NORTHERN LIGHTS:

May leftists see the errors of their ways (Robert Fulford, 9/28/02, National Post)

Ramsey Clark, who served president Lyndon Johnson as attorney-general and then moved drastically to the left, set out in 1994 to find a lawyer for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian who was charged with conspiring to bomb the UN and several New York bridges and tunnels. The story of Clark's search bears in a perverse way on what I wrote last Saturday about the left's affection for dictators and demagogues.

To defend Rahman, Clark recruited Lynne Stewart, a New York "movement lawyer" who often represents radicals. She knew little about Rahman's followers, Egyptian terrorists who prey on Coptic Christians and others. She was logically Rahman's enemy, since he's a religious fascist and she's a feminist and an atheist. But Clark told her (George Packer reported in a superb article in last Sunday's New York Times magazine) "that if she refused, the Arab world would feel betrayed by their friends on the American left." An amazing thought, with alarming implications.

She took Rahman's case, lost it, helped him appeal, then (the government charges) illegally transmitted his political instructions to his murderous followers. For that she'll be tried next spring, and perhaps imprisoned for life. But what astonished me was Ramsey Clark's argument. Who knew that eight years ago Arab terrorists already depended on the American left? Not me. Who knew that terrorists would feel betrayed if such help did not materialize? How did American leftists, such as Clark, connect with Islamists? The fever swamps of American left-wing politics turn out to be darker and more tangled than most of us guessed.

The left has supported so many vile causes that it can't hope for an honest and decent future till it understands and repudiates its own past. The Clark story gives an odd twist to that history. It suggests that when no leftish dictators and terrorists are available, the left will search among its natural enemies for villains it can support. This isn't an ideological mistake. This is a pathology.

Many readers responded with enthusiasm to what I wrote last week, but leftists reacted with irate defensiveness.

This is just a ritual drubbing and it gets even more gloriously ugly from here.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 30, 2002 3:48 PM