Is Terrorist's Attorney a Modern Rosenberg?

Attorney Lynne Stewart is about to go on trial for aiding and abetting the terrorist leader Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart is an avowed supporter of terrorism and an outspoken Communist. Whether she is a member of the party or no is really irrelevant. Her heroes -- as she proudly proclaimed in a toast at the annual convention of the National Lawyers Guild where she was the keynote speaker -- are mass murderers and terrorists, Ho and Lenin and Mao. According to her radical colleague Ron Kuby, Stewart not only identifies with her terrorist clients (she has more than one) but has a passionate affection for the blind sheik who, it will be remembered, plotted to kill 250,000 innocent Americans by blowing up the World Trade Center and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels during rush hour. Lynne Stewart is an ideological monster -- one of the ideological monsters of the progressive left who have spent their political lives supporting America's enemies while defending their treachery as"patriotism" and defenses of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of"liberals" and libertarians who are ready to leap to her defense, and who find John Ashcroft a greater threat than she -- perhaps because Ashcroft has a quaint belief in God, but more likely because he takes seriously the mortal threat emanating from the political left and its jihadist friends and they obviously don't. The current issue of Reason magazine has a defense of Stewart. So does the Sunday op-ed section of the Los Angeles Times. Written by a Brooklyn attorney named Gerald Shargel, the column is titled"Sheik's Lawyer Fights Guilt By Association." A sub-title reads"Rosenberg Case Shadows Trial." I couldn't have captured the continuity better myself. Shargel objects to the prosecution's plans to introduce a video tape of Osama bin Laden supporting the blind Sheik and threatening terror to free him. This Shargel claims is"Guilt by Association." The association is this: Osama Bin Laden, Omar Abdel Rahman and Lynne Stewart are part of a world-wide radical movement which seeks the destruction of the United States. Some members of this movement oppose terrorism and some oppose radical Islam. Lynne Stewart isn't one of them.

Shargel shows his own radical hand in this disingenuous comment:"Like [Lynne] Stewart, the Rosenbergs held opinions that were unconventional and unacceptable in their day. Today, many claim that they were convicted and punished for those beliefs -- for their desire, misguided or not, to change this country and the world -- rather than for what they did or did not do." Those who make such claims either share the Rosenbergs' socialist delusions and anti-American fevers, or are unacquainted with the facts. Hitler also tried to change the world. But no one would be fatuous enough to write sentences like this in defense of Hitler's agents. The Rosenbergs were convicted because they were spies for the greatest mass murderer in human history. (BTW the idea that Ethel didn't know what her husband was doing is preposterous. Morally, she was as guilty as he was.) The Rosenbergs' opinions were unacceptable then not because they were unconventional but because they were morally reprehensible. And so they are today. Or should be....