He says no:
I never killed or injured anyone.... In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
There is no doubt, however, that at least under current law, he would be considered a terrorist. Here is a definition of terrorism in U.S. law (22 USC 2656f(d)f(2)) (there are others as well but similar):
the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents
The Weather Underground was a subnational group; exploding bombs is an act of violence; government offices are non-combatant targets (the Weather Underground also bombed banks); and the use of violence had the political goal of ending the Vietnam War. "Screaming response" or no, this was terrorism.
Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is the excuse that terrorists always offer—that their political goals justify their use of violence—and naturally the legal definition could not permit such a defense without subverting itself, or turning every terrorism trial into a debate about whether the political ends of the defendants are "good" or "bad" from a moral or political perspective.
Though Ayers is right that the he was a sideshow to the campaign, the term “unrepentant terrorist” seems accurate. Worse terms would be even more accurate.
The op-ed is written carefully; one detects the touch of a lawyer or perhaps an author with lawyerly instincts. Ayers says that he never killed or injured anyone and that he co-founded the Weather Underground in 1970, which “went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices.” The natural question that arises is whether the Weather Underground actually did more than what it took responsibility for, and whether Ayers, as its co-founder, is responsible for those unnamed acts, or other acts that occurred prior to the founding of the Weather Underground in 1970. Anyone with even casual knowledge of the days of rage and the other antics of the Weathermen (the term used prior to the founding of the Weather Underground in 1970), and the various disputes involving what the Weather Underground did and did not actually do (as opposed to what it “took responsibility for”), might wonder what Ayers is not telling us, and whether Ayers considers himself responsible for the many injuries and deaths (of his own “comrades” who accidently blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village townhouse prior to the founding of the Weather Underground) even if he did not inflict them with his own hands. Ayres did not first enter the scene when he co-founded the Weather Underground in 1970, as uncareful readers might surmise.
The op-ed is a stupid piece of work; what it says about Ayers I leave to the reader.
Body count.
Ayers cares not a wit about "the people." Of this country or others. It's about power.
"Liberals in a hurry" went the argument. Yeah, he was in a hurry but not in the cause of liberalism.
Anyone who listened, decades back, to Radio Moscow on shortwave knew that the USSR's version of propaganda made great humor. In a free society, where views are open to challenge, one learns how to defend them and win people over. In a closed society, where questioning the revealed truth is out of the question, even a government PR agent comes to assume he can spout off nonsense and have no one doubt it. I'm sure Ayres has lived for decades, perhaps his entire adult life, in a closed society where everyone accepted whatever he said.
When you blow up property, even property you believe is "empty," you are deliberately taking the risk of killing people. When David Fine and his co-conspirators blew up the Army Math Center at the University of Wisconsin, he thought it was empty, but Robert Fassnacht ended up just as dead as those blown up by Timothy McVeigh. The ever-present risk of death or serious injury is why arson, even of buildings that the perp is "sure" are empty, has always been a felony (even in the days before felony inflation).
Is Ayers' claim innocence by incompetence?
Incidentally, I checked New York penal code and it is not (contra to what I said) felony murder there if only participants in the crime are killed, as at least two of the three casualties of the Greenwich bombing were.
I know I shouldn't ask but what the heck: And who exactly calls these people "terrorists"?
I've seen/read stories about people taking photos who were questioned as to what they were up to. But nowhere have I read that they were called "terrorists" simply for photographing in the public.
As Prof. Posner points out, it's at least debate whether he was responsible for the deaths of his "comrades," though I guess you wouldn't call them "innocents." But that to one side, the WU did target people. The bomb that exploded accidentally in the Greenwich Village apartment was intended for a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where it could have killed who knows how many servicemen and their (civilian) significant others. Here's a list of other WU attacks.
When you take your car on the road, you are deliberately taking the risk of killing people. We tend to do everything in our power to minimize that risk, but we still take it and we are fully aware of it. Does that make every driver on the road a terrorist?
Furthermore, when he was in New York, the WU killed three police officers during the commission of a felony robbery. If Charles Manson is guilty of the Tate and LaBianca murders (and he most certainly is), then Ayers too is guilty of murder.
Ayers may be many things, but honest isn't one of them.
Please, that is not the intent when someone drives his car. Ayers' intent was far different than taking a Sunday drive.
Someone who uses their car to try and force other cars/trucks off the road - but not wanting to willfully kill the driver (accepting Ayers' argument) - is a far different act than someone taking their car on the road to go visit Grandma for the holidays.
We're talking intent here.
Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is the excuse that terrorists always offer—that their political goals justify their use of violence
Substitute any number of people in the Bush administration for Ayres, and another "T" word for terrorist and you could make the same point.
I think you're being deliberately obtuse here. I don't care about Bill Ayers and have no desire or intention of defending his actions. But the point of his op-ed seems valid. Putting aside legal definitions for a moment, there is a HUGE moral difference between someone who takes reckless actions (which could, but are not intended to harm people) and those who intend to kill innocent people. It's the difference between driving drunk and being a serial killer. Both are bad, but not even close to morally equivalent. Terrorists like Mohammed Atta or Timothy McVeigh engaged in acts intended to kill as many innocent people as possible. Bill Ayers--at least if you take him at his word--never intended to harm anyone. That's an important distinction.
I know many people don't believe Ayers claim (I'm not sure whether I do), but that's a separate factual issue; it doesn't mean the distinction he's trying to make is unimportant.
And, indeed, the nails in that next bomb that blew up during assembly indicated that they were about to move on to killing people, since threats alone had not sufficed.
B. The nails are there to kill people, not property
C. Therefore, Ayers is telling a bald-faced lie
D. By printing Ayers, knowing A. above to be true, so is the Times
What interests me is why.
<blockquote>
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
</blockquote>
"Putting aside legal definitions for a moment, there is a HUGE moral difference between someone who takes reckless actions (which could, but are not intended to harm people) and those who intend to kill innocent people."
It was a NAIL bomb!!! Apologies for shouting - I'm truly mystified that intelligent people can advance this argument. Someone please enlighten me on how this happens.
If McVeigh said he thought the Murrah building would be empty, while planning the attack for a time that it obviously wasn't, would that change a damn thing?
Now this is nonsense on stilts. High stilts at that.
Not worthy of anything more than that response.
Not surprising that some wish to change the topic.
That's right--and, according to Ayers, the intent was NOT to kill people. But Seamus believes that intent is irrelevant.
Did you really intend for this to be a cogent argument?
I intended this point to serve as a refutation of the erroneous implication made by Seamus. The argument is perfectly "cogent" in response to his comment.
I am not attempting either to defend Ayers's actions or make a determination whether or not he was a terrorist, mainly because this is an wasteful exercise. Even my "freedom fighter" crack was meant to mock this discussion.
Seamus made a point that intent was not relevant as long as there was a risk and, plainly, there was a risk. My point remains that this is an extremely faulty argument. Your obtuseness is your own problem.
i think it is fair to say that ayers had a stronger, more solidly based greivance against his government. people he knew were being forcibly conscripted by their government, via the draft, and sent to kill people in South East Asia in an unpopular war. i have an uncle who fled to Canada and another who went and came home with a plate in his head and legally blind.
i can easily imagine the outrage and sense of injustice building to the point that if peaceful protest failed, a stronger message needs to be sent. this is not unusual in our history. the boston tea party, the shays tax rebellion, strike breaking and union busting, lynchings...
assuming ayer's mea culpa, such that it is, is a fairly accurate description of his actions, it strikes me as a perfectly acceptable response to an out of control government directly threatening him and his community.
what would it take to shock Prof. Posner's conscience into active resistance to his government?
Names them to his Cabinet, too.
I'll await the calls from those on the left for his impeachment from office immediately after Gate's confirmation.
It seems to me a fairly more reasonable construction to say that "non-combatant targets" are necessarily human targets, because whether a human is a combatant seems a fairly straightforward question. The human may be under the color of an army, they may be armed, they may be engaged in "combat" activities. How would we define that category for property? Would an office necessarily be a "non-combatant target"? Would it make a difference how close the office is to a theater of war? Or who occupied it? Or who used it, for what purposes?
As for the rest of this post, I don't really understand why you think it important to attribute to Ayers activities that the WU may or may not have performed, that you may or may not have any evidence of. Along with the reference to the WU's self-inflicted casualties (which wouldn't count as "terrorism" if the WU members killed in the accident count as "combatants"), this stuff serves no purpose other than to distract from your strawmanning of Ayer's op-ed and misreading of the statute.
I'm going to need a more credible and, let's say, disinterested source. And I'm not alone.
As noted above, what would be the purpose of placing nails in a bomb that is designed to go off on a dance floor filled with couples dancing?
I think the intent is pretty obvious.
Going for a ride in my car is the same as detonating a bomb in my neighbors house when he and his family aren't home?
Are you that dishonest or that
mentally challengedstupid?Ayers is lying.
You don't make nail bombs to damage buildings. You make nail bombs to KILL PEOPLE.
Anyone who tries to take the "Ayers didn't intend to kill" argument is either blindly stupid or boldly dishonest. Or maybe a bit of both...
Aren't both of these approaches profoundly different from soap-box speeches in the public square? Wherein people congregate to hear the speaker impromptu and by virtue of the effectiveness of his argument.
Here is the first part of his book prarie fire in PDF to give you an example.
He wasn't just mad about Vietnam, the goal of his bombings were to cause instability and the eventual overthrow of the US government.
What is it that makes terrorists so awful? It is not that they are "subnational." Nor is it that they are clandestine. What is bad about terrorists is the "politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets."
That is an evil thing to do; but it is found all over, not just among the people we are pleased to call terrorists. It happens from Hiroshima to Hebron, and we do not always call it terrorism or those that commit it terrorists.
