William Ayers and John McCain
Every time I think of William Ayers, I also think of John McCain, because they are of the same era, and they both believed in the efficacy of violence. According to an article in Friday's New York Times, McCain once said of Ayers, "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?" He had to use that "could have or did" because no one knows if bombs Ayers built actually killed anyone -- let's say that the odds are against it. Likewise, no one knows whether the bombs John McCain dropped on North Vietnam ever killed anyone. According to McCain's biography, "With the outbreak of the Vietnam War, McCain volunteered for combat duty and began flying carrier-based attack planes on low-altitude bombing runs against the North Vietnamese. ...On October 26, 1967, during his 23rd air mission, McCain´s plane was shot down during a bombing run over the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi." Let's say, given those twenty-three bombing runs, the odds are for McCain having killed some innocents. How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people, John?
But, of course, John McCain's defense is that he was performing his patriotic duty, and that's what William Ayers would have said, too. I remember the Vietnam War. It was not a war of self-defense that the U.S. had to wage or had to win. It was a war of aggression, a waste of resources, lives, manpower, global good will, and national spirit. And, many would say, it was a war crime. Those who were against it viewed their protests as essential patriotism, a way of correcting terrible choices and profound injustices.
According to the New York Times article, William Ayers' case was thrown out of court because of "illegal wiretaps and prosecutorial misconduct", exactly the sort of activities that will get cases brought against the Guantanamo detainees by the Bush Administration thrown out of court. Deja vu all over again.
In the meantime, what about the case against John McCain? The next time he goes abroad, might some enterprising human rights activist step up to him and put him under a citizens' arrest for war crimes and get him hauled off to the The Hague?
I don't think Barack Obama would like that. As snarky and contemptuous as McCain acts toward Obama, I think President Obama would defend McCain. In fact, I think he would feel about him as he does about Ayers -- he's an old man, and the wars he once fought are over and done with. Time to get past fighting old battles. Sometimes I agree with him. But then McCain brings up Williams Ayers again, and I can't help thinking of those bombing runs, and those dead innocents.
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Sorry, you simply can not compare a person in the US military who is doing his sworn duty with a homegrown terrorist. I don't like McCain and would never vote for him, but I would also not denigrate his service with assertions like this. I was in and out of the Army before the Vietnam war really heated up and was lucky that my reserve unit wasn't called up before receiving my honorable discharge in 1970. If I would have been sent over there, I wouldn't have been happy about it, but I can tell you that anyone who compared me with a leader of the Weather Underground would have a mouth full of false teeth after making such an assertion.
McCain is not presidential material for lots of reasons, but war criminal isn't one of them. I think he's wrong about many things, Iraq in particular, but I would never compare his actions while flying missions over North Vietnam with those of Ayers and the rest of his ilk. I hope that Barack Obama, who will get my vote this November, would respond to the above posting the same way I have. I believe him when he says he has nothing but respect for the members of the Armed Services of this country. Too bad so many of you don't. It's one thing to be a liberal Democrat, which I am, but espousing this sort of nonsense is really out of bounds.
Nice piece. May I suggest an idea for a column? Research the psychological profile of a "fighter pilot." You'll have every answer you need about John McCain. My father was a "fighter pilot," and I'd be scared shitless to have that ego controlling this country!
"He had to use that "could have or did" because no one knows if bombs Ayers built actually killed anyone ..." - you say this as if it justified the making of bombs and / or the threat of using them. And to compare McCain to Ayers is, quite frankly, preposterous. Do you paint anyone who serve this country in time of war with the same paintbrush?
I simply do not understand your thought processes - they seem to end up in wonderland. We can hate war and deplore the death it causes, and choose not to fight them - and cease to exist as a result. As long as man exists, there will be wars. And the young men called to fight and kill in them are not criminals, they are simply doing their duty, for a higher cause, and should be honored for it.
