No Thanks, Joan Baez

Joan Baez smiles in 1967.

October 16-20, 1967: Stop the Draft Week organizers lead 3000 marchers to the Oakland Army Induction Center on October 16, 1967. The sitting protesters force draftees to climb over them in order to get inside the building. As inductees enter protesters hand them leaflets, ask them to change their minds and to refuse induction and join the protest. When marchers refuse police orders to leave, police attack them with nightsticks, injuring 20. Forty demonstrators are arrested, including the folk singer Joan Baez.

It always amuses me when Vietnam era hardcore Lefties are baffled when they're held accountable for their past behavior.

John Kerry
Jane Fonda

Joan Baez
From The Washington Post:

When rocker John Mellencamp performed for the recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday night, a couple of things were missing. He squelched his typically blistering rhetoric against the war in Iraq. Also MIA, as it turned out, was folkie and antiwar activist Joan Baez, who says she was disinvited from the event by Army officials.

In a letter that appears today in The Washington Post, Baez says Mellencamp had wanted her to perform with him and that she had accepted his invitation.

"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence," she writes, "and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. . . . I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony."

Strange?

What's strange?

Is it strange that the Army remembers how Baez lambasted the soldiers serving in Vietnam and how she spat at them, figuratively speaking, upon their return home?

Where's the irony?

I don't find it ironic that she's being held accountable for her disgraceful behavior.

Reached by telephone yesterday at her home in Menlo Park, Calif., Baez, 66, said she wasn't told why she was given the boot, but speculated, "There might have been one, there might have been 50 [soldiers] that thought I was a traitor."

Oh, poor baby Baez. She's a victim.

Boo hoo.

Read the details on the arrangements and contract for the Baez appearance at Walter Reed here.

..."One of my more cynical friends said, 'They let the rats in, why not you?' " Baez said, laughing, referring to a recent exposé of living conditions at Walter Reed.

And she wonders why she wasn't welcome?

...After the concert, Baez said, Mellencamp left her a message to say, "I hope you're not mad at me." Her response: " 'Of course not. It's an honor to be turned down by the Army.' . . . But I would have been happier getting in . . . I thought times had changed enough."

So what exactly happened?

The answer -- since Walter Reed's officials aren't talking -- is blowin' in the wind. (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)

I don't care what happened.

What bugs me is that these fringe Lefties think that they can divorce themselves from their past actions.

What's she talking about when she says, "I thought times had changed enough"?

Does she mean she thought the Army had forgotten?

Obviously, it didn't.

Here is the Baez letter to the Editor that appears in The Post today.

She writes:

Regarding the April 28 Style article "At Walter Reed, Mellencamp Shuts His Mouth and Sings":

Recently, John Mellencamp invited me to be his guest at a concert for recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I said yes immediately. Only later did I realize how the passage of time had informed my decision to join him.

I have always been an advocate for nonviolence, and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. During that war, I could not, in good conscience, have "sung for the troops." Doing so would have meant condoning a war that was tearing soldiers, civilians, this country, Vietnam and, in some senses, the world, apart. I do not regret that decision.

What I do regret is having ignored the needs of the men and women who returned from Vietnam. For some who were relatively unscathed, it seemed possible to get on with life, with or without all of their limbs intact.

But it's clear that, for many, returning was hell.

I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the end, four days before the concert, I was not "approved" by the Army to take part. Strange irony.

JOAN BAEZ
Menlo Park, Calif.

I don't get her reasoning.

Baez is as against the war in Iraq as the one in Vietnam.

Forty years ago, she "could not, in good conscience, have 'sung for the troops'" because that would have meant condoning the war. To this day, she doesn't regret her decision to turn her back on the troops.

Yet, Baez wanted to sing for the wounded troops from the Iraq war. Wouldn't that be condoning that war?

Many liberals don't understand the notion of personal responsibility. They don't get that actions have consequences.

I wonder why Baez felt it was necessary to go public with this.

Why make a big deal out of being banned from performing?

Is she trying to embarrass the Army?

She's not. She's embarrassing herself.

Strange irony?