldiers, or work for them and my country? The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.
In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.
Logan was talking about the Civil War, which claimed the lives of more than 500,000 Americans. He wanted to provide Civil War veterans with a day to pay respects to their fellow soldiers who did not live to see the end of the war, without losing a day's pay.
I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.
I'm shooting a gangbanger, but as a dignified man. That's pretty much what war photography did: seeing images of soldiers in a dignified way. They might have been killers in Vietnam, but I'm seeing another side of them, and looking at images of the the American soldiers, also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong - I never saw an enemy.
When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat.
We have as a nation been duped by those who use our guilt about how we treated the innocent pawns in the Vietnam War game - the soldiers - into missing the point once again about the utter senselessness that is war.
History is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.
I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm...very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families.
When I was in Vietnam I learned a lot about the promises that soldiers make to each other. The Marines have a promise to never leave behind their dead. In this country, as citizen soldiers, we need to make the commitment to each other that we will never leave our veterans behind.
There can be no doubt about this. It even held true for the soldiers involved in the Kosovo War. For the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way, polar inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks.
Of course, you have politics, the Vietnam war and all that monkey business. There are all kinds of reasons. At every one of those demonstrations in the late Sixties about the Vietnam war, you could guarantee there'd be a series of speeches. The ostensible purpose was to protest the war. But then somebody came up and gave a black power speech, usually Black Muslims, then. And then you'd have a women's rights speech. It was terrible to listen to these things.
I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
So the whole of war, when you look at it is probably run by professional soldiers, and the rest of them are just recruits, or people who are just forced to join the army.
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