" And to compare McCain to Ayers is, quite frankly, preposterous. Do you paint anyone who serve this country in time of war with the same paintbrush?"
That depends on the war, and on how the soldier went about doing the serving. Sometimes, soldiers betray their nation despite claiming--and probably thinking--that they're serving it.
Ayers was working for a higher cause, PEACE. It is the duty of a citizen when his govt is engaged in war crimes to protest and bring light to it.
IF Ayers was guilty of anything, they would have got him, you know that. He has led a life of respectability and is/was a college professor.
McCain's integrity now is so off-kilter, his integrity back then could have been the same. He has been honored and honored to the point of ridiculousness, excusing his every mis-step forever and ever.
Enough!
You're sick defending Ayers... "Higher cause?" You are delusional, but that seems the practice here.
Gandhi and MLK, jr. had it right: non-violent protest. To all who love Bill Ayers and marvel at his life as a professor, how do you reconcile that he is unrepentant. That's what earns your respect? What if your son or daughter was his victim? Feel the same way then?
My Lai?
Perhaps you recall the trial? BUT, to take your tact, Ayers would be the equivalent of Calley.
These are "Jim Crow," Racist Tactics that John McCain, Sarah Palin and the GOP are now using.
Palin and McCain should be called to Task for making provocative statements like; "He Is Not Like Us."
These Tactics are not going to work. Most Americans are not going to fall for it this time. This is a New Day. A change has already come, Only nobody told John McCain and the GOP.
Some of us, apparently too few, have seen exactly this kind of change before: France- 1789; France - 1871; Russia - 1917; Italy - 1922; Germany - 1933; China - 1949. Among others. Change depends heavily, and most importantly, on one question - Change to WHAT?? "Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it"!!
Some of us may have read books about those transitional periods, but few of us have, "seen, " those from 1917 onward. I think it's safe to say that none of us have seen France in 1871 or 1789, unless you include being required to read Victor Hugo in high school.
Come to think of it, I did see that production of, "Les Miserables," on PBS...
Actually I have never met a domestic terrorist in my life... so he isn't like me.
And wasn't one of Obama's big lines about how he doesn't look like the other guys? So what is it going to be... Obama can say it but if anyone agrees they MUST be a racist... unless of course they disagree, then they are DEFINITELY racists.
Pathetic.
Every time I think of William Ayers, I also think of John McCain, because they are of the same era, and they both believed in the efficacy of violence.
Let's hope Obama is honest enough to share these sentiments with the electorate. I'm sure it would bolster his support just as I'm sure Jane Smiley is a good citizen.
Ms. Smiley consistently tells the truth from her perspective, without fear or favour. Hers may not be a popular point of view, but that makes her no less correct.
You are completely correct, the actions of a military officer carrying out the lawful orders of his superiors is definitely the moral equivalent of a domestic terrorist making war on his own people.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Excellent, Ms Smiley!
MDs I know feel strongly that McCain is afflicted with untreated PTSD and should not be in the postion of President.
Carl Jung warned that if we thought the physical plagues of the Middle Ages were bad, just wait until the psychological plagues of the age to come...
In that light, I'd say a significant portion of the U.S. population is suffering from a kind of PTSD. How else can we make sense of public policy as it is currently constituted?
The premise of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is that our current government is trying to induce more of that PTSD here and abroad. For a little preview, see here Harpers article on which the book was based here: http://harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197.
I've often wondered why the Republicans would want to bring up The Weathermen again. It didn't work out well for them the first time. I'm sure Ayers will do an interview and talk about how he got off because all the evidence obtained by the FBI was done illegally. It will open doors that our current administration and John McCain can't shut.
No. Ayers has admitted what he did in interviews time and again, and he even said he wish he had done more. He bragged about having got off even though he was guilty.
The doors I'm talking about are: warrantless wiretapping, invasion of privacy, and a whole host of issues that have been brought to light during the Bush Presidency.
