Congressman and professional McCarthyite Peter King has had no other apparent goal in Congress other than to hold hearings on whether or not all Muslims should be considered supporters of terrorism, and what they might have to do to prove their innocence. It has gotten him fame even outside of the United States, leading a Parliamentary committee to request his presence in discussing the problem of "radicalization" of immigrants in Britain. Not wanting to miss out on a chance to demonize someone, King readily accepted, but he was not met with
quite the adulation he perhaps expected.
Since he has been, after all, one of the few members of Congress with a history of supporting terrorist-linked groups:
A Labour Party member, David Winnick, asked about the period when Mr. King, a Long Island politician with strong Irish-American support, drew the attention of authorities on both sides of the Atlantic for his close ties to leading I.R.A. figures during its violent campaign against British control of Northern Ireland.
Mr. Winnick told Mr. King that there had been “some surprise in the United States but also in Britain that you have a job looking into and investigating into terrorism,” according to an account on Salon.com. He read a 1985 quote from Mr. King – “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it” – then asked him, “Do you stand by that?”
Mr. King said, “I stand by it in the context of when it was said,” before delivering a long and unapologetic response. He said that he had gotten to know the leaders of both sides well and thought the United States had an important role to play “as an honest mediator, as an honest broker,” a role he said he had been recognized for expediting.
“I was trying to put it in a perspective to show that there were people — that this is not just the terrorist mayhem it was made out to be — that there were significant leaders on the Republican side,” he said.
In the past Mr. King has called the I.R.A. “a legitimate force,” likening its struggle to that of the antiapartheid African National Congress in South Africa.
Oh dear, that was certainly not expected to be part of the script. The esteemed congressman was called to London to tell them how to best accuse others of implicitly supporting terrorism, not to answer for his own history of doing the same.
Note that it did not faze King too much, however—not enough to regret or even back away from those stances. He is still quite willing to profess that terrorist actions that kill civilians are regrettable but acceptable so long as the terrorist side has "significant leaders" involved: I gather the definition of "significant" in Mr. King's mind is "people I agree with."
This may be, in fact, exactly why Peter King continues to presume all Muslim Americans are probably secret terrorists: because that is how his own mind works, during each of the times when he was justifying car bombs and other murders perpetrated by the people he was hanging out with and acting as "honest broker" for. He remains so cavalier in his own support for terrorist-supporting groups that it has never once dawned on him that others would not share his own rather malleable views towards "moral" terrorist acts.
Perhaps, in other words, Peter King is himself the monster he continues to seek. Ahab, meet your whale.
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