Has the anti-war movement jumped the shark?

Resurrecting Jane Fonda might mark that moment

Jane made a name for herself aiding and abetting the North Vietnamese war effort. The pictures of her posing with North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns and related activities earned her the sobriquet "Hanoi Jane". Here's Snopes on Hanoi Jane:

The most prominent example of a clash between private citizen protest and governmental military policy in recent history occurred in July 1972, when actress Jane Fonda arrived in Hanoi, North Vietnam, and began a two-week tour of the country conducted by uniformed military hosts. Aside from visiting villages, hospitals, schools, and factories, Fonda also posed for pictures in which she was shown applauding North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunners, was photographed peering into the sights of an NVA anti-aircraft artillery launcher, and made ten propagandistic Tokyo Rose-like radio broadcasts in which she denounced American political and military leaders as "war criminals." She also spoke with eight American POWs at a carefully arranged "press conference," POWs who had been tortured by their North Vietnamese captors to force them to meet with Fonda, deny they had been tortured, and decry the American war effort. Fonda apparently didn't notice (or care) that the POWs were delivering their lines under duress or find it unusual the she was not allowed to visit the prisoner-of-war camp (commonly known as the "Hanoi Hilton") itself. She merely went home and told the world that "[the POWs] assured me they were in good health. When I asked them if they were brainwashed, they all laughed. Without exception, they expressed shame at what they had done." She did, however, charge that North Vietnamese POWs were systematically tortured in American prison-of-war camps.

To add insult to injury, when American POWs finally began to return home (some of them having been held captive for up to nine years) 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."

We should all remember, though the Left would rather we forgot, that America's retreat from S.E. Asia directly led to:

• The death or "re-education" of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.
• A massive outflow of Vietnamese fleeing Communist oppression (the boat-people), many of whom perished at sea.
• The rise of Pol Pot and the mass murder of at least 1.5 milion Cambodians.

The indirect impact sees us in our current predicament. Our enemies saw that the US really was a "paper tiger". What did they do?

• The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and we know how that worked out.
• The Iranian revolutionaries ousted the Shah and occupied our sovereign embassy, the first of many unanswered acts of war by Iran against the US.

The first event led to the radical Sunni war on the US. With covert US assistance, a coalition of Afghanis and foreign Jihadists defeated a super-power and became convinced they could defeat the sole remaining super-power. They began a series of unanswered terrorist attacks against US interests, culminating in 9/11.

The second event led to the rise of Iran's rulers as the primary sponsor of Islamic terrorism and an imminent nuclear threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the world's oil supply.

Good work, Ms. Fonda and your loathsome ilk.

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