James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com, the Wall Street Journal’s opinion website, follows up Friday’s bogus comparison between Harry Reid and North Korea with one purporting to link Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter:

CNN reports from Damascus on a remarkably candid speech by Syria’s dictator:

Bashar Assad has said the media and technological revolution sweeping the
region and the world is helping his country’s foes to undermine and crush
the Arab identity.

Assad told the congress of Syria’s ruling Baath Party on Monday that a media
influx had left Arabs “swamped by disinformation” about themselves.
“These many inputs, especially with the evolution of communication and information
technology, made the society open, and this opened the door for some confusion
and suspicion in the minds of Arab youth.

“The ultimate objective of all this is the destruction of Arab identity;
for the enemies of the Arab nation are opposed to our possessing any identity
or upholding any creed that could protect our existence and cohesion, guide
our vision and direction, or on which we can rely in our steadfastness,” Assad
said Monday.

Now read this passage from a column by Newsweek’s Jonathan
Alter, who argues that a scandal like Watergate would not bring down the
president if it were to happen today. He uses the literary device of imagining
himself writing a retrospective of President Nixon’s eight years in office,
ending in 2005:

The big reason Nixon didn’t have to resign: the rise of Conservative Media,
which features Fox, talk radio and a bunch of noisy partisans on the Internet
and best-sellers list who almost never admit their side does anything wrong.
(Liberals, by contrast, are always eating their own.) This solidarity came
in handy when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post began
snooping around after the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National
Committee. Once they scored a few scoops with the help of anonymous sources,
Sean Hannity et al. went on a rampage. When the young reporters printed an
article about grand jury testimony that turned out to be wrong, Drudge and
the bloggers had a field day, even though none of them had lifted a finger
to try to advance the story. After that, the Silent Majority wouldn’t shut
up.

Both Assad and Alter are arguing that the airing of views with which they disagree
has a deleterious effect on political hygiene. Both are mistaken in equating
the ability of their own institutions to control information with the common
good.

The reality is that there’s no similarity between Assad’s effort to clamp down on access to information and Alter’s criticism of the conservative media. But the larger problem is the way that conservative pundits like Taranto now churn out bogus comparisons and linkages between disliked American political figures and hated foreign enemies, all of which are designed to transfer irrational feelings of hatred onto the domestic political opponent.

And on a related note, the Wall Street Journal editorial page has followed up on an editorial saying that Amnesty International’s criticisms of the Bush administration “amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda.” The new editorial directly suggests that Amnesty’s actions are treasonous, even as it disavows the obvious implication of its words:

But before leaving this episode, we’d like to remind readers of the case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. On November 19, 2001, Amnesty issued one of its “URGENT ACTION” reports on his behalf: “Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of Iraqi citizen Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who is being held by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. He is held incommunicado detention and is at risk of torture or ill-treatment.” Pressure from Amnesty and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked; Mr. Shakir was released and hasn’t been seen since.

Mr. Shakir is believed to be an al Qaeda operative who abetted the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 plots, among others. Along with 9/11 hijackers Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, he was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was working there as an airport “greeter”–a job obtained for him by the Iraqi embassy. When he was arrested in Qatar not long after 9/11, he had telephone numbers for the safe houses of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. He was inexplicably released by the Qataris and promptly arrested again in Jordan as he attempted to return to Iraq.

There remains a dispute about whether this is the same Ahmed Hikmat Shakir that records discovered after the Iraq war list as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen–the 9/11 Commission believes these are two different people–and whether Mr. Shakir thus represents an Iraqi government connection to 9/11. But there is no doubt that the Hussein regime, whatever its reasons, was eager to have the al Qaeda Shakir return to Iraq. It was aided and abetted to this end by Amnesty International.

We don’t recount this story to suggest Amnesty was actively in league with Saddam. But it shows that, even after 9/11, Amnesty still didn’t think terrorism was a big deal. In its eagerness to suggest that every detainee with a Muslim name is some kind of political prisoner, and by extension to smear America and its allies, Amnesty has given the concept of “aid and comfort” to the enemy an all-too-literal meaning.

Once again, this is all part of a long history of attacks on dissent since 9/11. From John Ashcroft in December 2001 to the New York Sun in 2003 to Rev. Russell Johnson in yesterday’s New York Times, suggestions that dissent aids the enemy have run wild. These are dangerous times for our democracy.

(See also Spinsanity on Taranto and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.)