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Miss "Out of Touch" Fonda

"I would think that if you understood what Communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communists."

              -- Jane Fonda, Michigan State University, 1970

     This statement is really ridiculous when you consider that Communism suppressed religion but you have to consider the source. Hanoi Jane. Out of touch Hanoi Jane.

     For those of you who might be too young to remember, during the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda journeyed to Hanoi. She met with senior Communist civilian and military officials, held press conferences, toured sites of alleged bombing, "interviewed" American prisoners of war and, most important, made a series of propaganda broadcasts (tapes of which were incessantly played to our POWs).

     "Come on, cobra74, can't you let this Hanoi Jane stuff go? It's ancient history." some of you might ask.

      Nope.

      When American POWs finally began to return home from Vietnam and describe the tortures they had endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Jane Fonda quickly told the country that they should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are hypocrites and liars." Fonda said the idea that the POWs she had met in Vietnam had been tortured was "laughable," claiming: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." The POWs who said they had been tortured were "exaggerating, probably for their own self-interest," she asserted. She told audiences that "Never in the history of the United States have POWs come home looking like football players. These football players are no more heroes than Custer was. They're military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to law."

     How can anyone be so out of touch? There were many things during the Vietnam war that were not right but to slap our heroes in the face is treason, IMHO.

     As for her "apology" for her actions in North Vietnam, it was out of touch also. Here's what we got from her:

     “The image of Jane Fonda, ‘Barbarella,’ Henry Fonda’s daughter ... sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal ... the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine.”

     Lapse of judgment? Going to one of your movies is a lapse of judgment. What you did, Jane, is treason. Pure and simple. Betrayal? That, Miss Fonda, is an understatement.

     Miss Fonda also said that she was "stupid" and "naïve." Not wrong. Not wrong for assisting the Communists' propaganda campaign. Not wrong for acting in a manner inimical to the interests of her country. Just "stupid" and "naïve" - like buying a lemon used car, perhaps.

     Now, because of a wishy, washy "apology" I'm supposed to forget you gave comfort and aid to our enemy in a time when Americans were dying and galvanized a large part of the country to not support our actions in Vietnam? That, Miss Fonda, is what comes out the south end of a north bound bull.

     And it continues. On September 20th, 2001 Fonda told an Atlanta radio station that Americans should “try to understand the underlying causes” of the terrorist attacks which, in her view, must “be dealt with as a crime. And when there’s a crime, you don’t bomb a city or a country — you use very, very clever intelligence, undercover-type operations to get the criminals and punish them. . . .” It would be a mistake, she opined, for America to retaliate militarily.

      Put aside that Miss Fonda characterized American response as “saber rattling” and “calls for vengeance.” Put aside her implication that the “underlying causes” of the attacks were poverty and hunger rather than hatred for Western values and culture. Put aside that Miss Fonda knows nothing about intelligence operations. What Miss Fonda is saying is that the terrorists are not soldiers to be attacked militarily, but mere criminals.

      President Bush has consistently characterized the terrorism as an act of war against the United States. By any customary definition of “war,” he is correct. War is armed military combat, regardless of whether the combatants have issued an official declaration. Let Fonda tell the dead, the missing, the wounded veterans from Korea, that they were not at war with the North Koreans and Chinese Communists. Let her tell the mourners at the Vietnam Memorial Wall that their loved ones were not at war with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. And let her tell the dead beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center that they were not killed in a radical Islamic “holy war.”

      Does this statement Jane Fonda made while in Vietnam sound familiar? "I want to publicly accuse Nixon of being a new-type Hitler whose crimes are being unveiled. I want to publicly charge that while waging the war of aggression in Vietnam he has betrayed everything the American people have at heart."

     It should. A high school teacher caught by a student on audiotape in an anti-U.S. and anti-capitalism diatribe was placed on administrative leave after the recording was made public. 

     In the August 29, 2005 tape, Jay Bennish – teaching a 10th grade world geography class at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo. – told students he found "eerie similarities" to Bush's statements in his State of the Union speech and things Adolf Hitler said, i.e., "We're the only ones who are right. Everyone else is backwards. And it's our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to."

"Now, I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same," Bennish said. "Obviously, they are not. OK. But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use. Very, very ethnocentric. We're right. You're all wrong."

     Out of touch. Thanks, Miss Fonda. Even today your visit to Vietnam is dividing this nation.

     Traitor.

Thanks for spending part of your day reading about mine.

Tim "cobra74" Kenney