The Meaning of "Honor"

        Honesty trumps convenience when Viet POWs defend Jane Fonda

The search for strong and decent leadership in America today suggests the need for a closer examination of what each of us can do to restore the respect for "Honor" in our national culture. Many today would single out Honor as the value most likely to make a difference in our national leadership. Many also are determined to forestall a repeat of our American leadership's recent past, particularly at the dawn of the 21st century with the world more divided than anyone alive today can remember.

Yet, What does Honor mean? Assuming that nearly everyone, including today's most brutal despots, likely considers himself or herself as a symbol of Honor, upholding meritorious principles, what constitutes real Honor and how can it be recognized?

The notable historian Lewis Mumford wrote that "Man's chief purpose is the creation and preservation of values: that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life." But that was in 1940. Today there seems to be less discussion yet more disagreement about values such as Honor.

Virtually everyone, however, will agree what Honor is not. It is not making bold-faced lies in the interest of pragmatism and utility. Since that is the case, then it might logically follow that the core value that establishes the basis for Honor is honesty. According to Webster's, the word itself means "good name or public esteem" and is a Middle English word, dating it to the 13th century. It is derived from the Old French that in turn comes from the Latin "honos" or "Honor." Another definition refers to "reputation" or "recognition" and means "a showing of usually merited respect, as in "pay Honor to our founder." Synonyms include not only honesty and probity, but integrity as well as homage and reverence.

An e-mail hoax currently making the rounds through the Internet might serve to make the point. The message has already been distributed to an unknown, but certainly enormous, number of computer users throughout the English-speaking world. Dubbed "Less We Forget," the message was purportedly originated by former American fighter pilots. It expresses outrage at the recent decision by editors at Ladies Home Journal to include Jane Fonda as one of the "100 Most Important Women of the Century." Fonda, of course, has already been castigated by Vietnam vets as "Hanoi Jane" for her 1972 Hanoi trip in which she called American POWs "war criminals." Her statements at that time were broadcast in a series of propaganda announcements by Hanoi Radio into the "Hanoi
Hilton," the prison compound holding the POWs, and throughout North Vietnam.

Fonda's broadcasts included this one: "This is Jane Fonda speaking in Hanoi, and I'm speaking privately to U.S. servicemen the use of these bombs, or the condoning of the use of these bombs, makes one a war criminal and in the past, in Germany and Japan, men who were guilty of these kinds of crimes were tried and executed Should we examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit?"

John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, was a prisoner of war in May 1972 when his captors informed him that a delegation of American war protesters was in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese ordered McCain to have
his picture taken with the group and make statements condemning the war.

When he refused, he paid a terrible price. Both his arms were broken and he was confined to a six-by-three-foot box for five months. McCain, brushing off the torture brought on by his refusal to cooperate as just part of a constant regimen, has refused to isolate Fonda as a member of that delegation. Other POWs have specifically identified her as being responsible for their beatings.

Regardless of what the sentiment might be regarding the bestowing of Honors on such an unlikely hero, this particular e-mail is spreading what turns out to be a nasty lie.

The e-mail claims that Fonda directly caused the death of three POWs by turning over slips of paper containing their social security numbers to the North Vietnamese officer in charge. The e-mail claims that the men, in order to escape torture, agreed to meet with Fonda. They saw that as a chance to get word out to their families that they were still alive. That much is true. A number of other American prisoners were tortured into meeting with her.

The originator of the e-mail message, however, claims she took the slips and turned them over to the enemy commander, who then had the men beaten to death.

The charge - if true - would have put a much higher level of guilt on Ms. Fonda's already outrageous conduct in Hanoi. Paul Galanti, webmaster of the "Nam-POWs" website, the national Vietnam POW fraternity, is determined to set the record straight about the woman who is one of his least favorite people in the world. Galanti retired from the Navy as a Commander. He was a fighter pilot and POW at the infamous Hanoi prison impoundment from 1966 to the mass release of U.S. prisoners in 1973.

"The message being bandied about the internet regarding Fonda's direct responsibility for deaths of POWs is a total lie and I would like to make that clear," Galanti stressed.

