When the Fox Guards the Henhouse

The United States House Homeland Security Committee got a new chairman in January. It’s Peter King, the Irish-American Republican congressman, who has decided to investigate the American Muslim community, which he considers prone to radicalization and even terrorism. King is like a character from a TV show: a tough guy from Queens, turncoat congressman, son of a police officer, with strong roots in the New York Irish Catholic electorate.

After the 9/11 attacks, he advocated the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. He ardently supported Bush’s global war on terror, including the use of torture. Since then, he hasn’t shied away from denouncing Muslims, whom he accuses collectively of colluding with terrorists.

All these descriptions would suffice to disqualify him from investigating terrorism among U.S. Muslims; but in his case, they’ve done the opposite. His prejudices are his principal qualification, but we can add a more serious one, which does qualify him to know what he’s talking about when it comes to terrorism. According to the definition in effect since 2001 — when Bush drew a red line between those who were against terrorism and fought it, and those who were for it, collaborated with it or justified it — Peter King himself has long been a terrorist.

King’s declarations of support for the Irish Republican Army during its bloodiest years leave no room for doubt. Nor does his affiliation with the organization Irish Northern Aid, considered to be the main channel for supplying U.S. weapons and money to Irish terrorists. The Secret Service and the FBI followed King, and when it came to making peace the Clinton administration, which played an important role as intermediary between the two sides, also relied on the terrorists’ friend in New York.

King has made his political career as one of the most prominent lobbyists for the Irish Republican movement in the U.S. First the Good Friday Agreement (1998) and later the 9/11 attacks converted King the terrorist collaborator into King the terrorism fighter. There are two notable differences: his terrorism was Catholic, while his enemies’ is Muslim, and the former did not attack the United States, while the latter considers the U.S. its main enemy.

King has convened the investigating committee to draw conclusions that corroborate his own prejudices about American Muslims. Maybe in a few years, when our own Good Friday agreement is also a thing of the past, we will have the opportunity to see someone of Arnaldo Otegui’s caliber chair a parliamentary committee that’s investigating the new terrorist threat of the time.