Rep. Peter King's explanations for why he supported the Irish Republican Army are pretty fascinating:
"My problem with him is the hypocrisy," said Tom Parker, a counter-terrorism specialist at Amnesty International who was injured by an IRA bomb that struck a birthday party at a military hall in London in 1990. "If you say that terrorist violence is acceptable in one setting because you happen to agree with the cause, then you lose the authority to condemn it in another setting."
"It's ironic that someone who offered such vocal support for the IRA is involved in this kind of witch hunt against Muslims in America," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
But King sees no parallel between the IRA and violent Islamist extremism, which he describes as a foreign enemy or a foreign-directed enemy. His preferred comparison for the IRA is with the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela; the IRA, no less than the ANC's military wing, was fighting for community rights and freedom, he says.
"I [wanted] a peace agreement, a working agreement, where the nationalist community would feel their rights would be respected," King said in an interview at his Capitol Hill office. "I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized and you wouldn't have peace without them.
The New York Times also finds some pretty choice quotes from King's IRA days:
“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.”
In the second piece, King gives the game away by comparing the IRA to the Irgun, which was a Zionist terrorist group with no reservations about slaughtering civilians*. King defends his views by saying the IRA never attacked the U.S., which suggests that King isn't opposed to terrorism in principle, just terrorism directed at Americans. If King applied his principles consistently, he'd be calling for the Obama administration to negotiate with Hamas.
*The Times calls them a "paramilitary" group. They were terrorists. It does not discredit the cause of Zionism to say that the Irgun were terrorists.
