Daniel Greenfield article: The Day the ACLU Joined Al Queda

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 08:38 PM PDT

December 1944. American artillery near the Belgian village of Losheim opens fire on advancing German troops during the Battle of the Bulge. Suddenly a jeep pulls up and a lawyer jumps out waving a piece of paper. "Stop what you're doing immediately! I represent Obersturmführer Gunther Stoltz down there, and I have an order here from Federal District Court Judge Gantz forbidding you from killing my client without due process in an American courtroom."

Insane yes, except that's just what the ACLU is after. Captured Muslim terrorists have never lacked for civil liberties lawyers in the past. Whether it was collective organizations like the ACLU or the CCR, or pro-terrorist lawyers like Lynn Stewart or Stanley Cohen, there has never been any shortage of lawyers eager to fight for terrorists in or out of a courtroom. From enthusiastic defenses for terrorists on trial to fighting for the rights of terrorists detained in US military custody outside the United States, groups like the ACLU have served as Al Queda's legal department before. But the ACLU and the CCR are no longer satisfied with fighting for the release of captured terrorists. Instead they're fighting to provide terrorists in the field with immunity from US attacks.

The ACLU's lawsuit on behalf of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a terrorist leader operating in the field, moves beyond protecting captured terrorists, and toward protecting active terrorists on the battlefield. It's the equivalent of that jeep pulling up during the Battle of the Bulge with a stop firing order. The ACLU and its allied organizations have always hidden behind the argument that they were protecting the rights of defendants in the court system. But there is no court system here. Al-Awlaki is not in US custody. He's conducting a terrorist campaign of attacks that includes the Fort Hood Massacre and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253. What the ACLU is doing is arguing that the United States cannot kill Al-Awlaki on the battlefield, even though he's trying to kill Americans.

The ACLU has actually filed court papers asking to allow them to provide "legal services on a pro-bono basis to Nasser Al-Awlaki, the father of Anward Al-Awlaki, as representative of the interests of Anwar Al-Awlaki."

That's an American organization providing pro-bono representation to prevent US forces from killing a terrorist on the battlefield, who continues participating in acts of terrorism against American civilians. And you might think that the pro-bono representation is because poor Anwar and Nasser are dirt farmers. Not the case. Not the case at all.

Nasser Al-Awlaki is Yemen's former Minister of Agriculture and a relative of Yemen's current Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Mujawar. Ali is from the Shabwa province, and that is also where Al Queda and Al Awlaki are currently located in Yemen. The Awlakis are part of Yemen's political elite. Their influence freed Al-Awlaki from prison once and continues to shelter him from the United States. Which leaves America no option but to either invade Yemen and capture him using ground forces, or take him out using a drone.

How does the ACLU justify their actions in protecting a wanted terrorist leader from US forces on the battlefield? By claiming that since Al-Awlaki is a US citizen, the government should have to win a case in court against his father's ACLU lawyers-- before US personnel can actually shoot at him. (This incidentally highlights the importance of Lieberman's Denaturalization bill when stripping US born terrorists like Al-Awlaki of their citizenship. The bill has been opposed out of ignorance by people like Beck, who are ignorant of the fact that Denaturalization was standard until the 1950's when the Warren Court created another imaginary Constitutional right that had never existed until 1958.)

According to ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, "This is a dual blow to some of our most precious liberties, and such an alarming denial of rights in any one case endangers the rights of all Americans." Apparently "our precious liberties" involve the right to join Al Queda, murder Americans and then have the right not to be shot by American soldiers or bombed by American planes or drones. And killing a terrorist on the battlefield, whose mother happened to have dropped him in a hospital bed on US soil endangers "the rights of all Americans".

The ACLU has innovatively invented a new right. The right to be an Al Queda terrorist leader without having to worry about getting killed. And then still trying to wrap themselves in the flag, warn us that if we deny Al-Awlaki the freedom to murder as many Americans as he wants with no worry of retribution from the sky, we'll all lose our right to murder as many Americans as we want with no fear of retribution.

Vince Warren, executive director of CCR, has an even more cynical argument to make. "Yemen is nearly 2000 miles from Afghanistan or Iraq. The U.S. government is going outside the law to create an ever-larger global war zone and turn the whole world into a battlefield." According to Vince, it's the United States that is "creating a battlefield" in Yemen, not Al Queda terrorists who bombed the USS Cole, or Al-Awlaki himself, who was minding his own business until the United States decided to try and kill him for no reason at all.

No, it's the United States that's "creating a battlefield" in Yemen. Because when you fight back against Muslim terrorists-- you're the one who's creating the problem. There was no problem for the CCR when Al Queda bombed the USS Cole or when one of Al-Awlaki's disciples tried to kill hundreds of people in Times Square. The problem only begins when the terrorists are under fire.

Al Queda is doubtlessly grateful that the ACLU could take some time out of their busy schedule advocating on behalf of Teresa Lewis, who had her husband and son murdered to collect on the insurance, and then went through his pockets while he lay dying on the floor-- in order to invent a legal doctrine granting immunity to Al Queda terrorists who happen to have US citizenship.

