So you want Bill Ayers to go away? And you choose to promote that cause by jumping into a page by page argument about what a bad guy he was 40 years ago? This is contributing to a useful national discussion -- how?

Have to disagree, after listening to months of republican bile against him, does he not have the right to present his side of the story as he sees it. Now we may not agree with his view of it, but his side is probably just as valid as the republican distortions, this is still a democracy isn't it, barely I realize but we still retain some traces of it.

Bill Ayers is certainly a reprehensible man, but at least everyone but him will admit it. Henry Kissinger is far more reprehensible, but he's treated like royalty. You'd think killing a few million innocent people would get you into trouble. Apparently not.

The NY Times article linked to here has a lot more depth and nuance than this rant. People are capable of outgrowing the mistakes of their youth, and it would seem that Ayers did.

The way to stop playing a role in a "profoundly dishonest drama" into which you've been "unwillingly thrust" is to go home and be quiet. Once you've told yourself you never hurt anyone, it's pointless to tell everyone else. Especially when you know you're lying.

Hilzoy rightly feels the need to respond to Ayers' appearance in NYT, and likely wouldn't bring this up otherwise. The whole article may be more nuanced, but what unrealistic things Ayers says now are game.

Also, it is true that the excesses of that ca. 1970 Left helped conservatism gain support. That sort of conduct ironically helps the Establishment (well, some revolutionaries admit that directly by saying they want to provoke reaction by the Bourgeoisie/State to aid even stronger counter-reaction.) Yet in most cases, as in the USA, it simply makes progressives look kooky and helps conservatives get elected.

We should never again make that "No enemies on the Left" mistake.

Bill can give up this game. He might as well get used to public scrutiny.

For the next four years (at least), Republicans will bring up his name as often as humanly possible to claim Obama is a terrorist lover. They can't help themselves, and they won't try to stop - it's who they are!

Hilzoy wrote: "Now he should do the decent thing and leave us in peace."

In fact, before the Republican Party decided to make Bill Ayers a character in the election campaign that Ayers quite rightly calls a "profoundly dishonest drama", Mr. Ayers had "left us in peace", and had not only done "the decent thing" but had done many decent things.

He had become a professor, a leader in education reform and a highly respected citizen of Chicago. He had been given a "citizen of the year" award by the city government. He had served (with Obama) on a prestigious educational reform board established by a foundation headed and funded by prominent Republicans, in which capacity he advocated progressive educational policies for the benefit of disadvantaged children.

The former federal prosecutor who prosecuted Ayers for his Weatherman activities wrote in a letter to the NYT that although he had very much wanted a conviction (the case against Ayers was dismissed due to the use of illegal wiretaps by the government to obtain evidence) he was pleased to see that Ayers had become a productive, contributing member of society.

I was of draft age during the Vietnam War and I participated in numerous protests, and marched in the streets of DC with hundreds of thousands of other peaceful protestors during the years-long effort to bring an end to that vicious, ruthless, monstrous, criminal war based on sickening lies. Plenty of people were imprisoned, brutalized or killed for nonviolently opposing the war.

I rejected the violence of the Weatherman and similar groups then and I reject it now. However, if more of us back then had taken "revolutionary rhetoric" much more seriously, I think the world would be, and would have been for the past 40 years, a better place.

the best way to describe bill ayers is "unrepentant domestic terrorist." That is exactly what he is.

To the comments above: useful national discussion about what? whether it's okay for Bill Ayers to try to blow up a bunch of soldiers and their family at a dance? whether this guy is anything more than some obscure, aging, former idiot revolutionary who now spends his time mowing the lawn and writing books on education, and who is known to us only because of his extremely tenuous connection with the President? What, exactly, should we be discussing?

hilzoy is right. Bill Ayers, shut up and go away. we don't care, we don't want to talk about you anymore, we hope that we never think about the Weather Underground ever again.

I think this is bizarre as well. It's one thing to fact-check the op-ed but another to treat Ayers as if he was some kind of attention whore who refuses to go away. It's not like he asked to become a Republican meme, and he deliberately waited until after the election to defend himself (unlike Reverend Wright). So I think he deserves to have his say (however self-serving it might be) before sinking back into obscurity.

I'm actually for hearing straight from William Ayres mouth - it drove me nuts how every reporter in DC was talking about the close knit relationship between Wright and Obama without bothering to interview the guy. Then Moyers interviews him and it turns out he despises Obama. How can the most controversial man in America not get interviewed?

Getting into a debate over how bad Ayers was in the 1960s replays the right-wing frame of this issue and isn't going to do much good. Denounce Ayers all you want, as someone above points out, the charge that Dems "pal around with terrorists" won't go away even if Ayers had been in the Young Americans for Freedom instead oft eh Weather Underground. Republicans have so many liberal bogeymen in their arsenal that were we able to get all them to shut up and be quiet, well, we'd all be quiet.

