PrintWhen is it cool to bomb a courthouse?
Now New Yorkers face the hugely expensive and dangerous prospect of putting radicals on trial in the heart of Manhattan. And as many have pointed out, the trials bring the risk of terror attacks. Yes, New Yorkers have been here before -- and not just with the 1993 Twin Towers bombing trial.
In an earlier wave of mass terrorism, Italian anarchists set off a bombing campaign across the United States. In September 1920, angered over the arrest of their compatriots Nicola Sacco and Bartolemeo Vanzetti, the anarchists set off a huge explosion on Wall Street, killing 31 people. Sacco and Vanzetti became a cause celebre for the Left.
Intimidation and terrorism to pervert the course of justice was also a favorite tactic of the radical left during the 1970's whenever one of their peers was on trial.
Once upon a time, Black Panthers were an intimidating presence at Panther trials in New York and California. (More recently, the Department of Justice declined to prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating voters in Philadelphia. And of course our current Secretary of State helped defend Black Panthers charged with torture and murder.)
In April 1976, the United Freedom Front dynamited the Suffolk County courthouse, seriously injuring one Edmund Nairine. Although Nairine is black, this bombing does not live in infamy like the Birmingham Church Bombings, because the perpetrators were Marxists, not rednecks.
H. Rapp Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) was facing charges of incitement to riot in March 1970 when leftist radicals bombed the Dorchester County Maryland courthouse. The courthouse in Bel Air was also targeted, but the leftists bringing the bomb to the courthouse died when the bomb exploded prematurely in their car.
On October 11, 1970, the New York Times reported, "The Urban Guerrilla Takes a Heavy Toll:"
"Between January, 1969 and April of this year [1970], 4,330 bombs were exploded in buildings and public places in the United States -- one even in the New York City Police Department headquarters -- and another 1,174 attempted bombings were forestalled either because the devices were discovered and disarmed or failed to work. No one knows how many were planted by the urban guerrillas -- groups identified by the authorities as the Weathermen and the Black Panthers -- but guerrilla leaders have claimed credit for many of the bombings and other acts of terror."
It's of more than historical interest to point out that President Obama has personal and business ties with the leading radicals from the 1970's. Radicals who, far from being shunned for their actions, enjoy prestigious positions in academia.
In his memoir, Fugitive Days, former Weather leader Bill Ayers boasted of participating in some of these bombing campaigns. The Weathermen also bombed a courthouse in Queens.
They tried to kill the judge presiding over the Panther 21 case in New York, along with his family.
As Deroy Murdock asked during the 2008 presidential campaign:
"Obama today calls Ayers' behavior "detestable acts." But what did Ayers and Dohrn see in Obama? What inspired these unrepentant, hard-Left bomb throwers to hand the chairmanship of Ayers' foundation and then share their home and friends with the charismatic then-35-year-old whose current 95.5 percent Left-wing vote record made him The National Journal's "Most Liberal Senator In 2007?"
The difference between Islamic Jihadists and the Weatherman is not one of tactics, but of motivation, as I've noted before.
The 9/11 defendants would be well advised to renounce Islamic Jihad and embrace Marxism. Then instead of being executed, they might end up teaching at a community college, or serving on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union. Note well the dreamy, soulful brown eyes of one of the accused, Ramzi Binshalibh. When he gives his testimony about the atrocities of the Bush/Cheney regime, the old 70's Marxists will find nothing much with which to disagree.
