Peter King, IRA supporter and enthusiastic counter-terrorism advocate By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 5, 2011
In 1985, the Irish government boycotted the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City, the biggest celebration in the Irish American calendar. The cause of its umbrage was Peter T. King, that year's grand marshal and someone the Irish government said was an "avowed" supporter of a terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army.
King, then a local politician on Long Island, was one of the most zealous American defenders of the militant IRA and its campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland. He argued that IRA violence was an inevitable response to British repression and that the organization had to be understood in the context of a centuries-long struggle for independence.
"The British government is a murder machine," King said. He described the IRA, which mastered the car bomb as an instrument of urban terror, as a "legitimate force." And he compared Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, to George Washington.
A quarter-century later, King is chairman of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he became an uncompromising supporter of the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies. And he has suggested that President Obama "use the word 'terrorism' more often" so people understand the seriousness of his purpose.
Click for Full Text!
