By Tim Redmond
I’m been meaning to write something for a while now about the recent Black Liberation Army arrests, but it’s tricky: I don’t believe in shooting anyone, and killing a cop is a heinous crime, and there is no statute of limitations on murder, nor should there be.
But somehow, I feel the same way about this case as I did about the Sara Jane Olsen case and all these other efforts to get criminal indictments for things that happened in the heat of the 1960s, when there was, in some ways, a low-scale civil war on in this country — and both sides were doing some nasty stuff.
If you want to indict the alleged members of the BLF for shotgunning a cop, fine. Then how about indicting Henry Kissinger for war crimes? How about tracking down and indicting all the living FBI agents who illegally wiretapped radicals? How about indicting some federal agents and Chicago cops for the killing of Fred Hampton? The list goes on.
I’m thinking that if we really want to go down this road, we should create a 1960s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It the South Africans could deal with their bloody history that way, so can we.
Otherwise, the balance of indictments hardly seems fair.