Bill Ayers has admitted to acts of vandalism that could have put innocent people at risk. One can debate whether they meet the definition, under American law, of terrorism. In a country that sends $4 billion dollars to Israel every year, I'm not sure how much moral authority such a distinction carries. But in any event, the behavior is the behavior, and there is nothing in it to justify the implication, made during the campaign, that no decent person would sit in the same room with someone who had done those horrible things.
It seems to me a fairly more reasonable construction to say that "non-combatant targets" are necessarily human targets, because whether a human is a combatant seems a fairly straightforward question.
You haven't offered a plausible justification for your construction of the statute. First, "whether a human is a combatant" is not all that straightforward. Second, often times property will be obviously non-combatant (e.g., schools, hospitals, restaurants); the fact that some property may be more difficult to classify is not a reason for excluding property from the statute.
Also, suppose a group of guys got together and decided to fly some planes into the World Trade Center, as they existed on September 10, 2001. Suppose thousands of people inside those buildings died as a result. Do you really think the pilots are any less terrorists because they targeted a building? Would you really want to leave them with this defense? Come on.
As to Bill Ayers' column, yawn. The attacks on him, yawn.
blame nixon.
Your rebuttal was to compare apples to oranges because you either didn't understand his argument or deliberately chose to ignore it and create a strawman. Since you admit to desiring to "mock this discussion", I'll assume it's the latter. And so will others.
"As I asked some right-wingers , what does it say about you when the country rejects your philosophy in favor of a secret Muslim terrorist sympathizing socialist? It means you either suck worse than a secret Muslim terrorist sympathizing socialist or you’re full of shit about Obama."
What's the matter, Sputnik, lack the stones to muster more than a merely rhetorical question?
I think it means that its impossible in today's America to avoid working closely with leftist nutcakes (at least through college), so we just figured Ayers turned Obama off as much as the usual lefty turns us off. And I'm not even right-wing, and I voted for Obama.
Go figure.
Far from being a sideshow, he served the vital function during the election of soaking up the bandwidth of the Republican base, thus ensuring they wouldn't talk about anything the American people cared about.
the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents
The Weather Underground was a subnational group; exploding bombs is an act of violence; government offices are non-combatant targets (the Weather Underground also bombed banks); and the use of violence had the political goal of ending the Vietnam War. "Screaming response" or no, this was terrorism.
Interesting. I would have assumed that "non-combatant targets" referred only to people not property. If it includes property, then you're a terrorist if you key the car of that jerk of a city councillor who voted against the rezoning of your second-hand store.
"As to Bill Ayers' column, yawn. The attacks on him, yawn."
The NY Times publishing bold-faced lies on its Editorial Page, yawn?
The rest of the paper is to damn to good to be dragged down by that shit. You're coasting on your cultural muscle. You can do better.
I realize you're trying to score some quick points, but this seems to me a pretty good definition of a sideshow ...
Why is Ayers's "bald-faced lie" imputed to the NY Times when the paper prints it in an op-ed? Is the Times a neoconservative organ every Monday when it prints a column by Bill Kristol? Hell, the paper even pays Kristol for his work.
You obviously believe that anything printed on the opinion pages should be treated as the words of the paper itself.
My only question is: what?
"Far from being a sideshow, he served the vital function during the election of soaking up the bandwidth of the Republican base, thus ensuring they wouldn't talk about anything the American people cared about."
The Merkan People weren't listening anyway. There is a subset of that people who would do well to care more, however, and that is liberals within the Democratic Party/Progressive movement. Obama shows some signs of having the rare courage to chart his own course, if not to take on the Ayers's directly.
Hint: Ayers is, in nearly every way, Regressive.
Claims which contradict known fact. Especially when such claims concern felonies or worse.
A nail bomb is not a "bomb targeting property." A fire bomb or a bomb attached to some structural support would be such a bomb, but a nail bomb is designed to throw shrapnel. That's useless for any purpose other than hurting people.
Also, if the historical record is any indication, the Bill Ayers of yore that actually did these things was very much engaged in a political power grab rather than protesting war/evil/discrimination. I concur with the comment above about "liberals in a hurry." These were good old fashioned marxist revolutionaries that (in my estimation) simply failed to spark a revolution and decided that running away to fight another day was the better part of valor.
But none of this changes the fact that Ayers fits squarely in the middle of any reasonable definition of a terrorist. Maybe he wasn't planting the bombs personally, but does he seriously believe this frees him from culpability? Maybe he should let the Israelis know so they can stop targeting bomb makers and planners.
As for the unrepentant part, that speaks for itself. He is not only unrepentant, but he's constructed an elaborate fantasy world in which he was a sort of latter day Ghandi who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone should set off a bomb near him and see how he likes it as a form of peaceful protest.
My wife and I were recently in Italy. On our last day she took a picture of the train station as we were waiting for the train. Two cops immediately approached us and demanded that we turn over her camera, explaining that it was illegal under the terrorism laws to take pictures in the station.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
"I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
I say, and I speak as a veteran, Thank You for preserving our liberty through the use of explosives on our own government.
You haven't answered my question. You said in your first post that the Times knowingly published a lie, and therefore was lying itself. If the paper had published a lie as a news article, or even an unsigned opinion piece, I'd agree with you. But I think you misunderstand the nature of a guest Op-ed when you say that its publisher lies.
Sorry, but negligent?
Negligent:
Careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind, or in the case of gross negligence what would have been reckless in any other defendant.
So he accidentally or recklessly put the nails in the bomb?
If I'm ever on trial, I want you on my jury.
If I'm guilty that is.
Being enablers of sociopaths isn't so commendable. Don't you folks have any real American heroes to look up to?
Guess not.
Do you actually think the NY Times is a quality source of information?
Naive.
Pick your "terror".
Ayers is scum and those who defend him here are (violation of TOS)
Now unless this blog is going to start referring to participants in the boston tea party and other revolutionary war heroes as terrorists you are admitting that the legal definition terrorism is different from the common language notion of terrorism.
I mean hell, terrorism isn't even used in a consistent way in the law. Groups do get put on the terrorist watch list merely because they engage in activity which meets this definition. If we did that then many groups we approve of might be considered terrorists.
Look, I know it's unsatisfying but in common language only the bad guys are terrorists. There is some great famous quote about how the other guys are always terrorists and your guys are always freedom fighters and it's true. We call something terrorism to indicate our moral disapproval of the action so you simply define the term without including moral judgment into the definition. After all there are times when the legal definition of terrorism above might be a morally justified thing to do, e.g., Tea party/freeing slaves. In those cases we simply don't call the action terrorism.
Besides, if you really thought terrorism just meant the definition above you wouldn't care if Ayers was a terrorist. After all being a terrorist would sometimes be a good thing. The only reason people care if Ayers is a terrorist is because they understand that claim to be a moral judgment about him. It's misleading to argue that he is a terrorist in a certain technical sense knowing that the conclusion will be understood in the broader morally judgmental sense.
-------
Don't get me wrong, I do think Ayers was a terrorist. However, I think that because I'm willing to make the judgment that his violent destruction of property was immoral. Ultimately if you want the conclusion of your argument to be a moral judgment you can't get there without introducing moral claims along the way.
Well stated, and the distinction that Ayers makes in his article is not stupid. Without intending to give any offense, I think it is stupid to refuse to recognize the distinction.
The answer is that McCain lost the election more than Obama won it. In many ways, this is directly analogous to the Kerry/Bush contest of 2004. Bush was an eminently beatable candidate in 2004, but Kerry failed to compete. I was shocked by the depths of his failure because I had really expected Bush to lose 6 months before the election.
Similarly, Obama was a flawed candidate that could have been easily beaten if McCain had actually put in a good performance (I'm not saying it was within his abilities). Before the republican primary, I was hoping for an Obama candidacy because I thought beating him would be a walk in the park. The problem was that the republican primary failed to deliver and the media piled on to the more interesting candidate. Game over.
Fun, eh?
If he said he thought it was empty, and it was in fact empty, that would change a lot. A statement unsupported by objective circumstances is unbelievable; one that is supported by those circumstances is otherwise.
In all fairness to McCain, it's hard to ignore the climate he was competing in. Two wars, unpopular incumbent president, and economic collapse. Doesn't take a political scientist to see that spelled doom for his campaign. Though that's not to excuse how awful his campaign was--and it was awful.
Another example of an anti-property attack would be the environmentalist whackos who vandalize SUV lots, smash laboratory equipment and free animals (which are also property). Setting off a nail bomb near a scientist's office would be much closer to the WU attacks.
Rather than being stupid for refusing to recognize the distinction, those who criticize Ayers are pointing out that his convenient distinction is based upon a lie. Ayers did not "take reckless actions". He deliberately plotted the deaths of scores of people, celebrated the deaths of others and planned the extermination of 25 million Americans once his takeover was complete.
That's not recklessness, as has been pointed out repeatedly and ignored repeatedly.
That's your claim, but you haven't provided any evidence.
Where is the evidence Ayers was involved in planting nail bombs? He doesn't say he was, and I'm inclined to regard his measured argument as having more credibility than the hyperbolic condemnation of the right. If you have hard evidence, of course, that would be another matter.
A nobody who is teaching tomorrow's teachers and leaders.
I'm always interested, however tangentially, in the ideas of those who are teaching our young people.
Especially when they're published on the op-ed pages of the NY Times and have had, even indirectly, a connection with the President of the United States.
And most especially when they probably wanted to blow people like me up if I were around.
To those who they wouldn't try to blow up, I can understand the lack of interest.
It's fascinating to me that the same people who loudly protest the "guilt by association" claims against Obama proudly point to Ayers' much less intimate association with the Annenbergs as proof that he must be a good person now.In his case, absolutely. After all, he himself has not only never repented but exulted on the public record, "Guilty as hell, and free as a bird. What a great country!" Furthermore, he has expressed regret, less than seven years ago, that he didn't bomb more often.
