Sunday, July 31, 2005

"Hanoi Jane" joins anti-Iraq effort... bad news for protesters!

Once upon a time, Jane Fonda was HOT! I won't deny it. We didn't watch "Barbarella" because of the storyline. We watched it because we got to see her writhe around naked during the opening credits and enjoy the pleasures of "old fashioned sex".

Unfortunately, she ruined it by getting involved with politics. She went to Vietnam and publicly supported the communists... where she earned the title "Hanoi Jane".

My father never went to Vietnam, but as I've mentioned on previous occasions, he's seen his share of combat when JFK was in office. He firmly believes that Jane Fonda should have been arrested and charged with treason the minute she came back from Vietnam. And I happen to agree with him on it. It's one thing to oppose and protest the Vietnam War here in America. That's your constitutional right. It's another thing entirely to fly over to the enemy and engage in active propaganda against your own government's activity.

But Fonda managed to skip the treason charge... possibly because of her Hollywood fame, possibly because of her Washington friends, or possibly because Tricky Dick Nixon had to get caught up in his own FUBAR games. For whatever reason, she managed to duck the treason charge, and her wealth allowed her to avoid the wrath of military veterans who have been calling for her head on a pole.

Just this past year, Fonda gave a "non-apology" for her "Hanoi Jane" days. It was her way to supposedly put that controversy aside. Uh, sorry to break it to you, Ms. Fonda, but here's a news flash: it didn't work.

Well now Fonda is announcing that she's siding with the people protesting against the Iraq war. And that's really bad news for the anti-war protesters.

It's one thing to have Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins and that crowd protesting the Iraq War... it's another to be joined in by someone who basically should have been charged with and convicted of treason. That's like getting an endorsement from Bennedict Arnold and being PROUD to accept it. That's not good for your cause.

And to be honest, I really don't know why people are still screaming about the Iraq War being "unjust" when it's basically ending! Look, the issue over whether the war was or wasn't "just" basically ended when Saddam Hussein was captured. It's a MOOT POINT! It happened!

Yes we still have troops there and yes they are still in harms way. And we will still need to have a presence there for quite a while. We broke it, we bought it, and now we have to fix it. And we CANNOT simply pack up and leave. Period. Even if you objected to the Iraq War in the first place, you should agree that justice demands that we do everything possible to get the Iraqi people back on their feet before we leave. If we don't then we run the risk of turning that place into another Iran... or, worse yet, another Taliban-style Afghanistan.

My position on this issue has always been that this war was INEVITABLE. It was going to happen anyway. Saddam Hussein was simply too much of a bastard in that part of the world to NOT let him go unchallenged. If he kept his big mouth SHUT after 9/11 like other world leaders did and didn't publicly gloat about giving huge sums of money to terrorist groups, he wouldn't have caught the attention of the Bush Imperium. We would have focused all of our attention at finding Osama bin PigBastard. But no, Saddam had to be a prick. He had to go looking for a fight, hoping that the Imperium would simply ignore him. He must have thougth that he was still dealing with Bush Senior.

Sure, I wish it would have happened after we found Osama and stuck his head on a pole overlooking the White House rose garden. We made two colossal mistakes in the past. We let Saddam stay in power in 1991, and then Bubba Clinton pulled a "Tricky Dick" trick in 1998 and declared that conflict "over" after dropping a few bombs. Bubba didn't have the stomach to do what needed to be done at the time. The Imperium obviously did.

Oh, and sorry "Hanoi Jane", but it's best if you stuck to doing the only thing that you're good at doing... making movies.

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