What a crock of crap. When quoting Ayers rhetoric you conveniently left out "..."The rhetoric was excessive because the times were excessive," says Ayers. "The war had escalated, so naturally the language escalated. No one thought I meant that literally.">>>"

Wow man, can you dig it? Have you forgotten or are you just not old enough to have lived during that period. Crazy wording ruled from song lyrics to everyday conversations and only conservative straight people didn't get it...always trying to make something out of nothing to demonize everyone as traitors who disagreed with the military industrial complex. Billboards on the strips of people with afros saying "Beautify America...Get a Haircut".

Ayers op-ed reads like the truth. Your hit piece reads like prejudiced, biased, unsupported bullshit. Do you even remember "Four Dead In Ohio" yet you have the nerve to call Ayers membership terrorist based on your suspected and implied idea of his "Intentions".

You demonize something you have no idea of or experience of besides what you've been told. You belong to the "America...Love it or Leave it" crowd by your ass-hump-sons. You really believe this shit. You demonize the whole group because of the actions of three or four people. Your judgment sucks. Our revolutionary founders were just terrorists and if insurgencies ever became necessary to restore constitutional America...you can not be trusted.

Watching all your friends die, forced to fight against their will, and keeping score on TV and you call Ayers a terrorist??? You really disappointed me anyway who was willing to do almost anything to stop that insanity. Or as General Westmoreland said on his death bed..."It was just a war to test weapons and make money".

Ayers did nothing wrong and never set out to harm innocent people. Today, you can only protest war from an approved out of sight cage or a licensed parade. Only disgruntled police can battle in a Police state. You sound like a wingnut Hilzoy...for the first time since I've been reading you. Right wing talking points and propaganda smearing of Ayers behavior from 40yrs ago really showed your ass. Really...assumptions of intentions and motivations and biased interpretations of the facts. Yep...wingtard tactics.

Vincent: you may be right. Personally, I expect Mr. Ayer's mug to now start popping up on CNN and MSNBC and the Huffington Post. but if he actually does go away, then fine, the guy has the right to defend himself.

i really hope this is the last time we hear about him.

Never set out to harm innocent people? How about the soldiers and their families he and his lovely cronies were going to try to blow up when they actually succeeded in blowing themselves up? And putting a bomb in a building always runs the risk of killing or injuring a human being who happens to be in that building - for example, people cleaning it after hours.

I remember that era, including "Four Dead in Ohio," and the idea that the Weathermen were okay except for "three or four people" is also a crock of crap. I still have Weather Underground newspapers from that era, and they were calling for a violent revolution in the U.S.

How was this supposed to end the Vietnam War?

Bill Ayers is very careful in what he writes now in the New York Times - he wasn't so careful in 2001 when his book, "Fugitive Days" was published, or when an interview with him was published on September 16, 2001 in the NYT Magazine. At that time he said that the Weathermen hadn't done enough - specifically bombing - to end the war.

See this URL for more information - http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/search?q=ayers

And by the way, why is it relevant that Kissinger is worse than Ayers? Are we conducting a seminar to determine the worst person in the world? No, we're specifically discussing Bill Ayers and his dishonest self-exculpation.

The best defense against Lyndon Johnson and the liberal mafia was Yippiedom.

No particular brief for Bill Ayers, then or now. However, he was just a tool in a profoundly dishonest attempt to bring down Barack Obama through guilt by association and ad hominem. Whatever crap Ayers tried to pull decades ago (or recently in an op ed), the reason we are talking about him now is that lots of extremely slimy characters were trying desperately to cling to power, and were willing to say or do anything in order to make that happen.

Whatever you may think of Ayers, he's not any sort of threat to peace and the common weal these days. The same can't be said for the people who tried to use him during the 2008 campaign.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

I have substantially more respect and admiration for Ayers than I have for any of the mindless sheep who did NOTHING to oppose the Viet Nam war.

The people put in jeopardy by the weathermen were no more, or less, innocent than the Vietnamese villagers who woke up to bomb blasts and the sloppy feel of their own guts spilling onto their legs.

I just wish the weathermen had been more deliberate in their vilence: A good car-bomb in Kissingers Limo would have been both morally defensible and much more effective.

The commenters who say the Establishment did awful things too are right but that doesn't mean criticism of Ayers is disallowed. Yet balancing Ayers against the depredations of the State and private powers now and then would indeed be helpful. I think we can have it both ways.

Hilzoy, I think you're pretty banal in your reaction to Bill Ayer's op-ed. Maybe you weren't around in the 60s to witness the monstrous carnage of the Vietnam war, or to experience the draft, or the deceit and illogicality on which the project was based, but if you were, or had been, you would certainly appreciate the frustration, fury and indignation felt especially by young people in whose name the obscenity was being perpetrated. That's no excuse to engage in violence as a form of protest, but it is understandable. Protest was massive and global and almost entirely peaceful. In the end it won through and the war ended.

As a young idealist, Ayers got caught up at the extreme end of the protest spectrum. That was unfortunate. However, he was not guilty of any actual act of violence, and has since progressed to make a respectable contribution to society. That you should demean that is narrow and unbecoming of you.

