Bill Ayers and what isn’t being talked about

 

Bill Ayers Today.

 

 

 

It is highly unfair and misleading to insinuate again and again (as both McCain and Palin have) that Obama is friends with terrorists because of his association with Bill Ayers.

I’m just your average person on the street, not quite a Palin “hockey mom” or “Joe six pack”, but more like that than, say, a John Cage, but the little that even I know about Bill Ayers and the Weathermen  is enough to be angry about the intentionally misleading nature of McCain and Palin’s remarks.  Here is the parts left out about Bill Ayers:
1. Bill Ayers intentionally avoided taking anyone’s life. His community of political protesters, the Weathermen, were no doubt radical folks, but to use the same term for them that we use for someone like Bin Laden is crazy.  The Weathermen destroyed government property.  Not a good idea.  Wrong? Absolutely.  Violent? yes. But a different act ethically than murder.  Early on in the Weathermen’s career, Ayers’s girlfriend was killed while she was assembling a bomb.  This impacted the whole movement profoundly and from that point forward they intentionally avoided loss of life, even meticulously tracking movements of night-shift watchmen to avoid any harm to them.  The bombs went off in the middle of the night when the buildings were vacant and no one was ever killed by the Weathermen according to the documentary the Weather Underground.  PLEASE do not hear me saying that this behavior is in any way acceptable, but we shouldn’t describe it in the same terms as modern terrorism, especially not since 9/11. The Weathermen’s actions were seen as political protest, al be it unethical political protest, but not terrorism.

2. Bill Ayers was a product of the late 60’s, early 70’s.  If anything, Palin should claim that Obama knows someone who did some crazy @#$% in the 60’s and 70’s.  Do you know anyone who did crazy things in the 60’s and 70’s? Because almost everyone was. Including, the FBI, who, without trial, executed Fred Hampton in his bed in 1969.  That, also, was an act of terrorism in some sense, and yet we do not claim that political figures who knew FBI agents are pals with terrorists.  So, again, the Weathermen were wrong, but this time period was seen by many young radicals as revolutionary. As a follower of Jesus, I strongly condemn the use of violence on behalf of the weathermen or the FBI or any so called revolutionary.  All I’m saying is that we must understand the moment that Bill Ayers found himself in historically and not compare him with modern terrorism. 

3. Bill Ayer’s is now a respected professor who won the award for outstanding citizenship in Chicago in 1997.  He and his wife of many years, Bernadine Dohrn, (I’m not sure how many, but over 20 I think) served their time for their wrong and illegal actions (only around 2 years since loss of life was not involved) and have since been upstanding citizens, raising 3 successful children, serving as educators at top universities, and engaging in politics non-violently.  

4. As the press has pointed out, Ayers and Obama are not close. They served on a board for a charity organization and had a meet-and-greet that Ayers and his wife hosted.  They aren’t BFF.  The Ayers/Dohrn family are democratic supporters who live in Obama’s neighborhood.  I would guess that many democrats from Chicago, if not, Democrats in all of Illinois, have distant connections to this family.  This is no more a news story than any Republican candidate having a distant connection to, say, Kenneth Lay (which many do).

So if Palin and McCain are to be truthful they need to say something like,

“Barack Obama is not friends with terrorists as we currently understand terrorism.  He distantly knows a guy who destroyed some government offices and did various crazy stuff in the late sixties, but has since become a well-respected, law-abiding citizen who donates much time  to charitable causes, has been married to the same woman for 20 years, and enjoys his 3 grown children. Furthermore, we only brought this whole thing up because we figured that most americans won’t take the time to actually look into the facts. Since we’ve already worked to convince middle-America to fear Obama through lies in mass emails and by highlighting his different sounding name and his biological tie to Muslims, and, since, you know, he’s black, we figured that most Americans are racist enough for this “friends with terrorists bit” to sound plausible.  Also, it is more fun than talking about boring old healthcare reform.” 

If you want to learn more about the Weathermen, hear long interviews with Ayers and Dohrn, and the FBI agents who investigated them, I refer you to the documentary “The Weather Underground.”  Especially watch the special features where, in extended interviews, you see Dohrn and Ayers are clearly wresting with the ethical implications of their actions.

Update: This link leads to Obama’s take on Ayers.

Tags: Bill Ayers, lies, McCain, Obama, Palin, politics, Terrorism, The Weathermen