[James] Woolsey is parroting a line that runs in the groove recently carved out by Peter Beinart's article "A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism" that says that the way forward for progressives on foreign policy is to make everything (from feminism to racial politics) about fighting Islamic fundamentalism.[Ed: link added]
Washington Note
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Former CIA Director James Woolsey told a congressional panel [Intelligence Committee] Wednesday that the U.S. government should treat the ideological bedfellows of Islamic terrorism the same way it treated Communists and their supporters during the Cold War.
Drawing parallels between what he said were two totalitarian ideologies, Communism and Islamic extremism, Woolsey noted that even at the height of the struggle with the Soviet Union, "We could not make it illegal to be a member of the American Communist Party.
"Congress tried and the Supreme Court struck it down," he told a hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
But, he added, lawmakers were able to make "American Communists' lives very complicated and very difficult by making them register, by all sorts of steps."[...]
The discussion was led off by the businessman and neoconservative eminence grise, Richard Perle, who said that the United States would continue to face threats from state-sponsored terrorism, although he said it would be "driven underground" as U.S. policy raised the cost of being seen as supportive of terrorist activities.
[...]
Ranking Democrat Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., pointed out that the United States was no longer threatened by tank columns or inter-continental ballistic missiles.
"In an era of terrorism and WMD proliferation, the threats emanate from the shadows," she said.
UPI article
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