"We checked each of the allegations with the POWs mentioned in the e-mail and none - repeat none - of it is true. What she did in Hanoi was bad enough. There's no need to embellish it," the former pilot said. Galanti was imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton for seven years and shared much of that experience with Mike McGrath, President of the NAM-POWs. In fact, the two men were classmates at the U.S. Naval Academy, trained
together flying the A-4, were stationed together, and were both shot down in June, one year apart.

McGrath just retired from United Airlines where he had flown as an airline pilot after leaving the Navy as a Captain. He was a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton from June 30, 1967 to March 4, 1973 and left two sons, 2 and 3, behind. They are 34 and 35 now. He is quick to defend Ms. Fonda against the false charges and says with regret that "some things about the POWs get exaggerated and in this case, we are trying to put down the exaggeration. We don't want to have any part in stretching the truth. We believe in just telling the truth. In this case, that should be enough."

While false propaganda is a sad commentary on the use of the Internet, the episode highlights what might be considered poor judgement on the part of Ladies Home Journal. Oh, the magazine is not responsible for the
lie. No, of course not. But it must admit to re-opening the old but still raw wounds of war when it picked one of the most divisive women in U.S. history as a role model.

In spite of the rancor brought on by Ms. Fonda's behavior 27 years ago, there is no hatred coming from the leaders of the POW group.

The vast majority of those still surviving among the nearly 800 prisoners have put the past behind them and gone on with their lives. Galanti, for instance, is a good example of the way many of the POWs continued the fortitude they had so valiantly demonstrated as prisoners of war to recapture the American dream when they returned.  Following
his rehab period at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, VA, Galanti was assigned to the Navy Recruiting District in Richmond as Exec Officer. He studied nights and earned his master's degree in business from the University of Richmond in 1976. Today, he is a successful businessman, leading the marketing effort for a web developer and developing a real estate venture for "Over 55's" near Richmond.

The action of the leaders of the Vietnam POW Association in the Fonda e-mail slur serves as a fine working example of the difference between Honor and deception. Defending someone with whom they may have had grounds to condemn doesn't make Galanti and McGrath heroes, but if the Honorable thing is synonymous with the right thing, that's enough. It isn't a question of heroism.

In his farewell speech at West Point in 1962, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur repeats with magical oratorical effect the now famous phrase he coined, "Duty-Honor-Country," telling the cadets, "Those three
hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be." General MacArthur painted a heartfelt explanation for the significance of those words: "The code which those words perpetuate
embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong."

To those who would ridicule MacArthur's words, Galanti and McGrath might explain how important those ideals were to most of the POWs. Those principles sustained their spirits and gave them focus in spite of years of isolation, deprivation and torture. Their story is aptly told in a movie, which includes original North Vietnamese archival film footage that opened in various public venues around the country recently. "Return With Honor," the story of the American pilots shot down over North Vietnam and held in the prison complex, was written and co-directed by two Academy Award and Emmy winners from Hollywood, Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders.

Many of the men, including Senator McCain, ultimately consented, under brutal and relentless torture, to confess to being war criminals. Nevertheless, the false confessions did not violate their ultimate code. McCain and his cohorts had done their very best to maintain their commitment to Duty, Honor, Country.

The Code kept them going; the commitment to one another that in spite of the torture of the North Vietnamese "rope trick" which dislocated their shoulders and tore their ligaments apart, they would not accept an offer to leave out of turn  -- first the most critical, then the longest held. The key word in their story is "Honor." To this day, the film makes clear, the POWs who stayed do not speak with those who accepted an offer to go home early while their fellow prisoners were left behind.

Mock was impressed. "These are men who believed in their country, who believed in their leaders, who signed up and have stuck to it. In this day and age, there is interest in those attitudes."

At a time when values are being distorted to shape a plethora of different political messages, and young people are reacting in deadly and puzzling ways to vent their anger and redress their loss, it is odd that opinion-makers and mentors in schools and communities and leaders at the national and local level are failing to bolster the age-old
principle that can bind a people together.

Michael J. Stedman is President of BINS, Inc., Business Intelligence Network Systems, networking people and mining data, at 781-239-9845 or cointell@mediaone.net.