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Mona Charen, a True Enemy of Freedom

Public dissent in America may soon be a crime, if Mona Charen has her way. Her demonizing of patriotic Americans, who believe a U.S. war with Iraq is not in our national interest, continues relentlessly. Where will her dehumanizing of the peace and justice seekers lead?

In a Feb. 24th rant, (Baltimore Sun), Charen, an ex-shill for Nancy Reagan, accused anti-war activists of supporting the “Islamo-fascists and their enablers.” She blasted those who want the U.S. to stop playing the role of global cop, as “appeas[ers] of dictators.” She even smeared the organizer of the peace rallies in Washington, “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism,” (ANSWER), as being “explicitly communist.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Charen also insisted that pro-peace demonstrators, like the noted actresses and Screen Actors Guild members, Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garofalo, and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., President of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, represent the “Left’s default mode.” They are always ready to “protest against us,” Charen continues, without defining, exactly who is this us,1 that she’s talking about. She branded, without citing a shred of evidence, the above trio, and other activists like them, as having a “jaundiced view that the U.S. has given the world only pollution, low-skilled jobs and crass commercialism.”

Charen, too, tried hard to equate opposition today to any U.S. war with Iraq, with the activities of Leftists in the 1980s, who were supposedly soft on the USSR during the Cold War. She railed that anyone, who can’t see how dangerous an enemy Saddam Hussein is to the U.S., is guilty of “wishful thinking.” Well first, Iraq doesn’t have any nuclear weapons, and the USSR had ten of thousands of them. And, secondly, if Iraq did have such lethal weapons of mass destruction, it certainly doesn’t have the delivery system to use them against the U.S. It’s hard, under such circumstances, to take her analysis seriously.

Meanwhile, one of Charen’s favorite thugs, Israel’s Ariel Sharon, killed 42 more Palestinians last week in the Occupied Territories. She was silent about that murderous fact. Like other Sharon sympathizers in the media, she also ignores Israel’s role, along with the interests of “Big Oil,” and the “Military-Industrial Complex,” in pushing America towards the abyss in the looming Gulf War II. Naturally, she also won’t address the undue influence in the the Bush Administration, over our foreign policy, by the Zionist cabal, (Washington Post, 02/09/03), known as the “Likudniks.”

To tell you how desperate Charen is to make her dubious case that peace activists are “enemies of freedom,” she linked the justified U.S. “war on terror,” with the planned, unjustified war with Iraq. In Chareneese: If you’re against the war with Iraq, then you also don’t “value democracy.” She also cruelly labeled the anti-war protesters, including “mothers pushing toddlers in strollers,” as suffering from 3moral obtuseness.2 She also claimed, in a vicious slur on Islam, that if those seeking peace prevail, then we must all prepare to “don burqas and grow beards.”

John Adams, one of the prime architects of our Republic, and later our second president, said, “The . . . fountain of all just power and government is in the people.” The scheming pro-Iraq War factions are presently putting this principle to a severe test.

It’s time to ask: Are the people the true source of power in this country or is it the special interests? If it’s the latter, then the Republic itself is at risk. I think if the war with Iraq is launched, Charen’s attacks on the First Amendment right to dissent will turn even darker. And, we may soon be saying good-bye to our precious liberties. The Justice Department itself is readying a sequel to the “USA Patriot Act,” (Center for Public Integrity, 02/07/03), that may do just that.

© WILLIAM HUGHES 2003

WILLIAM HUGHES is the author of 3Baltimore Iconoclast2 (Writer’s Showcase), which is available online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.