The McCain campaign has made a lot of Obama’s connections to former Weatherman Bill Ayers and scholar Rashid Khalidi. Both men have been labeled terrorists and the campaign has implied that since they are terrorists then Obama must be one too.

What hasn’t been made much of is McCain’s own links to terrorists. First of all, he has his own ties with Khalidi. As Scott Horton details in his Harper’s article "The New McCarthyism":

McCain and Khalidi appear to have some joint interests, and that fact speaks very well of both of them. Indeed, the McCain–Khalidi connections are more substantial than the phony Obama–Khalidi connections McCarthy gussies up for his article. The Republican party’s congressionally funded international-networking organization, the International Republican Institute–long and ably chaired by John McCain and headed by McCain’s close friend, the capable Lorne Craner–has taken an interest in West Bank matters. IRI funded an ambitious project, called the Palestine Center, that Khalidi helped to support. Khalidi served on the Center’s board of directors. The goal of that project, shared by Khalidi and McCain, was the promotion of civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank.

 Now I would suggest that Khalidi is any sort of terrorist. As far as I am concerned he is a solid scholar of politics, human rights and culture in the Middle East and an heir to Edward Said whose chair at Columbia he occupies. That aside, I think that if Obama is getting flak for having connections to Khalidi so should McCain.

Far more troubling to my mind is McCain’s ties to the dictator Augusto Pinochet. According to an article on the Huffington Post:

In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile’s military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world’s most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.

And of course there was this piece on Democracy Now a few weeks ago called "McCain Sat on Board of Group Linked to Central American Death Squads":

As Republicans continue to talk about Bill Ayers, McCain himself is coming under new scrutiny for his ties to a group linked to former Nazi collaborators and right-wing Central American deaths squads. During the early 1980s, McCain was a board member of the US Council for World Freedom, which took part in efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The Council later went on to become a major figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. The Reagan administration defied a congressional ban to secretly funnel weapons to the Contras, the US-backed proxy group organized to violently overthrow the Sandinistas. McCain said he resigned from the Council’s board in 1984.

Two of my favorite left intellectuals, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, have endorsed the Obama campaign. Their endorsements are very measured. They both argue that Obama is no panacea and that he represents a segment of the ruling class rather than will of the majority of Americans. For those on the left who have been wavering between not voting, voting for a third party candidate and voting for Obama I think both endorsements are worth a listen. You can view Chomsky’s endorsement here and Zinn’s endorsement here.