for those of you who have been paying attention, it's clear now that Ayers is far more to Obama than just "some guy I know." for those of you too young to remember, this article does a nice job of explaining who and what they were about. if after reading this, you still don't understand why Obama's association w/ Ayers matters, then, to coin a phrase, you really must be "intellectually dishonest." [rquoter]John M. Murtagh Fire in the Night The Weathermen tried to kill my family. 30 April 2008 During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me. In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night. I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS. For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed. Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings. As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.” Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation. At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.” Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I. John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.[/rquoter]
Out of curiousity, do you have a problem with the Univ of Illinois-Chicago employing him, or with any of the various non-profits he has served? Do they all have bad judgement too? Are you concerned by all the thousands of kids who have been taught by him? Do you think he's training a bunch of future terrorists?
I read the part you posted in this thread. It doesn't say anything about the history of Obama's relationship with this guy, or the relationship at all. I'm confused as to how you wrote the above based on the article. It's an article about some kid's disturbing childhood that then throws in a random Obama comment. Makes no sense. What's more, this article is 4 months old. This thread is useless.
well we know the tatic the republicans are going to run with, expect to see jeremiah wright videos at the republican convention, i'm sure the fact that jeremiah was a marine in his youth doesn't matter
I don't know where you were in 1971 but I was was living in a nation that was forcedly conscripting thousands of my peers, shipping them off against their will to be killed and maimed in a war that was never endorsed by the people of the nation and for all practical purposes was never winnable. Wanton disregard for the will of the people by the government should and will induce a response by those who oppose it. The level of response is usually a direct reflection of the tyranny of the state as perceived by the abused. Would the underground ever taken to violence if the state had not acted first? I would never propose violence but anyone who did not resist the War in Viet Nam is not patriotic they were just sheep. I don't want to go back and debate the War in Viet Nam again because it is ancient history. But if the RNC wants to pull this bull***** when it has absolutely no coloration to massive issues involved in the debate of this election; then blind obedience to illogical policy needs to the topic.
Of course its fair to ask but that doesn't mean that there Obama is somehow responsible for Ayers' past. Off the top of my head my recollection is that Obama sits on a board of a charitable non-profit with Ayers that seems like a fairly tenous connection unless you can say that the non-profit has something to do with the Weather Underground or rehabilitating their image.
I'm not old enough to remember this stuff but I have seen the documentary on it all. From what I recall, they went out of they way to make sure people were not in buildings when bombs were set and also from what I recall, the FBI could not prosecute these people because they continually broke the law in the way they went after them. Anyway, from Bill Ayers himself. http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/episodic-notoriety-fact-and-fantasy/ Episodic Notoriety–Fact and Fantasy Day in and day out I go about my business, I hang out with my kids and my grandchildren, take care of the elders, I go to work, I teach and I write, I organize and I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and social justice; now and then (and unpredictably) I appear in the newspapers or on TV with a reference to my book Fugitive Days, a memoir of the revolutionary action and militant resistance to the Viet Nam War—the years of miracle and wonder—and some fantastic assertions about what I did, what I said, and what I believe. The other night, for example, I heard Sean Hannity tell Senator John McCain that I was an unrepentant terrorist who had written an article on September 11, 2001 extolling bombings against the U.S., and even advocating more terrorist bombs. Senator McCain couldn’t believe it, and neither could I. My e-mail and my voice-mail filled up with hate, as happens, mostly men with too much time on their hands I imagined, all of them venting and sweating and breathing heavily, a few threats—“Watch out!”; “You deserve to be shot”; and from satan@hell.com, “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll waterboard you”—all of it wildly uninformed. I’ve written a lot about the Viet Nam period, about politics, about schools and social justice, and I read and speak about all of it. I encourage people to argue, to agree or disagree, to discuss and struggle, to engage in conversation. I believe deeply in the pedagogical possibilities of dialogue—of listening with the possibility of being changed, and of speaking with the possibility of being heard—and I believe in revitalizing the public square, resisting the eclipse of the public and expanding the public space, searching for a more robust and participatory democracy. Talking to one another can help. So in that spirit here is another attempt at clarity: 1. Regrets. I’m often quoted saying that I have “no regrets.” This is not true. For anyone paying attention—and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways—life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough.” This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings. The illegal, murderous, imperial war against Viet Nam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese, a disaster for Americans, and a world tragedy. Many of us understood this, and many tried to stop the war. Those of us who tried recognize that our efforts were inadequate: the war dragged on for a decade, thousands were slaughtered every week, and we couldn’t stop it. In the end the U.S. military was defeated and the war ended, but we surely didn’t do enough. 2. Terror. Terrorism—according to both official U.S. policy and the U.N.—is the use or threat of random violence to intimidate, frighten, or coerce a population toward some political end. This means, of course, that terrorism is not the exclusive province of a cult, a religious sect, or a group of fanatics. It can be any of these, but it can also be—and often is—executed by governments and states. A bombing in a café in Israel is terrorism, and an Israeli assault on a neighborhood in Gaza is terrorism; the September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, and the U.S. bombings in Viet Nam for a decade were acts of terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause—the Union fight in the 1860’s was just, for example, but Shernan’s March to the Sea was indefensible terror. I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently. 3. Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good—must win. We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary. We need to bring our imaginations together and forge an unbreakable human alliance. We need to unite to transform and save ourselves as we fight to change the world and save humanity.
no one is suggesting obama is responsible for ayers' past. however, he is responsible for his own present day associations, wright, ayers, rezko, etc, some of whom have a view of this country that is profoundly at odds with what most people would describe as "patriotic" or"love of country". ayers in particular- the man's a terrorist. if obama sat on a board with KSM, would it be any different? imho, no.
I'll repeat: Do you have a problem with the Univ of Illinois-Chicago employing him, or with any of the various non-profits he has served? Do they all have bad judgement too? Are you concerned by all the thousands of kids who have been taught by him? Do you think he's training a bunch of future terrorists?
If you're not endorsing fire bombing judges houses, which is what this case is about, then your response isn't really relevant to the discussion. It sounds like you're trying really hard to be an apologist for the weathermen without actually saying so. Someone isn't untouchable because an academic institution employs them. In fact, academic institutions will often employ those who have more radicalized views for effect. That doesn't necessarily translate into something desirable for someone in the position of Obama. I'm not sure the extent of his relationship, but if Ayers is an adviser then yes it should be an issue, especially since he's never recanted or apologized (CometsWin's post above just proves the point).
What does his age at the time the bombings happened matter? What was Obama's age in 2001 when Ayers declared that he was not sorry and wished he had done more? The people on the Titanic felt a little rumble in the ship, just kind of a sideswipe scrape, but the entire mighty ship sank from that little scrape. This thing is probably going to be the iceberg which sinks Obama's presidential aspirations. Not like it makes all that much difference anyway - McCain is no great conservative either, so we all lose either way regardless.
It's more than sitting on a board with the guy. He's also given speeches with him and he launched his political career from Ayers' home in 1995. Obama also described their relationship as "friendly". I don't feel comfortable with a Presidential candidate having this sort of relationship with an unrepentent terrorist. This is a legitimate campaign issue, not a smear job. With a candidate as inexperienced as Obama, who he potentially chooses to surround himself with in his Administration is extremely relevant.
