Rep. Peter King characterizes WikiLeaks as a “terrorist” organization, but who’s the real terrorist-supporter? Wasn’t it Rep. King who signed a statement of support for the “National Council of Resistance,” a front for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which appears on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations? The MEK has killed American diplomatic personnel, and is described as a fanatic cult by many observers: its supporters, who adhere to a weird combination of Marxism and Islam, were succored by Saddam Hussein in Iraq before the US invasion, where they still persist (under US guard) to this day.
King’s support for terrorism doesn’t stop there, however: he is also a fervent booster of the “Real IRA,” an Irish Republican terrorist organization that plants bombs and assassinates its enemies. As a supporter of Irish Northern Aid, King lent his name and prestige to a group that was buying weapons for the “Real” IRA, which were used to murder civilians as well as British government officials and police.
If anyone should be accused of support for terrorism – material support – it’s King, and the only reason he’s not been charged is because there are two sets of laws in this country, one for us lowly plebs, who might travel to, say, Colombia, or Palestine, and meet with someone our government doesn’t approve of, and another set of laws for the political class, the members of which can do anything [.pdf] they damn well please as long as they don’t inconvenience higher-ups in the DC food chain.
Kristol’s prescription perfectly expresses the neoconservative view of power and its proper exercise: the common people who pay for our overseas empire have no right to know about, let alone criticize, our overseas shenanigans. Their role is simply to subsidize the whole mess, and let their betters (i.e. Kristol, various Kagan family members, and the laptop bombardiers at AEI and Heritage) determine policy. How dare the hoi polloi interfere!
