Amnesty and al Qaeda

The instructive case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal remind us that Amnesty International seems not to have very good judgment about who does, and who does not deserve sympathy for their plight. For instance, what should one think of Amnesty International when it goes out of its way to get a known Al-Qaeda terrorist released from a prison in Jordan so that he can return to Iraq at the behest of Saddam Hussein and carry out more terrorist attacks against the west? I know what I think.

And what I think is that AI, like so many other organizations which have been infiltrated and corrupted by the Angry Left, now operates under the philosophical and political assumptions that guide the left, including the principle of "blame America first." In the view of the Angry Left America is always wrong and our enemies are always right. For them, there is never a good reason for America to defend itself or to use force. Nor is there any justification for America wanting to spread its values and ideas around the globe, since the left is opposed to those ideas as a matter of principle. Thus any attempt on the part of America to detain terrorists or to change the political and cultural environment of the Middle East or to protect American citizens from the attacks of hostile terrorists and nations must be stopped at all costs.

But of course, don't you dare to question their patriotism.