What happened to Ayers is happening to every day Americans right now. If McCain would like to bring them up I'm sure Obama would be more than happy to talk about our loss of Constitutional rights. It would be great if that was brought out in the national dialogue.
i am anything but a McCain supporter, but honestly, attacks of this sort really debase the political debate...
Partisan attacks, even if designed to counter the opposition's partisan attacks, remove the focus from issues of grave importance (Iraq, Afghanistan, Economy) to trifling issues that do not affect the future of this country in any significant way
Talk about the Keating Five, talk about his support for the war, his lobbyist connection, his Kremlin connections..... these issues are of actual relevance in determining who to vote for. IT would be a stretch to consider Ayers's history and McCain's service in Vietnam as analogous, and even so, it contributes absolutely nothing to this discourse
I agree with housemix. I am strongly an Obama supporter but this article is not helpful to our cause. Saying things that only people already on your side agree with is counter-productive. Say these things in the company of like-minded people, but please don't let others hear them.
We want to win and that requires appealing to people in the middle who, by definition, have views that are different than ours. So we must find arguments that we have in common with them. The best counterattack on the Ayers issue is McCain's Keating 5 five association, especially given the current anger about financial executive malfeasance.
I am getting a little tired of people on our side wanting to be overly aggressive, including those who want Obama to open up and be more aggressive in the next debates. He does not need to appeal to those of us who are already voting for him. He needs to appeal to those who are unsure and that means making careful arguments and attacks on things that matter to them. I want to win!
And it worries me for the long-term beyond this election. If we don't learn to "play the game" instead of insisting on being heard, we will lose more often than we win. We need to act like the Republicans and focus on winning, not stoking our egos by demonstrating how smart we are individually.
I respectfully disagree. Ms. Smiley makes a valid point. And a brave one, considering the current atmosphere where anything related with the US military is treated as heroic and above reproach.
IMO, this article is completely a different genre than the ones trying to tell Obama to be more angry. Those seem to be by people who wish they had the cojones to punch the rethugs in the nose, and are trying to force this desire on Obama, who apparently has a different agenda - probably related to his understanding that his job as president will include having a good working relationship with the rethugs.
We let rethugs define "patriotism" as the willingness to fight whatever war they get us into. Ms. Smiley's article reminds us that war - and the killing it involves - is often reprehensible.
Can't agree. It goes to the judgement of invading Iraq and some of the tactics used in Afghanistan.
We have killed, maimed and dislocated millions in the Middle East, not to mention destroying their cultures, infrastructure and economies.
Ayers was at least directing force at his own country in an attempt to stop this kind of inexcusable violence against other countries where the citizens have even less input or control into their governments actions than we do.
Over the years I have revised the Voyager line.
Forewarning is Futile.
No matter how many ways and times numerous people, from Ike to Jane and the Naomis, tried to warn us about our imperial tendencies, the American politicians and public refuse to believe.
Now we are all going to suffer the consequences economically and otherwise, of our unwillingness to take more responsibility for our self education, votes, and input into the legislative process.
Ginny, get a clue.
Contrary to what you think, your country is not the enemy, and everything your country does is not by it very nature "a bad thing".
There is no need for you to support the current administrations policies, but to give Ayers a free pass is obscene. He is a man who couldn't convince people through a public forum so he resorted to violence against those he disagreed with, When this happens in other countries I am sure you tut-tut them mentally about how uncivilized they are... but when it happens here you pretend they are semi-heroic.
Thank you Ms. Smiley! Have you read the cover story in "Rolling Stone" entitled "Make Believe Maverick" by Dickinson? I enourge you to read this article if you haven't already done so. I hope everyone reads this alarming information about McCain!
Here's the link. And I also ENCOURAGE EVERYONE to read this article. When you get to the end, you will recognize that you knew the not-so-great character of John McCain all along....
