Undeserved honor for Klan founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cotton planter and a trader in horses, cattle and black people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest, whose business dealings had made him wealthy, [he] raised a cavalry unit to fight for the Confederacy. He is remembered as an instinctive military genius whose daring and unpredictability gave Union forces fits.

He is also remembered for leading a rebel band that overwhelmed a Union stronghold, Fort Pillow, Tenn., massacring 300 mostly black soldiers and civilians, including children, after the soldiers had dropped their weapons. According to official reports, black soldiers were nailed to logs, buried alive, gunned down where they stood.

Finally, Forrest is remembered as a founder and the first "Grand Wizard’’ of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, is America’s preeminent terrorist group; in its various permutations, it has been responsible for countless acts of violence against African Americans and others it deemed inferior, including the notorious 1963 church bombing in which four little black girls were killed.

This is the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At this writing, the state of Mississippi is considering whether to honor that legacy through the issuance of vanity license plates. And perhaps an observer might be forgiven for wondering what in the world there is to consider.

The request to honor Forrest was made by the Mississippi branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group often found neck deep in attempts to rewrite and sanitize the odious history of the Confederacy.

For what it’s worth, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has said he doesn’t think the state legislature will approve the vanity plate. But he rejected a call by the Mississippi NAACP to denounce the idea. "I don’t go around denouncing people," he said, piously.

Presumably, he would be equally nonjudgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their legacies, after all, are combined in Forrest: terrorist, traitor, mass murderer.

On April 12, it will be 150 years since the Civil War began. That is the distance from telegraph lines to smart phones, from steam engines to space shuttles, from Lincoln to Obama. And yet even after all that time, some of us are still unable to conquer the moral cowardice exemplified by Gov. Barbour and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The South fought in defense of racism and slavery. It was soundly defeated, racism and slavery soundly repudiated. You’d think from that loss the South would have learned signal lessons of human rights and human dignity.

The past exists for one overriding purpose: to prepare us for the future. It is the great and wise teacher, though its lessons are often purchased at monstrous cost. Such was surely the case with the Civil War: 620,000 lives — 2 percent of the population — lost, the South left devastated.

Yet sometimes, you wonder if the South even knows it lost.

Because, instead of learning those costly lessons and moving forward, too much of the South has spent too much of the last century and a half denying them and looking backward. It did so first through the expedient of lynch mob violence and Jim Crow laws. Now it clings to discredited 19th Century symbols like driftwood, obsessively reworks history trying to make the facts other than what they are.

But the facts are immutable.

You wish the South would finally accept that and move on. Instead, too many in that storied region are still absorbed in fighting a war that ended in 1865, seeking to vindicate a cause long ago lost. A man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor.

It is pathetic that that even needs to be said.

Miami Herald

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

BNP MEP questions Taliban place on terror group list

Andrew Brons (left) August 1981 in Fulham, campaigning
with the National Front and BNP leader Nick Griffin

British National Party MEP Andrew Brons today questioned whether the Taliban should be on an EU list of banned terror groups which includes al-Qaida

Organisations and individuals on the list are subject to sanctions and travel restrictions in Europe, but Mr Brons told fellow MEPs in Strasbourg that whilst the Taliban was an “appalling, repressive and anti-democratic organisation” it was not in the league of global terrorism alongside Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida and had no known cross-border ambitions.

The leader of Britain’s Labour MEPs Gelis Willmott said Mr Brons was “confused”, adding: “The Taliban are purposefully killing and maiming innocent women and children: of course they are terrorists.”

Mr Brons, referring to the current terrorist list of proscribed organisations, said: “What is the justification for placing the Taliban in the same category as Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida? Osama bin Laden and al Qaida are terrorists who have already committed terrorist acts worldwide and intend to commit more in the future. We must pursue those people to the ends of the earth and restrict them as much as possible.”

But he went on: “Whilst the Taliban are an appalling, repressive and anti-democratic organisation, the world is full of unpleasant regimes and the Taliban are not even in government. They are also killing and maiming our troops in Afghanistan, for which they are quite rightly hated. However, they would not be killing and maiming our troops if our troops were not deployed there. The Taliban, as far as I know, have no ambitions beyond their borders.”

He suggested that placing the Taliban and al-Qaida in the same category could provide ammunition for “the warmongers in the US and British Governments to pursue a pointless, murderous and unwinnable war in Afghanistan for years ahead”. He added: “Furthermore, wars against Muslim countries only provoke terrorist outrages.”

On al-Qaida, Mr Brons said there was “considerable doubt” about its existence “as an organisational entity, as distinct from an ideological one.” That meant there was no possibility of drawing up a definitive and inclusive list of its operatives: “The only strategy is to be watchful of those communities from which it recruits, regrettably including innocent people as well as the guilty.”

Ms Willmott commented: “Does Andrew Brons actually want to use this legislation to victimise innocent people in Muslim communities in the UK? The BNP are a party based on fuelling hatred. Their populist policies simply don’t work. I am very proud of the efforts of British troops in Afghanistan, often paying the ultimate price for everyone else’s freedom. And every British MEP should say they are too.”

This afternoon the European Parliament approved a resolution urging the EU to improve respect of human rights in the fight against terrorism.

“People suspected of terrorism or of links with Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida or the Taliban can end up on a UN ’black list of terrorists’ without knowing it.” said Dutch MEP Emine Bozkurt. “As a result, they cannot travel freely and their bank accounts and assets are immediately frozen without any possibility for them to claim their innocence and appeal against such measures. Once a name is on that list, it is almost impossible to delete it as no revision mechanisms are foreseen.”

Labour MEP and civil liberties spokesman Claude Moraes said the grounds for placing individuals and organisations on the terror list should be “defined by law, in a transparent and democratic manner”.

He added: “Recently, the European Court of Justice called on the EU for a revision of this procedure. A stronger role for the European Parliament is of significant importance to guarantee transparent procedures.”

Irish Examiner