His op-ed is an obfuscatory apologia that fools no one but fools.
Seems as if some parts of Chicago society are trying to be just too cool for school. Only lower-class rednecks object to terrorists, see.
All I can say is, Free Terry Nichols! Poor guy was watering the lawn in Michigan when the whole thing went down. Besides, they were protesting a just cause, and a little bit of domestic terrorism is part of our historic heritage.
I don't recognize this country anymore.
And exactly what utility does a nail bomb have if you are only targeting property?
Scaring people. Terrorism. You know, I'm thinking there's a connection between the two.
Make excuses for him all you like. He is an unrepentant, lying coward.
Do you know the slection processes used by the Annenberg Foundation? If not, you are puffing smoke. I presume the people at the foundation value their money and try to see to it that it is well spent.
These points are entirely consistent. The fact that they both served on an Annenberg board is the basis for the claim that he "palled around with terrorists." The point is not that Ayers was a good guy back in his Weather Underghound days, but that he is now regarded by many (including the folks who hand out the Annenberg millions) as a respectable citizen in Chicago, and Obama's association with him was in these respectable activities, not at all in his Weather Underground misconduct.
Almost every commentator I have seen - Republican, Democrat, independent, moderate, conservative, liberal - has said that Obama ran a brilliant campaign. I think you are a full of ****.
Since this evidence is readily available, and since you are basing your argument on it, the decent thing would be to give us a citation to it. A link would be sufficient. Claiming it is readily available doesn't make it so.
So now terrorism is merely scaring people? That was quite a "scare" over there in Mumbai, wasn't it? And those folks in the WTC on 9/11 really got "scared" good, didn't they? The word has been vitally stripped of any definite meaning. It means what you want it to mean, no more, no less.
It would be a rare granting authority that gave a hoot about who someone "palled around" with rather than the corpus of their scholarship and their curriculum vitae.Only in part. They also shared office space in Chicago for several years. They served concurrently on the board of the Woods Foundation as well. Ayers praised Obama in one of his books, and Obama wrote the forward in another one. They almost certainly met while Obama was attending Columbia, because both were involved in the apartheid protests and both were leaders of those protests.
They were a bit more than Annenberg buddies.
I personally think the "palling around with terrorists" claim was misplaced. Palling around with committed communists would have been much more to the point. It's all water under the bridge now. Obama is our President, and we should all pray that the country prospers under his leadership.
But please don't try to sell the bogus claim that Ayers is a good hearted fellow who has repented from his actions of 40 years ago, because his actions were more recent than that and were most certainly not benign or well intentioned.
As any current or former police bomb squad or military EOD unit member will be glad to explain, attempts at uncontrolled explosive detonations by amateurs desiring to make a "political" point are inherently hazardous to human life. But for Nixonian stupidity, Ayers should have ended his public life once and for all the day he got led off in shackles to start a very long and well-deserved prison term.
Yes, but using that standard means that one can argue (for example, Keith Olbermann repeatedly says this) that the Republican Party is a terror group because they scare (terrify?) the American people about the dangers of Islamic radicalism.
That is to say, Republicans argue that if you elect Democrats that terrorists will attack us due to the negligence/weakness of the security policies of that party.
Olbermann and, I assume, his fans would claim that this is terrorizing the public for political ends.
Of course, Democrats tell senior citizens that Republicans will take away their SS and Medicare. So, one could counter that Democrats "terrorize" the public as well.
Funnily enough, I'm not sure that you can speak of someone as being a terrorist under U.S. law since we have never criminalized terrorism per se, I don't think. I know several other statutes refer to that definition for a variety of reasons, but I don't think the category "terrorist" has legal salience under our law the way that, say, "felon" does. Just something that came to my mind, though - would happily be corrected.
Regardless, in this particular instance, I neither know nor really care about Ayers - I'm rather skeptical of his claims, particularly if he used a nail bomb, but I've never done any research into his group because I hate how baby boomers keep having these arguments - just wanted to throw in there that the definition in the code is neither the only one nor that broadly accepted.
The New York Times has been notably reticent to characterize as terrorists certain subnational groups, though their modus operandi may be "premeditated, politically motivated violance perpretrated against non-combatant targets." The paper, for example, often styles as "militants" those who recruit young men and women to strap on vests laden with explosives in order to kill and maim as many innocents as they can manage. So, how surprising is it that the Times would be conflicted with regard to Ayers, not call him out for what he is, and let him do his fundamentally dishonest thing in an op-ed.
If he had any cojones now, he'd make a full confession of all the crimes he and the WU committed, waive the statute of limitations, and accept the punishment he deserves.
Instead we get simpering rationalizations. No wonder he advises killing one's parents. He's still trying to weasel out of blame, just as he did 50 years ago when his old man caught him swiping his brother's candy on Halloween.
The media tried to do a similar job getting Kerry elected but Bush was a) better at running for office b) Kerry was on par with McCain in terms of campaigning skill.
Obama is either going to end up as the next Jimmy Carter or the next JFK. Both incredibly crappy presidents, the only difference in their legacy determined by how they left office.
Nixon would have ended the war in 1969, and there wouldn't have been any reason for the Kent state Massacre, or the subsequent WU actions.
And, not to gang up on Republican Presidents,
If LBJ hadn't lied to the American people ( 64 election - I will never send American boys to fight in Asia) and then to Congress (the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), none of this "history" would have happened.
You need to focus on how to stop Presidents from lies and misleading the country.
excerpt of Ayers' Prairie Fire
Obama, Ayers and the Woods Fund
Ayers' "no regrets" remark
Steve Diamond is a liberal who has done extensive research on the connections between Obama and Ayers, uncovering information that the vaunted media never found.
Google search for Ayers on Diamond's blog
video of a man whose house was bombed when he was 9 years old
information about his culpability in the nail bomb plot
Discover the Networks information on Ayers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlN2t0oERHk&feature=related
"For evil to exist it just takes good people to do nothing" or, as some of the previous comments reveal, for people to not care one way or the other.
It's relevant because the statute specifies "non-combatant targets". We're just kicking around the legal semantics, no one here is defending what Ayers and WU did.
is there nothing the government can do that will provoke civil disobedience in the poster's here.
if he killed someone, he should also do the time, but, i believe him when he says their intent did not include harming anyone.
but, it's all moot, because Nixon dropped the ball.
and, i will say it again, the construction of a nail bomb is not conclusive evidence the manufacturers intended to kill someone, although it is an inherently risky endeavour to say the least.
what a bunch of nonsense.
get over it.
We're sitting here discussing what constitutes terrorism, what are the acceptable limits to civil disobedience, what are legitimate and illegitimate actions by a citizen, and a whole host of other issues. Remember reading, for example, Antigone? The law of the state versus the law and requirements of the individual? [Antigone wished to bury her brother who had tried to overthrow the king; the King deemed that it would be illegal to bury him; if he wasn't buried, his soul could not rest; Antigone needed to bury her brother. What should she do?]
For those who wish to dismiss this with a wave of the hand is, it seems to me, a dangerously short-sighted reaction.
If you are talking about treason against the United States, it might be helpdful to read Art. III, Sec. 3 of the Constitution:
You have to prove an overt act, not a "goal."
And yes, David, I'd have been perfectly happy for the Times to publish an op-ed by McVeigh or anyone else who achieved his level of notoriety. Sunlight being a disinfectant and all....
This might have been an interesting argument--had anyone actually suggested that Bob Gates is a terrorist. The way I understand it, even the most hard-core, loony leftists saw Gates as an improvement over his predecessor (and over much of Bush cabinet) precisely because his views--and acts--were not of the same kind.
Seamus' point was entirely missed by you, then. His point is that committing an act of violence, even if only property damage is your intent, still results in felony murder if someone dies during the act.
Thanks for divining Seamus's point for him. Clearly, he was so inarticulate as to miss his own point entirely. If you want to discuss felony murder, we'll change topics, no problem. But if you want to discuss what Seamus says, please stick to what he said, not what you believe he might have meant.
Your rebuttal was to compare apples to oranges
If I was comparing apples to oranges, then all you got is sour grapes.
Being enablers of sociopaths isn't so commendable. Don't you folks have any real American heroes to look up to?
Oh, yeah! Let's rally behind Ted Stevens, Ollie North and Dick Cheney--the real American heroes! What was it that you were saying about enabling sociopaths?
Am I alone in viewing protests as barbarism? Terrorism is surely the worst, but protest by naked number is hardly intellectual--a fact borne by empty protest slogans.
Go see Valkyrie. You might learn something. And if you don't, I have a flock of sheep you may enjoy joining.
Going for a ride in my car is the same as detonating a bomb in my neighbors house when he and his family aren't home?
Are you that dishonest or that
mentally challengedstupid?Yeah, that's a nice intellectual argument--I don't understand what you said so you must be dishonest or stupid.
But, if you really want to know, the point was disparity between intent and risk. I was not making a comparison between bombing civilian targets and driving a car. The point was precisely to illustrate ridiculousness of the argument that leads to such conclusions. To put it in terms you can understand--did you get that or are you stupid?
Bill Ayers denouncing the demonization of one's political opponents? And the politics of fear?
Now that's funny.
Critics claim that Guantanamo is an American gulag where innocent Muslims are being tortured or held without cause or due process. In effect, war crimes are being committed.
And Guantanamo is run by the military under Gates's command.
It's so predictable. The last resort for losers is always to blame it on the media. McCain gets no blame for losing, and Obama gets no credit for winning. It was the "fawning media" that did it all. Did you notice the stadiums that filled up with Obama supporters? Did you notice the $750 billion that Obama supporters contributed to his campaign? Did you notice that Obama received about 8 million votes more than McCain? Sure, that was all a media illusion.
