Obama's Bundler, Osama's Enabler

SHOULD A MAJOR PARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, WHO HAS PLEDGED HIS SUPPORT FOR OUR TROOPS, REJECT THE MONEY AND SUPPORT of an anti-American extremist who thinks Osama bin Laden had a “valid” argument on 9/11 and says she is currently acting “to undermine the war effort”? Barack Obama should be forced to make that decision about the ample funds he has received from Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.According to Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, Evans has “raised at least $50,000” for the Obama campaign. As long ago as February 2007, the Code Pink co-founder and pampered divorcee co-hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for Obama with her ex-husband (financier Max Palevsky) and Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen of DreamWorks studios. [1]
Rare Candor (Read: Undisguised Hatred) from the Left
Evans capped off a lifetime of yeoman service to the leftist fringe this June 3, when she told Kansas talk show host Paul A. Ibbetson al-Qaeda may have had a point on 9/11. On Ibbetson’s “Conscience of Kansas” radio program, Evans declared:
Evans: We were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia. That was the message of Osama, was that, because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.
Ibbetson: Do you think that’s a valid argument?
Evans: Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that, that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East? [2]
The Code Pinko revealed, with unusually cold-blooded frankness, the reason Code Pink targeted military recruiters – and U.S. soldiers:
Ibbetson: I understand the activism and the protesting of George W. Bush and Cheney…What is this protesting and work against the military recruitment…in Berkeley?
Evans: As an antiwar activist, one of the things you try to do is you try to find the pillars that keep us at war and try to undermine those pillars. And one of the things: You can’t go to war if you don’t have soldiers.
When pressed to clarify the “pillars” her deeds “undermined,” the Obama bundler removed all doubt she aimed at our uniformed men and women themselves:
Ibbetson: You said you want to undermine the pillars of the war effort, and part of those pillars of that effort is the military, complex or whatever. Would you –
Evans: Well, the soldiers that fight the war. If you don’t have soldiers, you won’t be at war.
She didn’t sound very convincing in denying, “Code Pink sees the military as the enemy.” (“N-n-n-n-no,” she eventually stammered out.) She then likened Military Recruiting Centers to “liquor stores and porn shops.”
Finally, Evans affirmed of Code Pink’s travels to Iraq: “You’re right! We were trying to undermine the war effort!”
More Than Words
Evans’ revealing performance could serve as light radio comedy – (e.g., she later blurted out, in earnest, “Why is being a Communist anti-American?”) – if it did not mask a long history of actions designed to demoralize soldiers in harm’s way, vilify the military (and the United States as a whole), provide monetary and military support to jihadists, and popularize the views of Islamic radicals who believe terrorists who kill U.S. troops are “guaranteed Paradise.”Her statement that “you can’t go to war if you don’t have any soldiers,” dovetails with her work to break the morale of soldiers fighting in Iraq. In July 2003, Jodie Evans joined the Advisory Board of Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW) as a founding member. Castroites Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan established IOW in Baghdad to convince American soldiers serving in Iraq to obtain “conscientious objector” status and get sent home. As part of this process, they recycled anti-American news stories to the troops in Iraq, and spread “first-hand” accounts of mythical U.S. “atrocities” back home. At least one fellow Advisory Board member called for the murder of U.S. troops in Iraq.Tiring of rhetoric, Code Pink tended to the material needs of those who killed U.S. troops or tended to the “insurgents.” In December 2004, Evans and Code Pink delivered $600,000 in cash and supplies to “the other side” in Fallujah, a recent battlefield and terrorist stronghold infamous for killing American soldiers.That summer, Evans disclosed, in blunt fashion, that she had little concern over troops being killed, because she viewed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death squads as our moral superiors:
We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting for lies. [3]
Before long, she and Code Pink would seek to join forces with the terrorists’ leaders once again. In August 2006, she joined 11 other far-leftists in a Code Pink-sponsored trip to meet Iraqi “political leaders” such as:
Sheikh Ahmad al-Kubaysi, who once pronounced foreign-born jihadists killing U.S. soldiers “very brave.” He added, “These Mujahideen are guaranteed Paradise.” He is said to have given militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr $50 million.
Saleh al-Mutlaq, the trip’s prime sponsor, chided Americans for trying “to brand as terrorists the honorable national resistance movements.” He concluded, “We cannot give peace.”
