Monday, July 25, 2005

“No Fool Like An Old Fool”
The Jane Fonda Flashback Bus Tour



So, Jane Fonda has decided to join the Rolling Stones and go on tour in a reprise of her 1960s performances as America's most shameful war protester.

"I can't go into any detail except to say that it's going to be pretty exciting," she said.
I dunno... I bet that sitting at the controls of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun battery that had shot down American pilots was pretty thrilling to Hanoi Jane, certainly more thrilling than riding a Crisco-burning bus. Unless, of course, she manages to grab the original "Partridge Family" schoolbus and Shirley Jones is driving. Now, that would be groovy.

"I have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam," she said. "I carry a lot of baggage from that."
How much baggage do you think American POWs who were being actively tortured in Hanoi prison camps carry, Jane? Especially when the accompanying soundtrack was you proselytizing about how good and peaceful the peaceloving North Vietnamese were, and how released POWs lied when they reported they were tortured.

Some anti-war protesters got it. Leonard Magruder, a former sociology professor at Suffolk College and founder of "Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform" notes how shamed and embarrassed many anti-war protesters felt upon realizing how wrong they had been. He quotes Gerald Posner, writing in FrontPage magazine, who realized that he had been duped by protest leaders:

“The enthusiasm [todays] protests kindled in some seemed strange, for all they did for me was bring back shameful memories of my own political naivete thirty years ago.

“As a political science major I thought I had all the answers. The North Vietnamese were merely freedom fighters trying to liberate their country from the shackles of imperialism. The U.S. war was unjust and being waged against innocents.

“Three decades later I have no pride in the memory of those protests. Rather I wonder how it was possible to be so mistaken about real politics and world events. The so-called peace movement had completely deluded itself, conveniently ignoring any evidence that countered its agenda. How was it not possible to have seen that the North was a convenient tool for the Soviet to bleed the US and that it represented one of the most repressive old-line communist dictatorships since Stalin?”
Earth to Hanoi Jane: You were wrong in the 1960s. Your actions, and those of your Soviet-supported leftist fellow travelers (yes, the anti-war movement was encouraged and partially funded by Soviet moles), resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians after the US pulled out of Vietnam and Teddy Kennedy and the Democrats effectively negated our obligations under the 1972 Paris Peace Accords, leaving the South Vietnamese people hanging out to dry. You were wrong then, and you're wrong now.

Haven't you learned anything in the past 40 years?

Note: For those of you who would like to know more about Vietnam and why America failed to accomplish its goals, read this.

Also, Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber are covering the story.


Update: Our soldiers have reserved a seat for Jane (ht: InstaPundit).

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