Axis Sally - Ted Rall, Jane Fonda

Click here and here for my previous posts regarding Axis Sally, her World War II treasonous statements and her prosecution by the U.S. government. Those posts contain detailed information regarding Sally's conduct. They raise the question as to why today's traitors remain free and often on the government payroll even though Axis Sally was prosecuted for similar conduct.

I think the closest examples of conduct by modern traitors can be found in Ted Rall and Jane Fonda.

Here are the relevant actions of Axis Sally (according to World War Two Magazine):

On February 10, 1949, an American paratrooper from New York, 36-year-old Michael Evanick, told the jury he was captured on D-Day, June 6, 1944, after parachuting behind German lines in Normandy. Pointing his finger, he identified Gillars as the woman who interviewed him in a German prisoner-of-war camp near Paris on July 15, 1944.

"I'd been listening to her broadcasts through Africa, Sicily, and Italy, and I told her I recognized her voice," Evanick remembered. "She said, 'I guess you know me as Axis Sally,' and I told her we had a name for her." The witness said Gillars gave him a drink of cognac and a cigarette and told him to make himself comfortable in a chair. After a few drinks, he said, she sent for a microphone and began the interview, asking him if he did not feel good to be out of the fighting.

"No ma'am," Evanick said he replied. "I feel 100 percent better in the front lines where I get enough to eat." At that, he said, Gillars angrily knocked the microphone over, but regained her composure and offered him another drink.

On February 19, Eugene McCarthy, a 25-year-old ex-GI from Chicago, was called to answer a single question. Defense attorney Laughlin asked him if Gillars had posed as a Red Cross worker when she came to make recorded interviews with American POWs at Stalag 2-B in Germany. The soldier stated that she did not. Then in a dramatic outburst, shouting over the defense counsel's angry protest, the witness told the jury: "She threatened us as she left--that American citizen, that woman right there. She told us we were the most ungrateful Americans she had ever met and that we would regret this."

Sally was convicted for other offenses, but those offenses listed above involve verbal attacks on American soldiers or other direct attempts to demoralize captured American GI's. Those actions are strikingly similar to those of more recent traitors.

(1) Jane Fonda's activities in North Vietnam during the war are now notorious (even though some stories have since been vetted and proven false or exxagerated). Fonda's attacks on U.S. GI's (calling them liars, etc.) and public visits with North Vietnamese soldiers probably strengthened the North's resolve, lengthened the war and the GI's time in prison.
(2) Ted Rall is also notorious for his attack on Pat Tillman, the heroic former Arizona Cardinal who gave up his football career to fight in Afghanistan (where he was killed). Rall also has has penned a faux ad for Iraqi terrorist recruits. The point is, Rall expressly attacks American GI's, especially those who are killed or are in harm's way. Rall has dispensed with the niceties of debate and openly sided with U.S. enemies. He has done this from within the U.S. as well as in Afghanistan. He has been rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Whether we prosecute him or resort to other measures, we have to realize that he is not part of the political debate. We should no more "debate" him than we would "debate" Osama bin Laden. Hosts like Sean Hannity should stop having him on their shows. Expose him, yes. Show the similarity between Rall and other Democrats, yes. Dignify him with debate, NO.

The point is, we are not helpless in the face of treason by modern cowards.