"PEACE" GROUPS AND TERRORISM – AT 7:15 P.M. ET:  This, inevitably, will be a recurring theme among conservatives – at least those conservatives who can make it into the press.  It's about the help given by Western "peace" groups to terrorist movements.  London's Telegraph sums it up superbly.  Don't look for stuff like this in The New York Times.  But it is vital to understand the significance of what is said here:

A major problem in fighting terrorism and insurgency today is the active support certain so-called “peace groups” provide to terrorist and anti-democratic movements, just as they did in the 1970s and 80s.

This problem was highlighted in December, when a former officer of Colombia’s FARC rebels, one of the most vicious and murderous terrorist groups in the world, accused the Peace Brigades International, a human rights group monitoring Colombia’s decades-long civil war, of actively supporting the FARC terrorists. Mary O’Grady tells the story in an article in the Wall Street Journal.

That's the great Mary Anastasia O'Grady, one of the best reporters around. 

This behaviour of Western peace groups follows a familiar pattern. During the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet bloc intelligence agencies were heavily involved in organising and directing the Western European peace movement. After the collapse of the East German regime in 1989, Western scholars were able to examine the files of the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, which provided a window into the thinking of many major Western Peace groups and the eagerness with which the peace groups accepted Soviet Bloc support and espoused the Soviet line. Many of the peace groups only protested about NATO policies while ignoring Soviet actions.

That states it superbly.  We saw the reality when European "peace" groups, utterly silent about the placement of Soviet medium-range missiles in Eastern Europe, erupted in protest when President Reagan countered with new missile systems for Western Europe.  Reagan was the "warmonger."

Today, many European and American peace groups are again eager to denounce Western nations while giving a free pass to assorted terrorist groups and dictatorships. They are assisted by a Left-oriented and largely uncritical Western media. The Hamas and Hezbollah campaign against Israel is a good example. When the Israelis respond militarily to rockets fired at Israeli towns, a perfectly appropriate action under international law, many Western and Middle Eastern “peace groups” act as Hamas and Hezbollah mouthpieces and dutifully repeat every claim against Israel without question or verification.

The "uncritical Western media" is the key here.  I recall, vividly, visiting "peace" rallies in New York during the Vietnam War.  The chants were often openly pro-Communist.  Marchers would storm down Fifth Avenue chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!"  Yet, the press would mechanically report these displays as "anti-war" demonstrations.  They weren't anti-war.  They were only anti- our side of the war.

As in the 1980s, at a time when Western and democratic nations face a threat from terrorists and dictatorships a large part of the “peace community” clearly favours the other side. In our free societies these groups have the right to espouse views inimical to democracy. However, when speech becomes material support for terrorist and insurgent groups, the line has been crossed.

Don't tell that to the ACLU.  During the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda and others clearly crossed a line, but were never prosecuted, a terrible mistake in my view. 

Western nations need to consider much stronger laws to allow seizure of group assets and to allow victims of terrorism to bring civil suits against so-called “peace groups” that promote violence.

That would be tough to do, but at the very least we should demand honest reporting about what some of these groups are up to.  One of the reasons for the success of Fox News is that the audience does get a more accurate picture of these groups, and their supporters, than one would get in the fashion-plate media. 

One problem, of course, is the presence of a man who has hovered above the role of the press for more than a half century.  That man is Senator Joe McCarthy.  Describe any group, accurately, as Marxist, or pro-terrorist, and immediately the charge of "McCarthyism" is hurled, which can essentially end a journalistic career.  It is, of course, not "McCarthyism" to describe a Marxist as a Marxist, but there is still a built-in, Pavlovian response to Marxism by too many reporters.  The subject is simply avoided.  And that is the crime.

January 1, 2010