Ayers: Bombing America Not A Big Deal
Someone should ask Barack Obama point blank: at what point during his 21-year relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers (and to a lesser-documented but no less real extent, Ayer's terrorist wife and Charles Manson fan, Bernadine Dohrn) did Ayers and Obama discuss Ayer's involvement with the Weather Underground, and what was said?
In over two decades of knowing each other and running in Chicago's political cauldron of aging New Left radicals, SDS leftovers, graying Weatherman, Marxist-Leninists, angry activist priests and fringe religions, the "glory days" of the 1960s and 70s must have come up in conversation. Did the bombings ever come up in conversations at one another's homes? Did they ever have side conversations before or after the official business of their many working relationships in the ABCs Coalition, the Woods Fund, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge? Mr. Obama owes us an explanation. For his part, a three-year-old interview in a current Ayer's story fills in part of the puzzle:What a very interesting psychological profile Mr. Ayers must have. Was it "hope" or "love" that led his fellow Weathermen to purchase two cases of dynamite, lengths of pipe, and roofing nails to build anti-personnel bombs? Ayers was the boyfriend of fellow Weatherman bomb-builder Diana Oughten. Oughten was thought to be constructing massive pipe-bombs that used roofing nails for shrapnel in a Greenwich Village townhome, when they accidentally went off. The target of those bombs wasn't to be a statute in an empty park at night. It wasn't a federal building targeted at a time when most employees would have gone home. The anti-personnel bombs she and other Weathermen were constructing were designed expressly to take the greatest human toll possible, and they were to be placed at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey, targeting young soldiers, their wives, their girlfriends. The multiple bombs were built to cause as much loss of life as possible, similar what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold tried to do with their failed propane bombs at Columbine. But the Weathermen never made it to their target of choice. The bombs they meant for innocents detonated as they were being assembled in a townhouse basement, killing terrorists Oughten, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins. Perhaps they would be happy to know that the bombs worked as designed, if prematurely. From the pieces of Oughten they were able to collect after the blast and other evidence, they think Oughten was standing over one of the bombs, perhaps with her hands on it, when it went off. If the Weathermen had been successful in detonating multiple nail-filled bombs a dance filled with off-duty soldiers and their dates, would Bill Ayers still claim that the bombings of his group were " no big deal"? Bloody taffeta and lace and the images of shocked, mutilated survivors would have changed that equation. Just because the Weathermen were spectacularly unsuccessful in their attempts to prepare for mass murder doesn't make them any less vile. Nor does it excuse Barack Obama from consorting with them for over 20 years. Update: Andy McCarthy runs very much a parallel route, Bill Ayers: Unrepentant LYING Terrorist. Due to spammers, comments are closed.
In the interview, conducted three years after the September 11 attacks, Ayers argued the U.S. government had carried out "many other acts of terror ... even recently, that are comparable," and claimed he and his bomb-planting comrades were "restrained" in their actions. Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, served with Barack Obama on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago for three years and helped launch Obama's political career in Illinois by hosting in his Hyde Park home an informal campaign event for the future state senator in 1995. Ayers claimed the Weathermen were driven by "hope and love," not despair, and said he did not think the group's violent acts, targeting federal officials and local law enforcement officers, were "a big deal."
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:19 AM
Comments
1
IMO, Ayers is going to become very prominent in the election soon after BHO is nominated as the Democrats' candidate. And a lot of the Americans that are undecided are going to seriously question BHO's judgment and choice of acquaintances. You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.
Posted by: Penfold at August 27, 2008 09:31 AM (lF2Kk)
2
Well, it took William F. Buckley 48 years to repudiate his support of segregation, Bull Connor and the mobs defending their "folkways and mores" by attacking blacks. So Ayers still has a few years to beat him to the punch.
Posted by: nitpicker at August 27, 2008 11:59 AM (8NiWI)
3
What I cannot figure out is how Obama can possibly qualify for a Top Secret security clearance.
The questionable associations, relatives, and overseas involvements must combine to make him highly ineligible to obtain a top-level security clearance.
As such, he should immediately be disqualified from serving as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
The questionable associations, relatives, and overseas involvements must combine to make him highly ineligible to obtain a top-level security clearance.
As such, he should immediately be disqualified from serving as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
Posted by: Lone Ranger at August 27, 2008 12:13 PM (wrZV5)
4
nitpicker:
Even if what you state wasn't a bald-faced lie (re: Buckley), but the fact that, even in light of what Ayers did, you can't just condemn the man, and his associates, speaks volumes about your (lack of) character.
You can chalk your post up to just one more in the long line of liberal "well, your guys did something bad so so can mine so who are we to judge, nyahnyahnyah" reasoning.
Even if what you state wasn't a bald-faced lie (re: Buckley), but the fact that, even in light of what Ayers did, you can't just condemn the man, and his associates, speaks volumes about your (lack of) character.
You can chalk your post up to just one more in the long line of liberal "well, your guys did something bad so so can mine so who are we to judge, nyahnyahnyah" reasoning.
Posted by: ECM at August 27, 2008 12:14 PM (q3V+C)
5
He didn't think the violence was a "big deal?" Um....I bet Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell would disagree, well, he would if the "Weathermen" hadn't killed him. What a bunch of scumbags!
Posted by: Capitalist Infidel at August 27, 2008 01:45 PM (kNqJV)
6
I've met Ayers before. He's polite, follows academic decorum, and was not carrying explosives as far as I could tell. If you met him, you would think he was just another 60s radical turned professor. I think Barry just didn't pay attention to him beyond the obvious.
Posted by: OmegaPaladin at August 27, 2008 04:11 PM (pT/QE)
7
I was in college in the 1960s and I witnessed the SDS movement which morphed into the Weathermen then the Weather underground. Bill Ayers, Diana Oughten and Bernadette Dohrn weren't sympathetic figures. They were hard, ruthless criminals who terrorized the country. When their Ft Dix bomb detonated prematurely, Diana Oughten got the Darwin award but most of the others wanted to press on. One guy emerges as a tragic figure - Mark Rudd.
Rudd was a young radical who realized they had gone too far. He teaches at a Jr College in California and realizes that the Weathermen were wrong and says so. I hate him for his terrorism but I respect him for realizing what they had done. Ayers and Dohrn are human waste.
Rudd was a young radical who realized they had gone too far. He teaches at a Jr College in California and realizes that the Weathermen were wrong and says so. I hate him for his terrorism but I respect him for realizing what they had done. Ayers and Dohrn are human waste.
Posted by: arch at August 27, 2008 05:14 PM (fKThr)
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