If You're Going to Be Holding Hearings on Terrorism...

...you'd best not be on the record as an IRA supporter.

Unfortunately for people like King, with his own Hibernian heritage, they are required to at least give lip-service to the cause of Irish Independence because here in the Northeast the Irish represent a significant voting bloc. In this regard, King is no better than any Kennedy who ever lived, and shame on those members of the Irish-American community in this country who did their level-best to ensure that a bunch of bomb-throwing drunks had the absolute best explosives and guns that money could buy. Either King actually does support the IRA, or he's lied to a bunch of people in order to steal their votes and money. But then again, he's a politician; it's what they do. Expecting honesty and consistency from such self-interested douchebags is really too much to ask.

Now, King isn't wrong, vis-a-vis his hearings; there is a problem with Islamic terrorism, and there is certainly a problem with home-grown jihadis in this country, and the question we should all be asking is not "do these hearing unfairly single out Muslims for unwarranted scrutiny" but rather "after a decade of a War on Terror, why didn't you get to this sooner, Asshole?" The answer, of course, is that there must have been a more-important task for the politicians to accomplish before the defeat of Al'Qaeda, and that somehow this involved unionizing the same dickheads who helped bring you 9/11, pumping more money into intelligence services that failed to detect and stop the plot, turning the nation's airports into concentration camps, and finding more and creative ways to intrude upon the privacy-- and trample upon the rights -- of taxpaying Americans who just want to be left the fuck alone by the nosepicking morons in Washington who should be defending us.

If you think we're winning this War on Terror, then consider this: Usama Bin Laden is probably still alive. We're spending $100 billion a year to bomb Afghanistan forward into the Mud Age, and they're somehow still not equipped to handle it. American soldiers are still dying after the government has either declared 'Mission Accomplished!' or 'Combat operations have ceased'. There are hundreds of 'detainees' enjoying all the sun-baked splendor of the Caribbean at taxpayer expense. Your daily life is full of some government-sponsored douchebaggery which probably infringes upon your rights, lessens your liberties, or costs you money. We talk about 'bringing freedom and democracy' to the unwashed masses of the Middle East, but ignore the fact that this freedom and democracy is being installed and propped up at gunpoint, and the candidates are mostly all of our choosing. And we're bankrupt. If this is victory, I'd hate to see defeat. But, I digress...

King's problem is one of standards, or rather, his own double-standards. Now, a politician in Washington having double-standards is not exactly a new phenomenon. The Art of Politics is all about Double-Standards in Modern America; they are set up and continue to exist specifically to be manipulated by our elected officials. King has obviously supported a terrorist organization when it was convenient and advanced his career, and now he's attempting to further advance his career by conveniently reversing course. Apparently, there are terrorists and then there are terrorists, and who is a terrorist at any given time probably depends on whether there is a public furor over the subject, and who manages to throw you a few votes, or scratch you a campaign contribution check. King's weak response to the accusations of having this double-standard are pretty much what you'd expect to hear from a complete doofus who's been caught with his rhetorical pants around his hypocritical ankles: hummina-hummina-hummina...

Then again, King was the fucktard who suggested that in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, that it should be illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a Congressdouche or Federal Official (as if that could be reasonably enforced), so why should anyone be surprised that he's absolutely clueless on this issue, too?

Says the article:

The New York Republican says the IRA and al-Qaida are very different -- the IRA was a narrowly focused homegrown movement while al-Qaida has attacked the U.S. and other countries. King said in an interview Tuesday he was right to advocate that the IRA be brought into peace negotiations to stop the violence.

Oh, I see. So I guess all those IRA attacks in BRITAIN was just the IRA expressing it's narrowly-focused homegrown-ness that was in no way indicative of an attack on another country? I've actually been in Britain during a spate of (small-scale) IRA attacks, and I can tell you this; the only differences between the mobile-mortar attacks on bridges and stadiums (IRA operatives in vans equipped with heavy mortars and cut-out roofs), and 9/11 (I was at Ground Zero) were the scale and the amount of carnage and mayhem inflicted. The intent is the same -- to kill, maim, frighten, and in so doing, to change a government's policy.

Bringing the IRA to the 'peace table' (A Clinton/Blair idea, which means it must have been very-poorly thought-out) only legitimized it's methods, in much the same way that the United States legitimized Muqtada Al'Sadr in Iraq, by letting him stand for election to Parliament. There is, objectively, no difference between the IRA and Al'Qaeda. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous, and a load of crap. Then again, Peter King was never the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, being a member of the New York Congressional Delegation which is perhaps the nation's worst. If the entire delegation were to be replaced by incontinent Rhesus Monkeys tomorrow, we'd all be a lot better off.

Be that as it may, while King may not be arriving at his own hearings with clean hands (in fact, I would hazard to guess that on his best days, King arrives at a battle of wits completely unarmed), that is not a reason to delay or even give up the process. There is a problem with Muslim terrorists, and there certainly is a problem with American citizens being recruited to Jihad. I've posted, just the other day, why they do it, and if the Congresscritter would just read the damn thing, he'd have all his answers and we could save a lot of time, hot air and money, but that's besides the point -- it would deprive King of face time on Television. The real issue is that King is not the proper advocate; you can't be a standard bearer when your standard is a double one.

The hearings should still continue because the problem is real, and the issue is relevant (and because I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about Muslim sensibilities), only someone else should be taking point on them, if only to deprive The Other Side in this debate of the public-relations ammunition.

Oh, before I drop the subject entirely, I'd like to say a few words to my Irish friends out there -- apropos of if being St. Patrick's Day being next week; your compatriots on the Other Side of the Pond have been fighting for 800 years ... and mostly losing. Many of you here in America have absolutely no connection whatsoever to the Old Country, or The Troubles, except for what your great-grandparents or grandparents might have told you at their knee. A good many of you have never even been to Ireland, even as a tourist. You're not Irish at all; you're Americans in every measurable and conceivable way, except that you happen to drink more than most, and dance in a fashion that evokes the laughter and pity of most homosexuals. The street battles in Belfast, the Potato Famine, the myth of No-Irish-Need-Apply, and the indignity of the English (really Norman and Welsh) invasion and occupation of a portion of your ancestral homeland have all been lost to the decay of time and is in the realm of distant memory. Give it the fuck up, already; it's not your fight, and it hardly evinces any romantic aura.

The Romans didn't even feel your land worthy of conquest, and when Ireland was finally dragged kicking and screaming into the civilized world, it was at the hands of a pious British slave/lunatic bearing a shamrock, so what does that tell you?