Photo Co-opt - Jesse Jackson's involvement with release of prisoners of war

National Review, May 31, 1999 by Mark Steny

Slobo meets the Rev. J.

A few years ago in London, when Fergie had taken to emulating her sister-in- law and dropping in on emergency wards, hospices, and general scenes of human tragedy, I suggested that the British might like to start carrying an equivalent of the organ-donor card: "In the event that I am seriously injured in a car accident, terrorist bombing, etc., I do not wish to be visited by the Duchess of York." It may be time for a U.S. variation, perhaps printed on the back of a GI dog tag: "In the event that I am taken prisoner and used as a human shield by a ruthless tyrant, I do not wish to be rescued by the Rev. Jesse Jackson."

Let us stipulate that America's three POWs would have preferred to be somewhere other than Serbia. Let us stipulate, too, that the Pentagon was correct when it revealed that their doctors had determined the men had been "beaten," even though the victims themselves speak only of their excellent treatment. But anyone who remembers those downed RAF pilots forced by Saddam into going on Iraqi TV and denouncing Western imperialist aggression will be grateful that at least Slobo didn't degrade his captives by using them as propaganda tools and making them say things they would obviously have preferred not to say, just for the benefit of the cameras. Instead, he left that to Jesse. As they crossed the border into Croatia, the POWs were cajoled by the Rev. Jackson into linking hands and joining him in shouting, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!" Never mind that previous generations of fighting men would have considered the entire scene . . . unsoldierly. Left to their own devices, the POWs might have broken into Celine's big theme from Titanic, or the Hokey-Pokey, or selections from Brigadoon. But the unlikely cover version of Martin Luther King's famous speech couldn't have made it clearer: Jesse's the star and the boys merely the supporting chorus- anonymous Blowfish to his Hootie.

Isn't it a little, well, trivializing to appropriate the words Dr. King used to shake off the shackles of an entire race for the release of three men who, by their own account, were being treated very well and in reasonable compliance with the Geneva Convention? No matter. Somehow, whatever the nominal subject, by the time Jesse Jackson's through with it, it's been re-ordered to fit his priorities. On ABC, he revealed that early in their talks Slobo had proposed freeing the oldest soldier on the grounds that he had a wife and child. The Reverend pointed out that this was not a good idea: The man in question, Staff Sgt. Christopher Stone, was white while the other two were Hispanic, and releasing only the white guy would "send a very ugly signal." Slobo mulled this over and saw reason: He's slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Albanians, but he wouldn't want folks to start thinking he's as racist as some of those junior execs at Texaco. Start releasing the white ones before the brown ones and next thing you know you'll be looking at a class- action lawsuit and paying Jesse a couple hundred million to make it go away.

If only for that reason, we should take a relaxed view of the preacherman's overseas forays: The more time he spends hanging out with foreign thugs, the less time America's number-one shakedown artist has to make trouble for hapless domestic corporations. Indeed, one's principal regret is that the Rev. Jackson seems reluctant to pursue abroad the strategies he favors at home, since if there's anyone who could use a really good mandatory sensitivity-training and diversity program it's Slobodan Milosevic. Instead, the man who puts the PR in prayer just does his usual Lite Rap of moral equivalency: "Big problems need big leaders . . . Talk it out, don't fight it out . . . They demonize Clinton, we demonize Milosevic . . . We're bombing their bridges, but there's no diplomatic bridge . . . We're firing missiles when we should be firing Texaco management.

.."(Okay, I made up that last one.)

Still, Republicans are lapping it up. Increasingly, this war is like a bad repertory production where the cast have all been given the wrong roles. On 97.1 KXPT-FM, Nevada representative Shelley Berkley compared the Jackson trip to Belgrade to Jane Fonda's to Hanoi. As Ms. Berkley is a Democrat, one assumed initially that this was high praise. But not so. She was outraged at Jackson for "negotiating with the enemy." Her fellow Democrat, Illinois representative Jesse Jackson Jr., declined to take this comparison lying down. "Drawing a parallel between Jackson and Fonda," he said, is "reckless, offensive, and ill informed." He's right: There's a world of difference between misplaced idealism and misplaced narcissistic opportunism. And, if one must choose, Miss Fonda's unforgiving post-Vietnam assault on returning POWs as "military careerists and professional killers" seems a healthier characterization than the Reverend's sentimental reduction of them to helpless innocents caught up in an ancient conflict they can't possibly comprehend.