Read about "Prairie Fire" sometime and then weep that this was deemed "irrelevant" by both the Media and the Higher Education system in this country.
http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/
When only a few dozen out of tens of millions choose that path, in a democratic society, they are clearly not justified.
Rebellion may be justified in some (far more extreme) circumstances, but rebellion isn't a few Marxists running around throwing bombs. It is a huge popular movement. It is also treason, unless successful.
Further, it was Ayers' wife Bernardine Dohrn who indicated, of nothing less than the Charles Manson, Tate-LaBianca murders, "Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in their bellies. Wild!"
Those are facts that are not in dispute. All the obfuscations and all the moral and intellectual obscurantism in the world won't change those facts.
Likewise, how Antigone or anything else excuses that type of ideology, that type of thinking and that type of premeditated planning is difficult to ascertain. Likewise again, Vietnam can be honestly argued from "both" sides, but most typically it is not honestly argued by the Left, instead it is trumpeted as somehow being a great travesty. The fact is JFK began to get us further involved because the North invaded the South with the systematic use of terror and political assassins. The fact is that something on the order to 800,000 South Vietnameses were variously murdered by the North, post-April, 1975.
Those too are facts.
The only element that he arguably does not meet concerns "non-combatant target." Is this this defined in the statute to include property? If not, then it's far from clear that Ayers is a terrorist under the statute for just bombing buildings. I don't doubt however that the government has attempted to push the outer edge of the statute to cover any criminal activity by groups such as the Weather Underground.
As a practical matter, I'm far from convinced that someone who bombs just buildings can fairly be called a terrorist. The essence of terrorism is literally causing terror. If a group targets property only and is sufficiently careful and efficient to not in fact injure or kill anyone, then most resonable people would probably not in fact be terrorized by their criminal actions.
My point in citing Antigone was simply to make the observation that civilizations for centuries have debated the question of the law of man versus individual conscience. Civil disobedience, the rule of law, freedom of conscience, law of man versus law of God, et cetera, et cetera.
All of these issues are connected to the question of Ayers. Not Ayers qua Ayers. But Ayers as a symbol of how the individual should respond to what one views as immoral actions by the state. Not that his violent actions were analogous to Antigone's peaceful ones, mind you.
Isn't this why we study history, after all?
The good professor is being deliberately obtuse here. Ayers clearly states that he's not a terrorist because "we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends." Ayers does not in fact make the argument that Posner refutes. This is the very definition of a straw man argument. Too bad Posner doesn't take on the actual I'm-not-a-terrorist argument head on.
The post is a stupid piece of work; what it says about Posner I leave to the reader.
"...(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation
of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended -
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass
destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of
the United States..."
This is about one of the most controversial and contentious periods in the history of the nation. There are all kinds of issues, large and small, that revolve around this person. What he stood for. It's not about "getting" Obama.
I think it was Marty Peretz who called them "liberals without books."
I.e., no understanding of or concern with the past.
2) Ayers claims that his group did not in fact kill anyone, except their own members due to incompetence.
3) Posner has no actual evidence that Ayers's group in fact killed anyone (other than their own members due to incompetence). He has only speculation and innuendo.
4) There is an enormous moral difference between intentionally causing property damage and intentionally (or recklessly) killing innocent third parties. The two are not remotely equivalent.
5) Therefore, lumping Ayers in the same moral category with suicide murderers, Timothy McVeigh, the Beltway assassins and government death squads is a form of moral blindness.
6) "Terrorist" is a fundamentally morally laden category.
7) We are under no obligation to accept the government's definition of terrorism.
8) Therefore, labeling Ayers a "terrorist," as more or less equivalent to suicide murderers, Timothy McVeigh, the Beltway assassins, and government death squads, would be a form of moral blindness.
9) We should not choose a definition of "terrorism" that requires moral blindness.
Conclusion: we should not consider Ayers a terrorist.
Body count."
If that's the game, then what's the difference between Timothy McVeigh and John McCain?
NOTHING!
And Guantanamo is run by the military under Gates's command.
Fine... I am not going to dispute either of those claims, other than noting that Gates does not have the power to make a unilateral decision to close Guantanamo (it's above his pay grade ;-). But where does this say that Gates is a terrorist?
Of course, you want to discount what Larry Grathwohl has to say about what he claims Ayers said to him, personally.
You, of course, are free to believe whatever you want and discount what Grathwohl says, but it IS evidence.
But if you and others want to be apologists for Bill Ayers, fine by me--but your moral blinders are definitely on.
Try this: Most people in the US do not accept the logic of guilt by association, especially not when the (truly) guilty party committed his crimes when the second party was a young child. By the reasoning of those who sought to smear Obama with the Weathermen deeds. I too must be a questionable character as I once worked (at a bar) with a guy was was a former drug dealer, and another who had killed his wife in a fit of jealous rage.
If you're concerned with academic and otherwise sterile discussions only, I have no problem with any of it. But this isn't foremostly about abstract discussions or mere intellections. This is about historical specifics. (Revealingly, you excerpt none of the historical specifics I mentioned, such as the 800,000 South Vietnamese variously murdered post-April, 1975, and that reflects only those killed.)
Further, Antigone contains a great deal moral ambiguity than what we're able to more factually and empirically obtain in regards to Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn the Weathermen, Vietnam and the era that serves as backdrop, etc. After all, wasn't Oedipus and an involuntary act of incest part and parcel of the Antigone myth? Solely as a general point of reference, fine, but the analogy does not otherwise hold. Part of the problem with that era - which serves as backdrop to Ayers and Dohrn, et al. - are the obfuscations and obscurantism - the highly deceptive propaganda - that informs entire histories and the reportage of the period.
i'm just saying the certain people will react in extremis when they feel their government is waaaaay out of bounds.
no one asked to be born here, and i'll rest with twain, love your country, but follow your country only when it deserves it.
[yes, it's a paraphrase, but, accurate nonetheless}
San Francisco Police Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell
two policemen and a security guard in New York
William Moroney and shot and permanently disabled Michael Schlacter.
four more in a second roberry
I'M RIGHT
obama was elected despite the McCarthyite pleas to tar obama with an UNREPENTANT TERRORIST
oogggeeeedddddy booooogggggeeeeeddddy
Sorry Mate. Ayers and Co were still committing terrible acts in support of a boycot against South Africa at the time that Obama was studying at Columbia (And involved in the protest movement) and Ayers was studying up the road. It was never about Obama being involved with Ayers activities. It was all about Obama's deceptiveness about how an when he met Ayers and what the association was.
Obama and his cohorts lied.
Much as Ayers terrorist acts were reprehensible, they pale in comparison to what he has achieved as a teacher of teachers. He has been doing this for twenty years. How long has the quality of education been going downhill.
This is a good argument. It's not the strawman argument that Posner made and which I criticized.
If, as some critics claim, Guantanamo (an "American gulag" Andrew Sullivan calls it) is where prisoners, both guilty and innocent, are being tortured - terrorized - in order to give information or as punishment, that makes Gates complicit in these acts of terror.
He gives the orders that run the facility. Or implements those orders. He can resign if he thinks the orders are immoral or illegal.
Guantanamo is a place of terror for Muslims, so the argument goes.
And Gates is in charge of a terror facility.
Not to mention the "terror tactics" that the military, under Gate's command, uses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing innocents, et cetera.
All of this is hooey to me; but you asked.
According to your various goofball right-wingers. Ayers himself denies it. The government was unable to prove it. In the context of the election (the only reason we are talking about Ayers) it is what Ayers says that matters. Why? Because he was not changed with being an accused terrorist or a suspected terrorist, but rather an unrepentant terrorist -- a terrorist who was supposedly proud of having committed terrorist acts and he admitted as much.
What Ayers says he did are the only things he can fairly be accused of being "unrepentant" about. The rest he may or may not have done, but in any case, he has not claimed such actions. So he joins Max Cleveland and John Kerry among the legions of the right's political opponents they have accused of being cowards or liars or traitors. Yawn.
you people are THAT f-ing stupid.
Thank you for posting it--and for demonstrating that being a liberal commenter on this blog does not mean turning a blind eye on Ayers' massive moral failings.
That he actually got 53% of the popular vote is a testament to a surprisingly weak PE opponent and a weak GE opponent (who lacked enthusiasm, who was old and showed it, whose middle of the road approach meant he had hardly any fervent supporters) and the economic environment (causing many fearful voters to vote for "anyone but a Republican" -- even if that had meant voting for a Democrat candidate who was in a PVS) rather than Obama's campaign brilliance and skill at position shifting.
It will be interesting to see if Obama, even with no executive experience, can take advantage of the perfect storm that he had the good fortune to come across. And, if so, what we will discover his "core actionable principles" are (hopefully he actually has some). Seems that Reagan, in some respects, benefited from a similar perfect storm - although Obama has the misfortune of (as figurehead of the party which controls both houses of Congress) 100% accountability. Reagan always had a Democrat Senate to "deal with" which seemed to help lower expectations. Oh, and Reagan of course had experience of eight years as California governor.
More like the perfect storm that propelled a similarly unknown candidate into the public eye--Jimmy Carter.
For the country's sake, I am hoping that the 44th President is much, much better than the 39th President.
Oh--and small factual correction. Ronald Reagan had a Republican Senate until 1987. It was the House (remember Tip O'Neill?) that was Democratic throughout his two terms.
Referring to the nail bomb that killed his girlfriend - when asked what the bomb would do, he said "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too." - a direct quote
In Fugitive Days he says he bombed the Pentagon, describing the day in detail.
''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' - another direct quote - from 2001
May we assume you'll at least hold him accountable for his own words?
By contrast, you have presented actual evidence.
