{"id":427,"date":"2004-01-21T01:26:13","date_gmt":"2004-01-21T08:26:13","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-01-21T01:26:13","modified_gmt":"2004-01-21T08:26:13","slug":"sullivans-smear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/21\/sullivans-smear\/","title":{"rendered":"Sullivan’s Smear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan, the Boadicea<\/a> of the War Party, has Antiwar.com in his sights<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cFIFTH COLUMN WATCH: An Anti-War.com writer<\/a> pleaded guilty<\/a> to federal weapons and explosives charges. He was planning to fight for \u2018Muslim causes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This \u201cAntiwar.com writer,\u201d Ismail Royer, who wrote one very good piece for us a couple of years ago, was charged with violating the Neutrality Act \u2013 which forbids Americans from taking up arms against countries with which we are not at war — because he and his friends wanted to go fight in Kashmir for an obscure anti-Indian guerrilla group. At no time did he take up arms against America or Americans. As Tim Cavanaugh pointed out in Reason last year<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are various questions to be raised about the indictments. (Among them: Is paintball<\/a> a fitting substitute for Basic Training?) The invocation of the archaic Neutrality Act\u2014most of the charges involve actions taken before the LET was named as a terrorist group\u2014has inspired tendentious but not inapt comparisons <\/a> to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the French Foreign Legion.<\/I><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the real mystery is the involvement of Ismail (Randall Todd) Royer, whose prior writings give little indication that he was a jihadist. Among his articles: A plea<\/a> to respect religion in the public square. A call<\/a> for d\u00e9tente between Islam and the West. An article urging Muslims to avoid wallowing in victimization<\/a>. All outspoken articles, but pretty far from militancy. Royer is a co-editor of ATrueWord.com, a site that aims \u2018to actively engage the non-Muslim world in a constructive and honest dialogue of ideas.\u2019\u201d<\/I><\/p>\n

Sullivan is a despicable fraud, and so is the continuing campaign to link this website with \u201cterrorist\u201d activity: the ex-Trotskyite-turned-Muslim nutball cultist Stephen Schwartz has also tried<\/a> to link me personally with Royer:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe role of Raimondo in this maneuver remains extremely interesting. Raimondo has inexhaustibly assailed me because, like Royer, I have taken an Islamic name, although unlike Royer, I have never used it for deceptive purposes. Royer employed Raimondo\u2019s propaganda as a fig-leaf to cover his own attempt at intimidation\u2026. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others have similarly recycled Raimondo.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have never met Royer, nor never even sent him so much as an email, yet in the fantasy world of Schwartz and Sullivan, I\u2019m part of a grand conspiracy, a \u201cfifth column\u201d in secret communication with Osama bin Laden! They would like nothing better than to see Antiwar.com shut down, and me behind bars, like Ismail Royer. What\u2019s frightening \u2013 not to me, personally, but on account of the realization that we\u2019ve gone this far down the road to serfdom \u2013 is that they have the legal \u201ctools\u201d to do it in the form of the \u201cPatriot\u201d Act and its successors. The new totalitarians know they can\u2019t win the battle of ideas, but they\u2019re hoping they won\u2019t have to: Sullivan and the pathetic Schwartz actually think we can be intimidated, or else forced to shut up.<\/p>\n

Schwartz is so well-known as a nutball that even the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies \u2013 the subject, interestingly enough, of Royers\u2019 piece for us \u2013 dropped him like a hot potato. As for Andy \u201cMuscle Glutes\u201d Sullivan — I\u2019ll be damned in hell before I\u2019ll be intimidated by this slimey limey. Sullivan gives new meaning to the phrase size queen: he only tells really BIG lies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan, the Boadicea of the War Party, has Antiwar.com in his sights: \u201cFIFTH COLUMN WATCH: An Anti-War.com writer pleaded guilty to federal weapons and explosives charges. He was planning to fight for \u2018Muslim causes.\u2019\u201d This \u201cAntiwar.com writer,\u201d Ismail Royer, who wrote one very good piece for us a couple of years ago, was charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}