Concerned over Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection?
Recently, I was told that one of the reasons Barack Obama would not be considered for President was because:
Obama announced his candidacy for President in William Ayers’ home: False, “Springfield, Illinois (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama stood before a cheering crowd in his home state Saturday and announced he will seek the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.” “… the first-term senator addressed thousands packed into the Springfield, Illinois, town square on a chilly day in America's heartland.”
Ayers was the founder and head of the Weather Underground Organization: True, Ayers was a 1960s-era political activist and co-founder of the Weather Underground.
He is a criminal convicted of terrorism: False, he was never convicted of a crime.
In the Vietnam zeitgeist of the late 60’s, I encountered the Weathermen. It was at a demonstration in protest of the Vietnam War that the National Action Coalition (NAC), and of which the Weathermen had joined for this protest, had organized at the MIT laboratory, located on Osborne street, just down the street from a Polaroid satellite unit where I was a manager. It was a protest against MIT’s “imperialist war research.” NAC announced that “We are people engaged in a struggle to win withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam.”
Earlier in the day, MIT and the community were told that the Coalition was taking extensive measures to insure that all members of the Coalition, including the Weathermen, will maintain the Coalition discipline and not initiate violence. NAC did not intend, however, to permit police to arrest demonstrators without resistance.
Police briefed Polaroid personnel that they might expect forceful entrance by the Weathermen into our facility where they would cause chaos and havoc, use offensive behavior and language, throw punches at people and urinate on the floor or on tables. This never happened.
The NAC came well organized, and the demonstration turned out to be anything but peaceful. Cambridge and State Police units threw canisters of gas (I saw the smoke, but I assume it was probably tear gas) at them, came in with clubs, dogs, and Gestapo tactics. You would think you were in Nazi Germany. Police marched with arms linked in full battle regalia, boots and all, after breaking up the demonstration, down Osborne Street to clear the street. The police were in such a mindset and adrenalin induced hyperactive furor that they would have trampled and beat-up anyone who stood in their way. The police were more of a problem than the demonstration, and their warnings to us stirred up a lot of unnecessary fear and resentment.
I do not support violent action, but do support non-violent action. I believe if it were not for such violent as well as non-violent action Vietnam would have gone on and on, and we may even be fighting in that conflict today. Who really knows?
Nevertheless William Ayers was a man who stood up and took action for what he strongly believed.
The Washington Post: “There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, ‘I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough.’”
Bill Ayers responded to the “We didn't do enough,” statement, a sound bite echoing ad nauseam through the media.
He says: "It's impossible to get to be my age and not have plenty of regrets. The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.
"During the Vietnam war, the Weather Underground took credit for bombing several government installations as a dramatic form of armed propaganda. Action was taken against symbolic targets in order to declare a state of emergency. But warnings were always called in, and by design no one was ever hurt.
"When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough …. But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement; it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'”
"The war in Vietnam was not only illegal, it was profoundly immoral, millions of people were needlessly killed. Even though I worked hard to end the war, I feel to this day that I didn't do enough because the war dragged on for years after the majority of the American people came to oppose it. I don't think violent resistance is necessarily the answer, but I do think opposition and refusal is imperative.”
It is possible that "William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton." --Former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson, The Huffington Post, Feb. 16, 2008.
I certainly hope not.