So not only is Ayers a terrorist and liar, he's also a dick.
From the department of "proofread after restructuring a sentence", yep - I meant House.
I'm pretty sure 44 will be more effective than 39 - although I'm not sure I will always like the effect of being effective.
Sure. Or maybe they weren't any more members of the group willing to risk their lives assembling bombs designed by Bill Ayers.
Ayers was no Gandhi. He is a left wing Timothy McVeigh. He is a heartless, unrepentant domestic terrorist. Not a freedom fighter, not a youthful idealist, but a thug. An unrepentant killer. If there were genuine justice, he would have ended his life thirty years ago in the electric chair. Ayers wasn't a youthful protester, he was and is an unrepentant revolutionary.
For all the folks who think Ayers and Marxism have something worthwhile to offer the world, let me suggest you read his autobiography, then read The Black Book of Communism. Then tell us how well Mr. Ayer's mentors have done for the world. Nah - you'd probably lie like Ayers and tell us how mis-understood he is. Ayers mis-understood? No, we understand him too well. Thanks Professor Posner, your critics made your case even more strongly.
Don't forget that the WU manifesto, signed by Ayers, maintains a need to kill perhaps 20,000,000 or so Americans to achieve their goal.
These people were terrorists, with intent to become Stalinists.
When you reap the benefits of a democracy, you forgo the option of violence to achieve your political ends - whether you are WU, animal rights lunatics, or anti-abortionists.
"So, how surprising is it that the Times would be conflicted with regard to Ayers, not call him out for what he is, and let him do his fundamentally dishonest thing in an op-ed."
Actually there's two separate issues here. The Times is entirely free, and perhaps from some perspectives justified, to call out or not call out Ayers for what he is. Even, as LM noted, to give him some space if it judges that what he has to say is newsworthy. Obviously, I think they should call him out and/or deny him the undeserved platform, but that's arguable.
What I find indefensible is that the Times neglected to go to Ayers and say, "Look, this part is total bullshit. We don't find total bullshit Fit to Print. Change it if you want to appear under our masthead."
Buckley was so valuable because he ran the kooks out of the Right. The Times continues to show it is not up to that task for the Left.
But yes, we "right-wingers" are all out to get poor misunderstood Ayers.....
Again, I repeat myself. If someone had deployed nail bombs at the DNC, would we see people leaping to defend them on "They want to send a message, not hurt anyone" or "They aren't terrorists, they are just misunderstood".
Plausible deniability, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, ain't gonna cut it.
Truth - lagging behind Justice and the American Way since 1968...
In your mind, it seems, the only two options are "terrorist" and "misunderstood." How about naive, misguided, criminal? Nah. "Terrorist" has a certain ring to it, notwithstanding the fact that the person being so labeled has not admitted to doing that with which you charge him; instead, he admits to doing something that he himself distinguishes from terrorism in an important way. But why argue if one can resort to labeling and name-calling?
This is not a game sailor.
Your comments show you know little of Ayers or the Weather Underground. Their aim was not just the end of the war in Vietnam, it was the overthrow of the US Government and its replacement with a Marxist regime, complete with reeducation camps and execution squads for the unredeemable.
Is there the slightest possibility that Ayers comments and writings can be used in a civil case against him by some of the victims of the Weather Underground?
Would the illegal wiretaps, not allowed in a criminal case, be available to a civil suit?
Is their a tutute of limitations involvd?
Should read - Is there a statute of limitations involved?
Well, this is naive and misguided, and the means by which they sought these ends were criminal.
On the "reeducation camps" bit, produce any evidence or else you are just talking hot air.
Remember the unitary executive. Gates runs nothing. You need to read some actual history. Guantanamo has not been run by the military. Rather, the military chain of command has been consistently bypassed via Cheney and Addington, Haynes, et al. Jane Mayer's book has many factual citations, also the various JAG's, FBI agents, Robert Mueller and so on. If you don't like Mayer, please cite your reasons. If it was Gates' decision it would have been closed long ago: torture, war crimes, no useful intelligence produced, and long term blowback.
Read the manifesto. They say that millions may need to be eliminated after they take over. Does that give you a clue?
How naive can you be? Sheesh...
Nah. The 52% that were stupid enough to vote for the most liberal, inexperienced cipher in our nation's history need for things to go completely to hell so they won't do this to us again. The rest of us will survive on our affirming I-told-you -sos until we find the next Reagan to save the day.
I won't do a thing to make this nation prosper until the day he leaves office.
As the reader's surrogate, the New York Times fails in its obligation to call Ayers on his word games or, at the very least, to point it out to readers.
If the New York Times fails its journalistic duty to the reader, there is no reason to read the New York Times.
Of course, if the low NYT share price is an indication, many people understand this already.
Spoken like a true patriot.
actually, the new york times is considering its audience and providing (complete pap) to them. iow, it's doing it's journalistic duty, if you define journalistic duty as knowing your (ever shrinking) audience and catering to their delusions. journalistic duty (according to the NYT) = telling people what they want to hear, regardless of truth.
for another example see: dan rather and mary mapes.
feel free to read the comments attached to ayers article. it proves my point quite well. at least if one thinks that commenters are somewhat representative of readers.
Wow, really breathtakingly stupid! And lawyers (and jurists, the triers of law) don't rely on dictionaries to say whether or not conduct satisfies the common law or statutory requirements of a particular crime.
A) comment threads (over time) skew towards extreme views that are balanced by differing opinion trolls, B) the NYT censors many comments, which means that the trolls don't usually get through. Comment threads of that sort will always be stupidly, unthinkingly partisan
My goodness! You actually think that when I referred to dictionaries I wasn't employing them as a metaphor. If you read my comment and its context (Tilly's distinction between codes and technical accounts), then it becomes clear that the type of reasoning that lawyers engage in is being criticized rather strongly, not because I think they rely crudely on "dictionaries," but because I think they give too much deference to codes when disputes call for more substantive argumentation. Ayers is making a forceful distinction between what he considers terrorism and what he engaged in. An intellectually rigorous response would either provide serious arguments that the differences drawn by Ayers are artificial and/or irrelevant, or that, distinctions acknowledged, the acts of WU should be regarded nonetheless as terrorism (on some policy grounds to be revealed). Grounding these arguments on the letter of the law is intellectually lazy.
""Terrorist" has a certain ring to it, notwithstanding the fact that the person being so labeled has not admitted to doing that with which you charge him; instead, he admits to doing something that he himself distinguishes from terrorism in an important way."
Premised on a bald-faced lie. Nails. In. The. Bomb. OK, not terror, merely attempted mass murder. Is that fine by you?
This is a spoiled child of privilege who wanted (and wants!) to tear down the meritocracy that allowed his own father to rise so high, likely judging (rightly) that he himself wouldn't measure up to the old man. He's the bizarro Richie Daley.
This is not the progressivism you're looking for.
"Do you think that I am wrong about the NYT's own struggle with the "T" word as reflected by its very selective use of that label, with some buy in to the "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter," and that as at least a partial explanation here."
No, I don't. Nor do I care about the "T" word. What I care about is the truth. I don't consider bald-faced lies Fit to Print. Neither, usually, does the Grey Lady. Why did she feel justified in doing so in this case?
Somehow I suspect that had McCain claimed that Iraq was behind 9/11 or that he'd always been a faithful husband, an editor would have taken him aside and suggested that corrections be made.
This is important due to the influence the Times wields in setting the agenda for the rest of the nation's media.
This is nonsense. If you do something and don't repent of it, you're unrepentant about it. That's what "unrepentant" means.
No, that is not fine by me. I am not an idiot, and I presume Bill Ayers is innocent of attempted mass murder until someone with far more credibility than you have convinces me otherwise, to which end said individual would have to dedicate far more effort than the writing. of. weirdly. punctuated. phrases.
Finally, if you think I am arguing in favor of holding Bill Ayers as an example of thoughtful and productive liberalism, think again. It doesn't take even minor exposure to elementary logic to know that indicting an argument is entirely different from denying its conclusions, let alone asserting the exact opposite of its conclusions.
So do you contest the findings of fact (the presence of nails in the bomb) or my construal thereof?
He said he didn't intend to kill people. He put nails in the bomb he made. What am I missing? Or do I lack the authority to ask questions in this new bizarro progressive wonderland where everyone is so enamored with title and status?
The point remains that the phrase "the kind of terrorist who is super careful not to hurt anybody" has an odd ring to it. If someone really were super careful not to hurt anybody, and managed to destroy a lot of buildings to protest a war, it would be misleading to call them a "terrorist". This remains true, regardless of legal definitions of "terrorism" -- after all, think of legal definitions of "sodomy"!
Consequently, even if Ayers is a dishonest son of a bitch about the specifics of his activities, there's nothing wrong with the general point he's making.
This is by no means a strictly leftist attitude; but it has been a communist trait since their beginnings. (see Schwarz).
Our dilemma now is how to reeducate Americans to spot these charlatans and treat them with the contempt they deserve...
If it wasn’t of the fact that Ayers' dad was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison and a very politically connected man, Bill Ayers would still be rotting in jail.
Interesting that Dohrn is a professor of law at Northwestern.
Second, I think we know what terrorism is, legal definition or not. It's pretty simple: I'm a civilian going about my business on an average day, and a bomb, biological agent, bullet, whatever, that has nothing to do with me personally, is used by someone to kill or injure me because they want to make a political statement. I would be a victim of terrorism.
The Boston Tea Party itself wasn't terrorism, though a violent act against the civilian captain or crew of a ship may have been. Gunning down a bunch of random people coming out of a church, in order to draw attention to the tax on tea would have been terrorism.
If Bill Ayers et al. were to be drafted, and refuse to go, and kill anyone who came to force them into the military, using whatever means they had at their disposal, that would not be terrorism, either. I won't get into what's right or wrong here, just what is and isn't terrorism.
