Useful idiots. That is perhaps the most charitable thing to be said about Jane Fonda (aka Hanoi Jane) and many of the vicious, uninformed protesters seen last week in our capitol city of DC. Short are the memories of those who would permit someone as notorious as Jane to speak on behalf of their cause. Recall that this is the same Jane who, while American servicemen were suffering at the hands of the North Vietnamese, sat happily on an anti-aircraft cannon (the very same which had downed many of our flyers who were then imprisoned) with propaganda cameras a click’n. According to Robert J. Caldwell:
At her [Fonda's] request, she made at least 10 broadcasts on Radio Hanoi that included calling American pilots war criminals and urging them to stop bombing North Vietnam. In a propaganda gesture heavily publicized by Hanoi, she also met with a group of coerced American prisoners of war to demonstrate, as the North Vietnamese intended, that the POWs were receiving “humane” treatment.
In fact, as we know now, nearly all American POWs in North Vietnam were brutally tortured until 1969, when Hanoi’s policy changed to more selective mistreatment. One American POW was strung up from a ceiling by his broken arm until he agreed to listen to Fonda’s assertions that the prisoners were being well treated.
When the POWs returned from North Vietnam in 1973 and told of their torture, Jane Fonda declared, “the POWs are lying if they assert it was North Vietnamese policy to torture American prisoners.” For good measure, she also suggested that their recollections of torture were products of “racism” toward the Vietnamese.
Perhaps we should not be so hard on the old gal. She did of course apologize for getting caught on camera sitting pretty on the guns (not for the more treacherous acts.) She declared on “Sixty Minutes”
I will go to my grave regretting that … It was the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine.
Judgement is a funny thing. Moral judgement requires some objective “right” from which to separate good acts from bad. I would suggest that in Ms. Fonda, as with many others of her ilk, the moral compass has been damaged beyond repair. As has the memory of many of those that applauded Fonda last Saturday.
