Army of God: terrorist organization?

Treat The Army Of God as a terrorist organization

[12-14-01]

ACTFORCHANGE ACTIVISM UPDATE: December 6, 2001

-URGENT ACTION ALERT-

TREAT THE ARMY OF GOD AS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

It is way past time for the Justice Department to recognize that violent anti-choice organizations exist rather than treating each murder and threat as isolated crimes by individual disaffected men.

Yesterday, federal authorities apprehended Clayton Lee Waagner, a self-described "anti-abortion warrior" who claimed responsibility for sending hundreds of letters and packages professing to contain anthrax to women's reproductive health clinics across the U.S. and also announced his intent to kill 42 clinic workers in the next few weeks. We applaud law enforcement for capturing this fugitive, who Attorney General Ashcroft described as a "domestic terrorist." However, Waagner and others like him do not act alone. Now is the time to target the organization that enables Waagner, and men like him, to carry out violent acts against innocent people.

Click here to take action.

Waagner and others are allied with the Army of God, an anti-abortion group characterized by paramilitary tactics and linked to incidences of murder, bombings, arson and kidnapping that date back to the early 1980s. The Army of God is responsible for distributing a manual that supplies detailed instructions for attacking abortion clinics, manufacturing bombs and cutting off the hands of abortion doctors.

The group also glorifies those who kill workers at women's reproductive health clinics, like Paul Hill, a Presbyterian minister convicted of killing two abortion clinic workers in Florida in 1993, and James Kopp, who is charged with murdering a doctor in New York. The Army of God also claims affiliation with the notorious Eric Rudolf, who is wanted in connection with the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and suspected of 2 other bombings in Atlanta.

**More information on the Army of God's activities, including a fundraiser honoring the author of "A Time to Kill" (a manual on anti-abortion violence) can be found at their web site (armyofgod.com). Please note -- this site is extremely graphic and disturbing.

The Justice Department is at serious risk of hypocrisy if it does not apply some of the same determination towards apprehending homegrown terrorists and their support organizations as those that are based abroad. So far, the Department of Justice has pointedly not focused on these networks.


Given the FBI's history in the sixties and seventies of infiltrating, surveying, provoking and entrapping a wide range of groups -- many of them legitimate organizations of dissent -- caution must be applied in urging the FBI to take more aggressive steps domestically. But the FBI has been so alarmingly absent from the fight against anti-choice terrorism that there is plenty of room to take steps without risking our liberties.

By even cautious standards, the Army of God is clearly a terrorist organization and should be treated as such by the Department of Justice. Where possible, this should carry the following legal consequences, similar to those imposed on foreign terrorist organizations:

The consequences of continuing to ignore the violent anti-abortion movement will be the continuing terrorization of reproductive health workers and the denial of rights to American women.

Urge Attorney General Ashcroft to treat the Army of God, and others like it, as terrorist organizations. Click here to take action.



Michael Kieschnick
President
Working Assets

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

After fifteen years of scholarship and activism, Voices of Sophia presents a blog. Here, we present the voices of feminist theologians of all stripes: scholars, clergy, students, exiles, missionaries, workers, thinkers, artists, lovers and devotees, from many parts of the world, all children of the God in whose image women are made. .... This blog seeks to glorify God through prayer, work, art, and intellectual reflection. Through articles and ensuing discussion we hope to become an active and thoughtful community.

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John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

A Presbyterian minister, currently serving as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, Tenn., blogs about spirituality, culture, religion (both organized and disorganized), life, evolution, literature, Jesus, and lightening up.

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