(Memo to the NSA: The views expressed below are strictly those of the author, not the website on which they're posted.)
Jane Fonda will never live down the worst junket ever. During her trip to North Vietnam 35 years ago, she frolicked around anti-aircraft guns. She used the North Vietnamese airwaves to beseech American pilots to consider the effects of their bombing. Worst of all, once home she branded returning POWs who described torture sessions "hypocrites and liars."
Despite apologies, fine screen performances and her string of exercise videos, to those on the hard right Jane Fonda will always be Hanoi Jane. That, of course, was an allusion to Tokyo Rose, the handle that Allied forces in the South Pacific slapped on anonymous English-speaking women who broadcast Japanese propaganda.
In fact, the hard right turned former pin-up girl Fonda into a poster girl for their caricature of liberalism. Considering how excruciating her exhibition was, even to those on the left, you could scarcely blame them.
In recent years, the hard right has also fired its share of broadsides at Hillary Clinton, George Soros and Nancy Pelosi. But Jane Fonda remains the figurehead that cuts the prow of their idea of a ship of fools.
However, despite those who thought Fonda had provided aid and comfort to the enemy, the Nixon Administration showed no interest in indicting her for treason. Maybe the president had a soft spot in his heart for her and, after Pat went to bed, retired to the East Room with a drink (or six) for a screening of "Barbarella."
An example of a true traitor was Mildred Gillars, an American who found work as an actress and an announcer with Radio Berlin before World War II. After the US entered the conflict, she stayed on and did the Third Reich's bidding.
Mildred identified herself as "Midge at the mike," but Allied soldiers called her Axis Sally. Mildred-Midge-Sally played American songs, attacked FDR, spewed anti-Semitism, and sought to plant doubts in soldiers' mind about the faithfulness of their sweethearts back home. Captured, she was tried and served 12 years in prison.
Today, Azzam the American (Adam Gadahn from California) alternately appeals to and threatens Americans on behalf of al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, those who view westerners working for Al Jazeera in the same light only reveal their ignorance of its professionalism and objectivity.
But there's still a nation that could sorely benefit from an American spokesman: Iran -- its government, that is, not its people. Their enemy-ness is as elusive as that of the citizens of any country we've fought in recent years.
Today, of course, we conduct hostilities against either governments or terrorists and, in Iraq, sectarian militias. The surest route for a government to attain enemy status in our eyes is to support said terrorists. Besides its support for Hezbollah during its bomb-throwing heyday, Iran cements its status as an enemy through its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Thus far, of course, Tehran has only sought nuclear power for peaceful ends. But it's hard to deny that it's got lust in its heart for nuclear weapons. At present, though, its efforts are akin to some guy browsing MySpace or Facebook in search of an under-aged girl to lure out of her cyber-lair.
While the American public ain't got no quarrel with them Persians, few of us voice our opposition to the administration's plans to attack them. Why don't we?
Possible explanations include:
1. The Iran hostage crisis is still an open wound on our national psyche. (Sort of like how Iran's never gotten over 1953 when the CIA helped depose Iran's elected president Mohammad Mossadegh and re-installed the shah.)
Hanoi Jane's error was attacking American soliders as criminals. I she had exposed the truth about the history of Vietnam and about supporters of the Vietnam War, she could have made a positive contribution.
Americans with international satellite dishes are able to watch Iran's Press TV with 24 hours per day news and programs in English. On my local cable television service, I can watch news in English from Communist China. Why do cable television services offer English languge programs from Press TV and from Al-Jazeera.
America's Fox News Channel is so terrible that it even uses as a foreign affairs analyst an Iranian supporter of the Iranian MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran) terrorists. He worked for the terrorists in the Washington, DC office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran before the Federal government closed the office.
For Americans who do not have an international satellite television dish, they can watch Press TV online at:
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