As far as a bomb designed to kill non-coms and their dates, I don't think that these military personnel were involved in conscripting Ayers or his friends. Some may have, themselves, been conscripts.
Bill Ayers was no freedom fighter. He was a terrorist leader. That is most certainly clear.
No, Ayers does not love peace or freedom. That such a monster could be honored and supported by so many professors only shows how depraved academia has become--not to mention liberalism in general.
Seems all have overlooked the other big lie in Ayers' piece. He says he was, like millions of others, just trying to bring the Vietnam war to an end.
In fact, he was avowedly working for a Communist victory.
But what is worse still, is that Ayer's supporters forget that the Weathermen live on in the ALF and other terrorist groups that are explicitly targeting fellow current academics. I have colleagues who work in agriculture science -- not necessarily GM or animal testing, these guys do benign Precision Ag and and one was explicitly threatened by one of these homicidal morons. They work in buildings where they take a small risk every day that one of Ayer's and his apologists' fellow travelers will take a swipe at murdering them in the name of some cause of which they know surprisingly little (but they do care so much about it).
Go to a med school or ag research college building and you'll see signs on procedures as to what to do when you find a suspicious package or get a bomb threat. These are signs that you'll never find in the Poly Sci, Sociology, English, and Useless Studies buildings that continue to bend and stretch to underwrite not only Ayers but his children targeting their colleagues across the country and even just across campus (ironically, the same colleagues who pay their light bills through indirect costs charged to their grants while they take the summers off). That their preferred homicidal maniacs hit the mark only very rarely is besides the point. If they were targeted for murder maybe they'd think differently.
"But for Nixonian stupidity,"
Nixon would have ended the war in 1969, and there wouldn't have been any reason for the Kent state Massacre, or the subsequent WU actions.
And, not to gang up on Republican Presidents,
If LBJ hadn't lied to the American people ( 64 election - I will never send American boys to fight in Asia) and then to Congress (the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), none of this "history" would have happened.
Don't know if this has been addressed, but you do know LBJ was a Democrat?
Of there 12 bombings, about half came after the draft ended. Most of the bombings were aimed at targets having nothing to do with Vietnam. Heck, he helped Timothy Leary escape prison and flee the country!
These were really, really strange counter-culturalists with an odd set of morals. Their justification always involved the term justice. "We were seeking justice, man". The fact that Ayers has escaped justice for his crimes by using a legal system that he targeted as being unjust is a terrific irony, one that is lost on Ayers.
The irony that Ayers, a counter-culture icon, is now firmly embeded in mainstream political culture is also lost on the guy. The irony that Ayers, an anti-capitalist, now works at U Chicago, a college started by John Rockefeller, is also lost on the guy. U Chicago pioneered nuclear power and advanced monetarism (in fascist Chile, no less!). Heck, U-Chicago would have been a perfect target for one of his bombings!
The irony that Ayers rallied agianst the United States, now he lives a very comfortable life in an upscale Chicago neighborhood, working with the son of a mayor he hated, is further lost.
WU leader Mark Rudd
I think Ayers has a big problem with his credibility. His contemporary contention doesnt match:
1.The anti-personnel nature of the nail bomb
2.His own words describing the effects of same
3.His comrades direct claims about the intent and nature of the bomb
Is there really another alternative here, aside from everyone else including the facts are lying?
Words have meaning, and their meanings are hugely important. Their meanings and uses may not always be absolutely precise, unambiguous, etc., but if they are employed in an other than honest way, as the NYT does with the "T" (terrorism) one, then no good can follow. By its notably selective use of the "T" word (used by the NYT for Islamic extremists who attacked in Mumbai, but rarely for Palestinians attacking Jews, especially in Israel, no matter that they be a subnational group aiming to achieve political ends through attacks targeting noncombatants), the NYT signals its ideologic biases, and tacitly endorses the amoral, if not immoral, notion of "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."
Things should be called by their proper names. The NYT doesn't always chose to do that, the "T" word business being a most egregious example of the paper's tendentiousness. It's all very much about truthfulness, and helps explain the Ayers op-ed piece.
At his blog, see Ayers proudly present his Venezuelan speech of two years ago in which, addressing Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez (who is a dictator, legislating by decree), Ayers lauds the “revolucion Bolivariana” and the terrific job he's doing creating a system that's “truly new and deeply humane.”
As Ayers declared in that speech, “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now,” “La educacion es revolucion!”
Ayers went on to say:
Another worthwhile visit in Ayers' creepy blog is this piece wherein he proposes that every citizen of a “democracy” every ten years be required to donate a year's free labor to the State.
Then, too, just before the election last month, Ayers slyly suggested that McCain's proposal to briefly suspend campaigning so Congress, he and Obama could attempt to concentrate on addressing the recent financial meltdown, was a likely prelude to “suspending” the election itself. Sure.
It's clear to anybody willing to see that Ayers views himself these days as still a part of hard-left revolutionary communism — but nowadays positioned within its propaganda wing: tossing verbal explosives rather than physically explosive bombs whilst trying to turn students his/their way.
Accountability.
There are some people left who remember Ayers from the Weatherunderground. Not all of them agree with him ideologically. Some of them may start to contradict Ayer's assertions.
There are some people left who remember Ayers from the Weatherunderground. Not all of them agree with him ideologically. Some of them may start to contradict Ayer's assertions.
There are some people left who remember Ayers from the Weatherunderground. Not all of them agree with him ideologically. Some of them may start to contradict Ayer's assertions.
There are some people left who remember Ayers from the Weatherunderground. Not all of them agree with him ideologically. Some of them may start to contradict Ayer's assertions.
I've looked, and I can't seem to find anything to directly connect Ayers and the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
Yes, both involved Weathermen. The article also claims there was internal disagreement in the Weathermen/WU about the degree of violence appropriate. Is there something tying Ayers to one side or the other beyond circular "of course he's a terrist, it was a nail bomb!" invective?
Perhaps those accusing Ayers of personal involvement ("designing", for example) could elucidate the link?
Thanks!
Nevermind the logic though. You have centuries of jurisprudence to overcome to make your argument win.
You mean just now after the NYT piece, BOs election and his coming out of sequestration? Everything that he has said recently has been countered by him and his buddies who still for years, let alone those who have grown up. But it doesn't matter does it? He's always had his homicidal tendencies and a full pardon by the likes of the NYT, pedro, Chicagoland et al.
Like I said, if you are expected to forgive a unrepentant self-admitted terrorist having a publicity fix and not forgive a typo....
I've said nothing in defense of Ayres or whatever it is he did in the 1960s. I've said I neither know nor care what he did, anymore than I care what any other random nobody did in the 1960s.
Ayers has nothing to do with UofC. Check your facts before posting.
Where do you think Ayers was living at the time? Do you suppose they might have discussed the plan when they were together?
According to this articleAccording to this articleGrathwohl was a Weatherman turned FBI informant who also testified to Ayers' plan to exterminate 25 million Americans after they had won the revolution and taken over the United States.
If Ayers wasn't involved in the nail bomb incident, then why did he go underground immediately after the explosion?Ayers himself admits in his book Fugitive DaysIf you want Ayers to go on the record and admit that he was responsible for all of this you will be waiting a long time. The case against him was dropped to avoid political embarrassment because the Nixon administration's FBI had performed illegal wiretaps.
Ayers could still be indicted and convicted for his crimes, if anyone in our government had the courage to pursue the case. It doesn't hurt that he himself has confessed, on the public record, to being "guilty as sin".
But our government often doesn't have the courage to pursue people like Ayers.
The operative question thus does not turn on whether WE intended to kill people or whether the felony murder rule would apply, but on whether it intended to use terror as a weapon to induce the end of the Vietnam war. (Not being familiar with WE's activities, I dont' know the answer to that question.)
Separately, I wonder whether all of WE's actions would really fit the definition given by Posner. The Pentagon and the Capitol, centers of the legislative and military power in this Country, would surely be considered legitimate targets in wartime. Why are they "noncombatant" targets under the definition? Similarly, a military dance would be full of miliary personnel, surely they are "combatants." [note: This is more a criticism of the definition than Posner. I agree, for instance, that the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon was terrorism, not becuase the Pentagon is a noncombatant, but becuase it was part of a fear-inducing attack on the country.]
is, at best, a red herring. The Weather Underground was the name adopted by the people who had formerly called themselves the Weathermen (after a line in a Bob Dylan song). As such, they had formed a faction within the left-wing group SDS in the late 60s, took over that organization in 1969, and organized the "Days of Rage" riots in Chicago that year. They "went underground" after the Greenwich Village work accident because they wanted to avoid arrest and interrogation.
The name change from Weathermen to Weather Underground was a celebration of how "bad" they were and the first recorded instance of politically correct re-naming in response to the criticism from women in the group that the term "weatherman" was sexist. The name change did not represent a new organization, ideology, or goals. It was just a name change.
As for evidence of Ayers involvement in the Greenwich Village bomb, we have only that Ayers was a member of the groups leadership and that one of the victims was Ayers girlfriend, Diana Oughton. We also know that the group discussed and debated every action in great detail. The natural inference is that Ayers knew and approved of the construction of the bomb. That would make him culpable for felony murder.
It is in the nature of revolutionary terrorists groups that they do not keep minutes of their meetings. The FBI may have had informants in one or more of the meetings, they had pretty good success penetrating SDS, but their records are sealed.
Ayers claims that the group intended property damage only are belied by the experience of John M. Murtaugh in his article: “Fire in the Night: The Weathermen tried to kill my family.” @ City-Journal.org dated 30 April 2008.
Ayers article was so slippery and mendacious to render it useless as an apology or explanation for or of anything.