But they don't need to worry. The ACLU is now fighting to provide immunity on the battlefield to an Al Queda terrorist leader. And the Rubicon has been crossed.. Civil liberties lawyers are no longer fighting a rear guard action on behalf of captured terrorist, they're working on behalf of active terrorists, to protect their right to kill Americans, while remaining immune from American bombs and bullets. And they're trying to do it by using the court system to handicap the military even well outside the United States.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, and an attendee at Obama's Ramadan dinner, whose department's John Adams Project exposed the identities of CIA agents to captured terrorists, traveled to Yemen to meet with Al-Awlaki's father. Nasser Al-Awlaki is not some innocent father. He's part of Yemen's political elite and he has stated that his son is under the protection of his Awaliki tribe, and that he was, "simply a preacher who has the right to spread the word of Islam wherever he likes." The Awlaki tribe has already warned "Whoever risks denouncing our son (Awlaqi) will be the target of Al-Awaliq weapons" and is tied up with Yemen's Separatist movement and plenty of members of the tribe are also members of Al Queda. Yemen's President has already called for opening negotiations with Al Queda.

Nasser Al-Awlaki and the ACLU know exactly what Anwar Al-Awlaki is. His own words indict him. Yemen's government is too unstable to hand over a man, who is a son of their own political elite. The Al-Awlaki tribe has become tangled up with Al-Queda, which in the convoluted linkages between tribe and religion, may just have as much to do Al-Awlaki's Jihadism. Nasser Al-Awlaki has spent enough time abroad to know how to play the game. Anwar Al-Awlaki knew how to play the game very well, condemning the attacks of September 11, while counseling and advising terrorists himself, including the 9/11 hijackers. Then he decided to take the mask off and stop playing the game.

From his days posing as a moderate for the gullible media, assuring them that terrorism is against Islam, to his current activities in Yemen. Al-Awlaki has always relied on the kindness of liberals to protect him. And now conducting a war against the United States, they are still trying to protect him. The ACLU has become Al Queda's legal department. Its tactics are no longer limited to the defensive, but the organization is increasingly going on the offensive on behalf of terrorists. With the sun setting on Guantanamo Bay, Rendition and many of the other measures that the Bush Administration used to protect against Islamic terrorism-- the ACLU is aggressively expanding beyond the United States to defeat American soldiers and aid terrorists wherever they may be found.

After 9/11, the ACLU marketed its pro-terrorism lawfare as concern about the civil rights implications of the War on Terror. Today when defending Al-Awlaki's right to kill Americans, the ACLU is still making the same phony claims, talking about "our precious liberties" and "the rights of all Americans"-- when their advocacy is focused on helping murder Americans. When the ACLU was trying to free captured terrorists, then it could play the old lawyer's game of claiming that they were trying to provide fear legal representation, and not taking sides. But when it offers pro-bono representation to a terrorist on the battlefield, so that American military forces will not be allowed to kill him before he can cause more deaths, the mask is off for good.

This is not about civil rights. Anwar Al-Awlaki is not sitting in an American prison cell. He's among Al Queda terrorists, actively recruiting and possibly helping organize the next attack. He's on the battlefield, and the ACLU wants to argue that he can't be killed. Why? It's not about the law, it's what it has always been about. Helping terrorists. Not because of the Constitutional issues or the legal issues-- but because they support the terrorists. Because they have always supported the terrorists.

In 1934, Roger Nash Baldwin, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the ACLU, wrote an article for "Soviet Russia", in which he quite clearly explained why he was fighting for civil liberties.

I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which worker's rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental. When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever.

To understand this paragraph is to know why the ACLU is a scam. The ACLU does not believe in civil liberties. It is not fighting for an America with freedom and civil liberties. Civil liberties are only a tactic that the ACLU uses to undermine and overthrow America, in order to replace it with a totalitarian state, that they will maintain "by any means whatever". When the ACLU, on rare occasions, defends conservatives, it only does so for the long game in order to maintain a political environment that favors the eventual takeover of America.

"Political democracy is useful only as a tool of peaceful change," Baldwin wrote, on another occasion. The goal was "change", or as Baldwin had written previously in the Yale yearbook, "Communism is the goal". Before the Fish Committee in 1930, he testified that he supported the right of aliens to advocate the violent overthrow of the United States. For this same reason, Baldwin defended Soviet repressions as, "Weapons of the struggle in a transition period toward socialism." Back then Baldwin and his comrades were using civil liberties to enable a Communist takeover of the United States, that would end all civil liberties. Today they and so many on the left are working to enable an Islamist takeover.

Once again, Baldwin himself said it best. "I don’t regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it." Today the United Front is Red and Green, the Marxist-Islamist alliance, and the left thinks that it and the Islamists want the same things. Including the violent overthrow of the United States.

The ACLU is not protecting Al-Awlaki's civil rights. It is protecting his ability to organize the murder of Americans. And it is doing so for the same reason that the ACLU was protecting Communists, while pretending not to be Communist. Because it supports their aims. The anti-war movement and the civil liberties campaign on behalf of Muslim terrorists are both products of a United Front between Islam and the Left. The terrorists wage a violent campaign, while their leftist enablers tie the hands of those who would resist them.

This is war. And the ACLU is on Al Queda's side.