If you don't like what I'm saying, don't read it.

I don't reads that in the sense mousethief took it, as trying to close down disagreement. I took it as meaning something more like, if you are going to get upset by reading something that disagrees with you, you don't have to read it. Which seems fair enough to me.

People being rude about Jane Fonda doesn't matter that much, unless some damaged soul or publicity hungry nutter takes encouragement from it to get a gun, and blow her away. Which of course isn't at all impossible,,or even particuarly unlikely.

But there is an injustice involved. Going to Hanoi at the height of the War-that-Wasn't-a-War was not a prudent thing to do, it might not even have been a wise thing to do, but I can't see any malice in it. (Prudent = this is going to harm me; wise = this is going to harm the cause that I support.) I can't see how it can be seen as "harassing returning combat veterans", or as anything but an attempt to bring the war's end closer.

Insofar as one intention would have been to get over the message to Vietnam's leaders that there were Americans who were against the war, there may even have been a hope that it might make it more possible for prisoners to be seen as human beings, and not as alien devils. And people who are living in fear of bombs do not find it easy to recognise that. When I was a child the Germans were dropping bombs on the city I was living in. But the bombing was never as heavy as it was in Vietnam.

The idea that the war could have been in any way extended by Jane Fonda's visit just doesn't stand up. The government in Hanoi weren't on the point of giving in, they intended to win, no matter how long it took. They'd been fighting for 30 years already. A visit by some American film star was light relief, made for good photo calls, but that was all.

And I can't imagine how it could have made the American government any more reluctant to admit the fact that they could never win, and cut a deal.

I hope none of our governments ever get involvead in an unjust war again. But if they do, I hope that people will not feel frightened to do whatever they feel is right to oppose it. That's why I feel very uneasy at an ongoing campaign over 30 years against an individual for doing that in difficult circumstances.