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/page/1
It's one-sided, and some of it is false. They talk to people who don't like him, but stangely, they don't talk to any of the people who do like him. For example they quote far leftist Phil Butler (and they call him a classmate, which is false--he was younger). But they don't quote his roommates, who have good things to say about him. The article has no balance at all.
If McCain insists on measuring a man by his abstract associations with criminals, let John McCain be measured by his:
Alan Cranston
Dennis DeConcini
John Glenn
Donald Reigle
Charles Keating.
Those in glass houses, John...
And that doesn't even include his campaign staff of lobbyists.
"..no one knows if bombs Ayers built actually killed anyone"
Actually we do know that. The bombs he set off at the Capitol and the Pentagon killed anyone, but only because he was unlucky.
We also know that the bomb that killed Ayers' girlfriend when it exploded too early was intended to be set off at an NCO dance at Ft. Dix. It was a nailbomb, meant to maximize damage to humans. These wealthy trust fund terrorists were planning to "stick it to the man" by murdering middle-class soldiers.
Sorry, that should read "Pentagon didn't kill anyone"
Is the nail bomb like a cluster bomb that the U.S. has dropped in civilian areas since the end of WWII? I wonder how many Vietnamese, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian civilians have been killed and maimed by our use and our allieds' use of cluster bombs? Thought I'd ask!
"American servicemen are just like terrorists."
Tthis is a point Obama needs to make. It's a sure winner with the electorate...in Iran.
>only because he was unlucky.
What do you mean only because he was unlucky. According to a documentary i saw the Weathermen attempted only to damage property and not injure people.
The bombs typically went off at 2 a.m. after they'd made sure nobody was still in the buildings, like the barbershop in the Pentagon basement, if I recall correctly.
The Ayers "We Were Just Trying To Do Property Damage" Lie [Andy McCarthy]
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDJhM2ViZWVkODIxMGUzOTcxMGJhYmVlODVjZTY1ZGY=
Just to add to the observations of Jonah's reader, I've addressed Ayers' preposterous claim about only wanting to damage property, not kill people, in a prior post — and Jonah has talked about this, too. Anyway, here are the major points from my prior post:
[I]n 1970[,] three of [Ayers'] confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. As noted in Ayers' Discover the Networks profile, the explosive had been a nail bomb. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:
That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."
10/04 12:35 PM
That's right. Compare soldiers sent out on missions to home-grown terrorists who send bombs out to attack their fellow Americans. This incidentally is why much of the left isn't taken seriously.
That's why the right is getting its heinie handed to them.
No, thats not the reason. The reason is we have a candidate we don't want. How he won the primaries I don't know. I guess more inept candidates, and then he runs a bad campaign. Thats why we may lose.
The term smart bomb is an oxymoron when the bomb is part of a stupid strategy or tragic tactics if the dud who uses them is Ayers or McCain.
Wow. What an excellent post, Ms. Smiley, thank you.
It's almost like poetry; you say what cannot be said, in a very short manner, very profoundly and true... Mentioning a potential President Obama taking up for McCain is absolutely right on, but the point that you make about it's what pushes me back all the way from those hate-filled, terrifying days to now.
I remember what Nam did to this country. Not enough people do, obviously. I was 9 years old when my uncle went there as a Marine adviser in '62. When I became of age to go, It was still going strong, with the draft lottery. Since my Uncle served, I was anxious to go ahead and go if my number came up. It was high, so I wasn't called. Then with the waste of lives and treasure, all us young people really had our doubts. It was scary. Hearing to this day Jim Morisson sing about the Unkown Soldier... "Nestled in your hollow shoulder" takes me back to that eerie time. I recomend anyone read the "Pentagon Papers"... It's very clear that no, those against the war actually WERE in their own sense being patriotic, without any doubt. America is better then that.
With your permission, Jane, I'm going to clip this post and save it, make my oldest daughter to read it, save it for my younger daughter and son to read. And that's about the best compliment I can give anyone.
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