Via Marc Cooper— one of a regretably small number of antiwar leftists with both eyes open– comes the news that former US attonrey general turned totalitarian apologist Ramsey Clark has signed on to help defend Saddam Hussein.
Everyone, including war criminals, deserve proper legal defense. And I’m not being sarcastic.
What’s meaningful about this development– at least to me– is that Clarke is also co-founder and often chief spokesman and human face for International ANSWER , the grouplet that has headed up most of the large anti-war rallies of the past few years.
Meaningful, but as I said above, not surprising. ANSWER is, in turn, the creation of a cultish-stalinist group called the Workers World Party.
I wrote two years ago– as an opponent of the war in Iraq– that the liberal and democratic left was making a monstrous mistake in ceding the leadership of the anti-war movement to this wacky fringe who, indeed, supported not only Saddam but also Slobodan Milosevic as well as that nice family that runs North Korea.
Marc is absolutely correct that even (or especially) Saddam Hussein is entitled to a full and competent legal defense (although whether he can get that from Ramsey Clark is another matter). But what are we to make of it when the public face of one of the main “antiwar” coalitions is helping to defend the man responsible for some of the most horrific war crimes in recent history?
I hope Marc isn’t the only antiwar leftist raising hell about this.