Relishing Defeat

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com

For all the twists and turns of the conflict in Iraq, it’s comforting to reflect that one thing hasn’t changed: The antiwar “movement” -- that motley aggregation of Hollywood glitterati, bullhorn radicals and leftist Democrats -- remains as irresponsible and unserious as ever.

As evidence, consider this weekend’s much-hyped antiwar protest in the nation’s capital. Coming on the heels of last Wednesday’s nonbinding anti-surge resolution, a cynical stunt engineered by the Democrat-dominated Senate Foreign Relations Committee to oppose the 21,500 troop increase in Iraq, the protest was a transparent attempt by a political fringe to capitalize on popular discontent over the war’s conduct.

To wit: The star of the demonstration was none other than Jane Fonda. As she told it, the 69-year-old actress had come out of protest retirement -- this was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years, Fonda solemnly explained -- in order to break her silence about, well, the need to break her silence. “Silence is no longer an option,” Fonda announced, thus dealing a certain blow to public discourse. Fonda also delivered a historical lecture. Likening Iraq to the war in Vietnam, Fonda condemned what she called America’s “blindness to realities on the ground.”

This is richly ironic. It was Fonda after all who distinguished herself in the Vietnam War by glad-handing communists in Hanoi and making propaganda broadcasts for their cause, only to look on as the real destruction commenced once South Vietnam fell to her former hosts.
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