The New York Times has been impressing me recently. Today they fire a shot right across hometown Congressman Peter King’s bow.
For Representative Peter T. King, as he seizes the national spotlight this week with a hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, it is the most awkward of résumé entries. Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.
“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “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.”
As recently as 1985, Rep. King (R-NY) is on record justifying attacks by a terrorist organization and any resulting civilian casualties. In 2004, during the Second Intifada, Tim Sebastian of the BBC interviewed Khaled Meshaal, one of the top leaders of Hamas. Israel had just killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Here’s part of that transcript:
TS- You target women and children. That is terrorism of the most brutal kind.
KM: We are not targeting civilians and we are not targeting children. From the beginning the Palestinian resistance was focusing on military targets and on settlers.
TS- So the suicide bombs on buses aren’t for civilians? The children and women who die on buses? I don’t notice the suicide bombers allowing civilians off the bus before they blow it up.
KM: I didn’t complete my answer. I said the Palestinian resistance focused in the beginning on military targets and on settlers. But Israel committed crimes against civilians in the Aqsa mosque in 1990 and in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in 1994 against innocent civilians who were praying in the mosque.
Notice the same mealy-mouthed justification for indiscriminate killing in both statements. What did Rep. King think about the Brighton Hotel bombing the year before? In that incident, five Britons were killed.
The bomb failed to kill Thatcher or any of her government ministers. Five people, however, were killed, including Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry and Parliamentary Treasury Secretary John Wakeham’s wife Roberta. Sir Donald Maclean and his wife, Muriel, were in the room in which the bomb exploded. Lady Maclean was gravely injured in the explosion and later died of her injuries while Sir Donald was seriously injured. The other victims killed by the blast were Eric Taylor and Jeanne Shattock. Several more, including Margaret Tebbit—the wife of Norman Tebbit, who was then President of the Board of Trade—were left permanently disabled. Thirty-four people were taken to the hospital but recovered from their injuries.
Was an attempt on the life of Margaret Thatcher of concern to Rep. King? Would he morally condemn the IRA for killing Roberta Wakeham, Muriel Maclean, Sir Anthony Berry, Eric Taylor, and Jeanne Shattock?
Of course not.