Code Pink announced after this trip, “We left this historic meeting with a commitment to make sure that the voices of these Iraqi parliamentarians are heard here in the U.S.” Indeed, one delegation member, a DailyKos blogger who ran for Congress in 2006, blogged, “if justice is to ever come to the people of Iraq, the people we call insurgents will have to be recognized as the ones who are actually defending their homeland.” As I noted at the time, Medea Benjamin laid out her full plan to coordinate anti-American events with foreigners in her essay “Toward a Global Movement," published in April 2003 in Nation magazine.
Evans was “present at the creation” of this subversive agenda. And now she sees her savior in Barack – and Michelle – Obama.
Her official page on Barack Obama’s campaign website states, “I am impressed with his ideas and ideals and that he has an amazing wife and listens to her.” Discussing Michelle Obama may be “low class” for her detractors, but evidently it is a selling point to radicals like Jodie Evans.
Not Just Obama: Code Pink’s Growing Influence in the Party of Defeat
As David Horowitz and I point out in our new book, Party of Defeat, this pathology extends far beyond Barack Obama. The Hate America ideology Code Pink represents – once at-odds with Democratic leaders like Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Sam Nunn, and the young Al Gore – now represents the will of its McGovernite base. Increasingly, when the Radical Left talks, the Democratic leadership listens – whether by attending the Take Back America Conference, the Yearly Kos, or inviting hate-spewing bloggers into the halls of power.Code Pink has not been left out of this arrangement – and an increasing number of lawmakers are singing the group’s praises. Sen. Russ Feingold, declared: “People try to marginalize them as being ‘left,’ But they serve as a reminder to (lawmakers) of the broader concern in the country over the war.” Even one of the group’s targets, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, courted their support last month, saying, “Instead of fighting us – which is your right to do – let’s all work together to end the war and bring the troops home.” Rep. Lyn Woolsey, a California radical Democrat and co-founder of the Progressive Caucus, admitted, “If it weren't for Code Pink and groups like Code Pink, we'd be a lot farther away from resolving the situation in Iraq.” And according to CP (which stands for “Code Pink,” not “Communist Party”) activists, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, signed the letter to get them into Fallujah to exercise their jihadist philanthropy.Similarly, Code Pink activists know they have the Democratic Party’s ear (or other appropriate part of the anatomy). Founding member Gael Murphy told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We've gotten to a place now where Hillary and Obama are falling all over each other to be the leading peace candidate.”They did, indeed, court the radical Left – even as the media lauded them for standing up to it – and this has led them to turn their backs on a war they supported, and to seek the defeat of the soldiers they put into harm’s way. As Jodie Evans smiles.
Show Me the Money…Being Returned
Barack Obama now faces a question, not of experience, ideology, or judgment, but of decency. Will he return the money raised by someone so self-evidently opposed, not merely to victory in Iraq (they have that in common), but to our soldiers themselves? Anyone seeking to be a credible commander-in-chief of those forces, anyone deserving of their respect and sacrifice, must return her funds, renounce her organization, and refuse any support Code Pink might seek to offer his campaign.Yet while he has been prompt to throw other longtime associates under a bus when problematic statements crop up, he has not yet lifted a finger in regards to Jodie Evans. Perhaps this is because, unlike Jeremiah Wright, Otis Moss, Michael Pfleger, or Jim Johnson, Evans offered more than rhetorical support.Compare his reticence against the Texas Republican Party. The Lone Star GOP recently divested itself of $1,500, because it came from a vendor who sold a racist button asking, “If Obama is president ...will we still call it The White House?” Texas Republicans swiftly donated the money to a charity benefiting Midwestern flood victims. Party spokesman Hans Klingler told AP: “This vendor need not apply to another Texas GOP state convention. We will neither tolerate nor profit from bigotry.”
Shouldn’t Barack Obama make the same pledge about hatemongers who justify 9/11?
ENDNOTES:
1. Evans also said she had donated to Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Ron Paul. This bipartisan (or, if you count Paul’s Libertarian background, tripartisan) coalition should also return these funds and any others she generated or delivered.
2. You can listen to the entire interview in the program’s audio archives, or watch relevant clips here and here.
3. A sanitized version of this statement now appears on the Code Pink website.
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Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of the book 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AB6A5F46-2C84-4820-8E88-77B26E577734
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