Why punish Lindh--but not Fonda?

A small item in a newspaper caught my attention a few weeks back. It reported that the father of the man who became known as "the American Taliban" asked President Bush to grant clemency to his son. The request got Frank Lindh nowhere, and his son remains in prison.

Many Americans have forgotten John Walker Lindh's name. Many more never even heard of him. Here's a reminder. Several months after the September 2001 terrorist attack on our nation, with American forces already engaged in toppling Afghanistan's Taliban government, a 20-year-old American from Marin County, California, was found in Afghanistan among an assortment of dead and wounded Taliban fighters in a prison where U.S. forces were holding captives. A recent convert to Islam, he had journeyed to Afghanistan only six months earlier to study the Koran and soon found himself pressed into the military forces of his newly found friends and co-religionists. Asked to choose between being trained as a terrorist or fighting against Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, he opted for the latter and was captured after U.S. forces had joined with the Northern Alliance to topple Afghanistan's government. He participated only in action against the Northern Alliance, never knowingly against U.S. troops and then only if American advisers happened to be among his enemy.

Brought to the United States and charged with conspiring to kill Americans and supporting terrorists, he avoided a life sentence by pleading guilty to lesser charges and is currently serving 20 years in a federal prison. It can be said of him that he personally targeted no American; had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack; refused terrorist training; and never allowed himself to be used to denounce the country of his birth. His crime was being part of the government that was then ruling Afghanistan. That regime's crime was shielding bin Laden who was hardly known by most Americans until after the devastation at New York's World Trade Towers and elsewhere.

I'm no fan of John Walker Lindh. I continue to find it amazing that any American would follow the path he took. But if he earned punishment, how about another individual who committed far worse crimes in 1972, was never charged, and manages still to remain a revered figure--Jane Fonda?

Think back to the days when the Vietnam War was still raging. By 1972, tens of thousands of Americans had already been killed; many thousands more had been wounded; hundreds of captured Americans were rotting in North Vietnam's prisons; and our nation was being torn apart by an increasingly unpopular war.

It was at this point that actress Jane Fonda performed on stage for the enemy. In an incredibly treacherous performance, she showed up in the capital city of North Vietnam and pranced around Hanoi with her communist hosts. She broadcast appeals urging our men to quit fighting. She demonstrated her solidarity with the anti-aircraft gunners who had been successfully downing American planes. She even donned a North Vietnamese helmet and posed for pictures sitting at the controls of one of those anti-aircraft guns.

The communists with whom she expressed her solidarity then took her to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" where downed American flyers were being held, most of them in filthy three-by-five foot cells. She did her best to pry statements out of these men, some of whom had been captive for upwards of five years. It was, indeed, quite a performance, especially considering that the men who refused to cooperate with her requests were later given extra beatings.

Back home, Fonda faced calls that she be tried for a variety of crimes, but many leftists defended her. Years later, TV personality Barbara Walters gave her air time to issue a lame apology dubbed by many as merely a self-serving attempt to preserve her earning power.

Texan Sam Johnson remembered his seven years in the Hanoi Hilton and has never forgotten her message being broadcast over the prison's loudspeakers. Now in his 8th term as a U.S. congressman, he maintains that there is no way any apology can make up for what she did. Then-Congressman Robert Huber of Michigan called for her to be put on trial for "conspiracy" and "sedition." But nothing of note happened except her marriage to Ted Turner.

Walker's misdeeds don't compare with Fonda's. He picked up a rifle: she boosted the morale, and hence the fighting ability, of an entire enemy army. He joined a ragtag army fighting against its country's rebels; she donned the uniform of a well-armed enemy force that was in direct conflict with America, one that had killed tens of thousands of Americans.

He went quietly about his deeds; she broadcast hers to millions. He was an unknown young Californian; she was a world famous film star who knew full well that what she was doing would be publicized worldwide.

If John Walker Lindh earned punishment for his very minor role as a member of the Taliban forces, why wasn't Jane Fonda prosecuted? When he was brought back to America, there were cries to "throw the book" at him. Where were the 10 books that should have been thrown at Fonda?