Commentary: Sara Jane Olson should be released, but to another country; Former terrorist should have been tried for treason

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Somewhere buried under the headlines of the great March snow-pocalypse, sits news about Sara Jane Olson being released from prison.

The mature public will remember Olson from her actions in 1970s, when she participated in a deadly California bank robbery and the attempted bombing of Los Angeles police cars as a member of the urban terrorists who dubbed themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. Known then as Kathleen Soliah, she went on the lam for several years after those crimes, taking a new name and according to the Star Tribune, reinvented herself as a housewife, DFL activist and a community theater actress.

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles police cars in 1975, and Olson later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1975 shooting death of a customer during a bank robbery in Carmichael, Calif. A year later, her sentenced was reduced. And now Thursday, she’s free.

Wait… what?!!

In the middle of a growing “War on Terror” and only a few years into a what should have been a lengthy prison sentence, Olson is free to cavort with her family and friends. Olson is a victim of privilege, a rebel without clue, cause or concern for her actions. Maybe she’ll write a second edition to her cookbook “Serving Time: America’s Most Wanted Recipes.” (She was apprehended due to an America’s Most Wanted tip.) Maybe Olson will resume her political career. Maybe she’ll get to watch her children grow up.

But while she resumes her life, a church worker and mother of four still sits buried in a California cemetery.

Myrna Opsahl, who made the mistake of going to the bank, is dead. She will never get to see her first grandchild, or even attend the weddings of her children. She has yet to have the chance to write a cutesy cookbook, either.

Is this the new American Dream? Kill an innocent person in cold blood and serve less than 10 years? Write a “funny” little cookbook to capitalize on your notoriety?

Sara Jane Olson should be walking out of prison — I wholeheartedly agree to that. But it should be straight into U.S. Naval care so they can dump her in another country. According to one of Olson’s cronies, the now-free terrorist also kicked a pregnant teller in the abdomen which resulted in a miscarriage.

We seem so concerned about the battle abroad, but maybe we should take a deeper look at our own. America is a great country because we have the ability to seek change without using bloodthirsty tactics, because we are able to debate our political and ethical concerns. We shouldn’t have to worry about taking five slugs in the chest when we drop off our payroll check because some half-brained “political organization” is trying to make a name for themselves.

America has no place for people like Sara Jane Olson and her former SLA comrades, who started out in present-day, Marine-bashing Berkeley, Calif. Apprently they haven’t changed much there, either.

Olson should be tried for treason in her assistance to the enemy of all Americans: ruthless thugs who needlessly toss away valuable and innocent U.S. lives.

Why should Sara Jane Olson get a chance at parole and life as an American citizen? Myrna Opsahl doesn’t.

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Elliot writes for a daily newspaper and also frequently at elliotmann.org. He believes people should question the government, but abhors when people mistake that ability with violence against everyday citizens. Contact him here.

Additional reading: Star Tribune

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