The University of Chicago is a private university founded by John D. Rockefeller and William Rainy Harper in the 1890s. The University of Chicago's main campus is in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago (5700 south and 1100 east). The UI campus is at 800 west and 700 south, about 8 miles away.
The two schools are often confused by folks from out of town who are not academics. Sometimes Chicagoans are confused.
"It is in the nature of revolutionary terrorists groups that they do not keep minutes of their meetings. The FBI may have had informants in one or more of the meetings, they had pretty good success penetrating SDS, but their records are sealed."
A few facts:
a) Ayers and his wife turned themselves in in 1980. She ended up on probation and paying a fine for assault.
b) Neither Ayers nor his wife were ever prosecuted for any terrorist acts while they were members of the Weather Underground. Apparently, Nixon bugged their attorneys offices, broke into the offices, etc.
c) The prosecutor on the case, William Ibershof, believes to this day that he could have won the case. But the trial judge issued an order for an investigation into the burglaries, the Mitchell Justice Department decided to drop the case against Ayers. His wife still faced state charges, though, so they remained on the lam.
d) Barack Obama has the highest security clearance possible and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee has held such clearances since he went to Washington.
Adding that all up, I have to believe that if Barack Obama is such a great pal of Ayers that Ayers wrote his first book (as one wingnut claimed), that his career was launched in Bill Ayers' living room (as several wingnuts claimed), etc., then the Bush Administration surely would NOT have given the junior senator from Illinois, a new member of the Dem. minority delegation, a full security clearance IF Ayers was a terrorist. Obviously, after doing Obama's background check, the FBI saw nothing wrong with Obama "pal-ing around" with Bill Ayers, because Obama got the security clearance.
Which leads me to three possible conclusions:
(1) Ayers is a bad guy, but Obama and Ayers are not close enough that it worried anyone in the Bush Administration that they knew each other,
(2) Obama and Ayers are close, but Ayers was either innocent in FBIs eyes OR he was an informant, or
(3) Some combination of the two -- like Ayers was a bad guy but an informant, so the Feds let their relationship slide rather than make a stink about Ayers and unleash people to do digging, FOIA requests, etc.
My conclusion all along? Informant. Because if he was really a bad guy, you don't think SOMEONE from the Bush administration would not have leaked something about it?
And they were still making bombs and killing people into the 1980's, when Ayers turned himself inClearly Ayers still believed that other Weathermen were "out there" still plotting "radical" activities. (The New York Times, December 7, 1980, Sunday, Late City Final Edition) Indeed, shortly before Ayers turned himself in, the WU had committed another act of violence.The story of the capture of Katherine Boudin is detailed in Newsweek, the November 2, 1981, UNITED STATES EDITION, entitled Return of the WeathermanIn addition to the Brinks guard, two police officers, Officer Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O'Grady, were murdered.
Surely you realize that there are political considerations that often override any desire to see justice done? For example, Ayers was never tried because the Nixon administration didn't want to have to deal with the embarrassment of being exposed for having committed illegal acts of wiretapping.
By the same token, even if someone in the Bush administration argued vociferously against granting the junior Senator from Illinois a security clearance, the political ramifications of pursuing that action would overwhelm any concerns.
There are Senators currently serving who have revealed national secrets, in violation of the law, and have never been investigated, much less prosecuted for those crimes simply because the political firestorm would overwhelm any justice that could be done.
Hell, there are CIA agents and NSA members who have revealed national secrets and never been investigated or convicted for their crimes. Politics often overrides justice.
As to your other claims about "wingnuts", it is a known fact that Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' house. There are numerous eye witnesses to that fact, including Ayers, who has admitted it, although he chooses not to characterize it as Obama's "launch".
I'll leave the claim about ghost writing to others with more insight.
Ayers has nothing to do with UofC. Check your facts before posting."
Oops. I guess I didn't know that U of Illinios had a Chicago campus. My bad, and I offer a correction.
I find it more ironic that Ayers would work at a state funded university than a private one, though. Selling-out to the goverment you tried to overthrow? "Days of Rage" indeed. I guess it would be even more ironic if Ayers worked in a building named after Richard J. Daley.
I apologize for calling you either dishonest or stupid. That added absolutely nothing to the discussion.
However, I still don't get your post. I thought you were equating bombing a supposedly unoccupied with driving to the store. Now I don't really know what you meant in your post. Maybe I am the stupid one.
What a perfect description of William Ayers.
"Things should be called by their proper names. The NYT doesn't always chose to do that, the "T" word business being a most egregious example of the paper's tendentiousness. It's all very much about truthfulness, and helps explain the Ayers op-ed piece."
Ah, I mistook where you were coming from. I still think there should be a distinction drawn between opinion (who merits the title/what is the meaning of "terrorist") and fact (nails in the bomb directly contradicting a statement of intent). Not that seeking to resolve our differences of opinion is not valuable as well. It's just that fact makes firmer common ground.
For better or worse, Pinch evidently envisions the Times as the National Review of an elite (and very rich!) Left revival (among other things). Putting the kooks on his editorial page does not advance this goal, any more than the apologists in academia do their own similar goals by not only defending, but also celebrating this guy.
Want to know why Obama isn't embracing you? Why didn't Reagan embrace the Birchers and his apologists? Time to employ those celebrated critical thinking skills to the power dynamics of the Ayers case.
Perhaps you're right about the disinfectant effect.
2. What percent of those supporting Ayers have read his book, "Fugitive Days" (dedicated to some cop killers) or his pamphlet, "Prairie Fire" (dedicated to, among others, Robert Kennedy's asassin Sirhan Sirhan)? I suspect few would support Ayers if they had read his book and his pamplet.
3. Are those supporting Bill Ayers also supporting the terrorists who bombed Oklahoma City? The major difference is the bomb Ayers group built to kill others, ended up killing Ayers' group instead of the NCO dance participants they made the bomb to destroy.
Does anyone have evidence Bin Laden build bombs personally?
The fact is that there have been many people with far more extreme and close ties with terrorists who have made good leaders. Yitzhak Shamir, for example (a former *leader* of a self-described terrorist group). I am not saying I would vote for Ayers if he was running for POTUS, but I do think that people complain largely about their political adversaries and look the other way when their friends are even more guilty of such things....
I think that Ayers is a very bad man, and one who seems to have concealed his evil from himself in a thick cloud of bull$#;+. I derive some comfort from the idea that he will, in the great bye and bye, have to explain himself to the One who knows the truth and what is in our hearts.
E. Posner could have written a sensible indictment of Ayers in the style of Matthew Yglesias', but instead opted for talking about the victimhood of buildings. It takes very little imagination to see how it is possible that someone finds Ayers to be a criminal (even a terrorist) without agreeing with Posner's argumentation. But it takes neurodoc no more than cursory glances at comments on a comments thread to come to authoritative conclusions about the relative intelligence of people.
The point I have been making is not about Ayers. It is about Posner and his argument. I pay close attention to reasoning and argumentation (albeit from a disciplinary perspective quite different from that of legal scholars, for whom I have expressed much more contempt in this thread than perhaps I should have), and it is Posner's argument that I find flawed. Whether Ayers is or is not a terrorist is a matter of evidence and facts that I have not studied, but it is also a matter of terminology. Ayers makes a case that distinguishes between certain kind of subversion and what he calls terrorism. (Granted that Ayers may be lying about his actions, but that's not where I am focusing attention, and I am not in a position to judge.) This distinction is meaningful and debatable, and Posner did not do a very good job of articulating an opposite position. The fact that Posner is a noted apologist of state inflicted torture only makes his smug moral superiority much harder to stomach.
What do Posner's views on state inflicted torture have to do with his views of Ayers? If it's just your stomach, who cares? Is this the different disciplinary perspective at work?
Well geez, I don't actually know. Perhaps you could provide some info? I assume you're insinuating he was living in the same house, but that's my speculation based on your reply.
So I wasn't born in the 60s (ok, very late 1969), but from what I hear, "lover" doesn't mean much in some circles. Did they screw once in the name of free love, or were they joined-at-the-hip-no-disagreements-ever? Lot of range in there. My stereotype of an organization like the WU says "even more so".
Hey, articles! Thanks for the pointer. It's something to evaluate. So, Ayers designed the Greenwich Village bombs?
Hm, the tone and cite quality of that article are not exactly convincing. Editorial, not primary source. It repeats the claim that Ayers designed the nail bomb, with no cite to a source. And published a little before the election. You did learn about relative value of primary versus unsourced evidence somewhere along the way in life, right?
Or, do you believe your later quote (Ayers):
The quotes you provide still leave me uncertain about the whole "designer" thing. Ayers pins it on someone else, and there's no actual source identified to the contrary. I'd vote for a non-Ayers source, personally, if I knew one. Ayer's own quotes are highly discountable as self-serving. Play juror here for a minute...
I'm glad I've got something to look at - it beats nothing, which is where I was to start with. I'm open to reading actual information. I'm genuinely curious here. But frankly, there's little more than the same echo chamber-like accusations I read here on the fine VC.
Thanks for the cite to Fugative Days, though I'm not certain that would really be anything more than Ayer's self-serving propaganda. I probably won't bother with that; I'm interested in the sources accusing him of the bad shit he probably did do. That's what I want to evaluate.
Contrary to what some think, Ayers has served *no* time for his crimes. He was exceedingly "lucky" to have his day in court canceled. Ayers calls himself today "a small-c communist." He stated recently, in public, that his *country* makes him puke. Notice, he didn't say his country's *government* makes him puke. His role in the SDS and Weathermen was secretary of education. Today he teaches democracy and social justice to beginning teachers of all subjects. Yes, that includes math and music. Read about "educational debt" as part of Ayers' plan for American education.
It is my understanding that the NYT solicits opinion pieces. If true, Ayers was asked to write. There is no reason for any comment or correction by the paper, regardless of what may have been written earlier on a news page. I'm confident that the NYT will support Obama in every way possible. The fact that Obama was secretive about his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn makes other hidden portions of his past more questionable.
Since Posner's post was about Ayers, it is surprising that so many here seemed not informed about Ayer's past or his present. I am very concerned about Ayer's "small-c communist" influence on education in this country.
"The reins passed years ago from Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, the father, to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the son, and it is under the son that the NYT has gone more pronouncedly in that ideologic direction."
His son is known as "Pinch", in a nod to the father. It is said that greatness skips a generation. Does Pinch have any sons?
Nail bomb
Quote:
... and ...
But hey, Ayers was only a freedom fighter!
I'm trying and failing to find support for the connection between Ayers and the nail bomb.
Can anyone point to the evidence suggesting that Ayers was the designer/planner? Doesn't have to be sworn testimony. Some semi-decent hearsay with modest indicia of reliability would be a good step.
Ayers says the designer was killed. Who is contradicting this self-serving statements? Is there something by, say, other [former] WU members who were in a position to know?
And again, something more than evidence-free, merely accusatory, politically opportunistic editorials. That's no different than Krugman's preaching in the NYTimes. What's the actual evidence that Ayers designed the nail bombs?
I find torture to be repulsive, and I am opposed to it. Having said that, I am well aware that the simplistic moralizing that is frequent among undergraduates and intellectuals generally doesn't work very well in the real world. Torture is evil. Bombing as advocated by Ayers is evil - the idea of targeting people who can not or will not defend or protect themselves because the bomber knows they are easy targets is particularly repulsive. Is there ever a time when one can make a legitimate case for either?
Perhaps. But I do not think that Ayers or any of his supporters have made a logically convincing case for use of terror tactics to end the war in Vietnam, or in the Middle East, for that matter. I am slightly more open to hearing a convincing case from the folks who advocated torture on behalf of the Bush Administration. I haven't been fully convinced by either side in the dispute - the Bush Administration is stuck trying to fight a guerrilla war against terrorists, and it seems willing to cut corners; the opposition seem less concerned with genuine human rights than with ousting the president they voted against. The comments by so many persons on this and other sites who see nothing wrong with Ayers' anti-Vietnam behavior while condemning Bush for killing innocents strike me as disingenuous at best.
As one of those "intellectual lightweights" nonetheless well versed enough in logic to laugh at your silly notion of "implication," I can reassure you that I do not find Posner more loathsome than Ayers. As someone who saw first-hand the nefarious consequences of the idiotic and immoral calculations of leftist guerrilla movements in Central America, I have no sympathy for people like Ayers. But silly arguments like Posner's deserve to be called silly. If what makes Ayers a terrorist is that he is willing to inflict harm and death to innocent buildings at the risk of harming and killing innocent civilians, then surely something not altogether dissimilar can be said of people who advocate the infliction of torture on subjects that, even by the lights of obtuse Volokh commenters, are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Sure, there are circumstances under which even the most despicable actions can be justified. By the power of stipulation, all sorts of aberrations can be justified, no doubt. But it is not the case that I am justifying the actions of Bill Ayers (not the actions he alleges he engaged in, let alone the ones with which other charge him), nor is it fair to call me an Ayer's supporter. The latter would follow if all that were required to qualify as such is to vehemently disagree with Posner and to exhibit moral disgust at his pro-torture stances. But you and I know that disagreeing with Posner and exhibiting disgust for his views hardly amounts to justifying the actions of Ayers.
Puhleez. Either pull your head out of your arse or quit telling us how wonderfully it smells in there. Spare us your sanctimony, your selectivity, your highly truncated views, your short sighted, tendentious arguments and numbers. Firstly, the numbers, the US KIA, are similar to the Korean conflict, wherein South Korea was built up and maintained as an open, democratic society. Also, North Vietnam began a strategic campaign against the South, not vice versa - it began in earnest around Jan., 1960 when:
+ the Ho Chi Minh trail was strategically developed as an infiltration and supply route, roughly between 1956 and 1960
+ now known secret speeches by Ho Chi Minh and other North Vietnamese leaders outlined a large scale strategic offensive against the South
+ orders to military and political front operatives were disseminated throughout the ranks, including orders directing the use of terror and political assassinations against civilian populations - very much in the Marxist/Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist mold
+ ideological front groups were created by the North Vietamese in the south for purposes of destabilization and indoctrination
Those are merely some of the more notable factors that informed JFK's initiative, c. 1961, and later Johnson's greater initiative, notably in 1965. More broadly still, Ho Chi Minh was no mere nationalist, he was a Leninist/Stalinist and Maoist styled Marxist, hence the Cold War as a whole, within Truman's global containment doctrine, rightly serves as broader context.
None of the above is any longer in doubt, though virtually all of it was propagandized by the Left and the New Left of that era. They systematically lied to 1) themselves and 2) to the world at large.
In terms of populations killed, some notable markers from Nobel finalist R.J. Rummel and other documented sources:
+ 283,000 North Vietnamese civilians killed by the North Vietnamese communist regime between 1953 and 1956 as a result of "land reform," "rent reduction" and repressions and other (and without quoting various estimates, these internal purges in the North continued from 1956 through 1975)
+ 400,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by the North during the 1955 to 1975 period
post-April, 1975:
+ a million “boat people,” 125,000 of which died at sea (some estimates are much higher)
+ 65,000 summarily executed in the immediate wake of April, 1975
+ 250,000 varioiusly killed in Stalinist styled gulags and Maoist styled “reeducation” camps in the lengthier wake of 1975
+ 300,000 starved to death in the wake of '75
No absolutely authoritative numbers exist, but those are all researched and documented numbers.
And obviously, none of this is intended to be dismissive of U.S. and other military KIA or similar tragedies and concerns, but the notion it all reduces to the massive bullshit promulgated by academia, Hollywood, the media, by the Left and the New Left of that era and derivative ideological movements continuing to this day is precisely and only that:
MMPB - Massive and Massively Promulgated Bullshit
Guess what? I agree. But the question was formed in response to people claiming, in this very thread, that:
(sbw):
(rosignol):
All emphasis added.
Let me recast the question, then. What's the evidence - from any source who actually knew what was going on, or the FBI, or just about anyone - that he "participate[d] in planning to build and use them" (the nail bombs)?
Query if your formulation of "planning to build" is much different from the "Ayers designed them" bit.
I strongly discount Ayer's claim that he was against hurting people - sounds like spineless post-facto rationalization to me. The problem is that a lot of commentors are assuming facts that are not in evidence.
It would be a lot easier to lambaste Ayers with facts, not unsupport innuendo. I'm trying and failing to find actual facts here. This is a plea for information, not a defense of the idiot, or a name-calling slugfest.
That said, feel free to non-respond by calling me a liberal again if it makes you feel better.
It is always interesting when people call others "naive" rather than actually address the point. I will start slowly:
To believe your argument, one woudl have to believe that Bush, recently elected with a self proclaimed mandate, saw fit to cowtow to the Dems and permit a junior senator with "ties" to a "known terrorist" to have the highest security clearance. Now why, pray tell, would they have risked a breach like that? What woudl they have to gain?
And there are senators who no longer have a security clearance, like Leahy and Shelby, because they could not keep their yaps closed. They simply are not permitted to sit in on highest clearance matters. Obama came in as a junior senator of the minority party. If the Bush administration denied him a clearance, there would have been nothing he could do about it.
Ayers is the dog that did not bite. Whatever their relationship (and Ayers says he did not know Obama that well), it was not enough for the FBI to raise any red flags about in 2004. In my view, that speaks volumes.
"Terry is the one who knows how to build the timer and arm the device. This one was huge, many, many sticks of dynamite stolen from a railroad shed, taped together in a briefcase destined for the army base nearby. It was primed with heavy cotton, PACKED WITH SCREWS AND NAILS that would do some serious work beyond the blast, tearing through windows and walls, and YES, PEOPLE, TOO. This one was huge and WOULD VOMIT DEATH AND DESTRUCTION..."
The bomb described in the previous paragraph was designed, according to Ayers himself, to kill people. Luckily it killed three of the people building it, instead of the people it was designed to kill. Ayers was the leader of the group building the bomb and is responsible for their deaths. Ayers would have been responsible for hundreds of other deaths and injuries if his group had been able to use the bomb on their intended target, instead of blowing themselves up.
Since Ayers admits that his group built the bomb that blew them up, you might wonder what other violent acts his group performed that he doesn't acknowledge.
Ayers now calls himself a pacifist! Even if Ayers hasn't bombed anyone recently, he is NOT a pacifist, he is just a unrepentent, temporarily retired terrorist.
Ayers was living and sleeping with Oughton at the time. In the same house where the bomb was being built. He was also the leader, the one who makes the decisions. What are the chances that he didn't know about the bomb? What are the chances that he had no input in its construction? That he wasn't the one who decided it should be big, should have nails, should do a lot of damage? And if he knew nothing about it, why did he go underground immediately after it exploded?
Crimes can seldom be tied up with a neat yellow ribbon. There are always ambiguities, inexplicable pieces that don't seem to fit. Yet people are convicted on much less evidence than the evidence that Ayers was involved in the bomb, that Ayers had input into its construction, that yes, he designed it to kill lots of people. He himself admits that his good friend Terry (also killed in the explosion) knew how to build the timer and arm the device. But it was almost assuredly being built at Ayers' behest, to Ayers' specifications, for Ayers' purposes.
That's the best I can do having researched the facts. If that isn't good enough, then you're on your own.
Hard to believe people are defending this man's actions. This is the destruction of property paid by EVERY taxpayer. Doesn't that kind of make you mad?
I had someone destroy my property once and I was quite steamed.
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