I believe you knew, as well as most of us, that the guilt-by-association tactic of the Republicans during the election was hyped-up fabrication symptomatic of their desperation. They had to find some attack to compensate for the policy vacuum at the heart of their doomed campaign. That Ayers was thrown into the spotlight is no fault either of his or Barack Obama's.

Now I cannot really believe that you were never even slightly curious to know how Ayers himself was experiencing his sudden unwelcome defamatory prominence. I was, and I also understood why, as Ayers put it, he 'saw no viable path to a rational discussion' at the time his name was being used in a futile attack on Obama's campaign. So, while I don't expect he'll have any need or occasion to return to the topic (which I understand is what you wish), I am genuinely glad to read what he has to say about such a peculiar role he was given in the election of a new president.

Seriously, are you telling us that you have no interest in that whatsoever?

All of this happened 16 years before I was even born. How is it even relevant today?

Amen Hilzoy! I can't believe anyone would defend Ayers. He would be in jail now if it wasn't for a crooked prosecutor. His rich Daddy paid for him to be accepted back into society. How many kids from the 60's weren't so lucky?

Shut up Bill. Being castigated by the likes of O'Reily is a small price to pay for your crimes.

See, this is why we can never have a conversation about Vietnam.

I don't know how old you are, Hilzoy, but I wonder if you are old enough to remember the sixties. I am (barely, ahem), and you cannot begin to equate anti-war protesters, however radical, with people who fly planes into buildings.

You know how unpopular the war in Iraq is - you see what shattered wrecks it makes of our fighters. But the casualties are a tiny fragment of the number of dead and destroyed in Vietnam. If the war in Iraq had a quarter of the destruction of american lives (because we sadly have never cared about non-american lives), the US would be engulfed in flames by now, because we're just not prepared to take that kind of shit from the government any more. And the fact that we are not going to take it can be traced directly back to the student protests of the sixties and seventies.

I am vaguely reminded of young women today who deny they owe anything to the 'feminazis' and 'bra-burners'.

"And by the way, why is it relevant that Kissinger is worse than Ayers? Are we conducting a seminar to determine the worst person in the world?"

It isn't really. The point I was alluding to is that the evil people from the liberal side get treated as evil, and rightly so. But the evil people from the conservative side get treated as visionary heroes. Apparently, if you're conservative, you are always above reproach. Why is that? There are plenty of evil people on the conservative side, but only David Duke ever gets called evil. Hell, most conservatives will still defend Joe McCarthy.

The Ayers stuff is sort of like listening to a guy who got a hybrid pardon. Half from the botched up government that could not indict him and the other half from the hyper drive media that will not let go, Hannity, Limbaugh and others. For me I hope the media always tracks this guy.

My reasons are personal and very selfish. And yes for the chance to offer fair play folks there are dynamical analogies to what Ayers has done in respect to similar things Bush did. Deep association’s that Bush and Company have endorsed, made deals, played game with , and likely profiteered substantially over the years done with a sophistication in money, power, and Congressional games. Corruption of the fairest kind mirror on the wall Bush is the fairest of them all.

Actually very likely Bush and his profiteering caused considerably more damage in a wider scale with a depth that makes Ayers look like a simpleton. That includes the ability to get people killed, murdered, blow up stuff, and out, and out lie doing it. Those in the know Media types like Hannity know the very reason to smear Ayers and connect Obama throws a lot of noise over some interesting activities going way back to Grand pa Bush H.W, Bush tinkering with Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, and later through the Carlyle Group obnoxiously made Screwy Louie deals via good friend confidant long time weasel profiting buccaneer, Stephen L. Norris. All very Google-able. Or gulliable?

The real juicy stuff Mr. Norris acted as a principal financial advisor to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Kingdom Holding Company, in structuring and negotiating the re-capitalization of Citibank. Pretty neat Huh? Blows me away, and now we give them billion more for being stupid. America is really stupid to believe this bail out stuff. What we need is a lot of Rachel Maddow holy mackerel stuff here.

The juicy part of the Bush profiteering drama always converges on the Bin Laden family which is the famous group that brought America the master mind of 911 Osama Bin Laden. It baffles me to no end why this retched and toxic close friendship is not discussed in detail in the media? Answers they, the media are in on it too, are key players in the profiteering scheme. Like the media would be getting drunk and barfing all over each other if, any or all of that relationship was exposed. That’s why I laugh at those interviewing clips that suggest how history will tell that George Bush will be a great president.

The whole Bush family as witnessed by the huge majority of Americas now realizes they are the biggest conglomeration of crap ever brought forward to public serve.

I don't know about ayers, but sure wish that "joe the plumber" just goes away FOR GOOD!

"I don't know about ayers, but sure wish that "joe the plumber" just goes away FOR GOOD!"

Amen, brother.

"All of this happened 16 years before I was even born. How is it even relevant today?"
Posted by: will on December 6, 2008 at 6:18 PM

Good God...because all of history is not about YOU, Will. Are you seriously asking why the events of the past have any relevance because you weren't "born yet?"

Arachnae - you have it right. But I think for those who are too young to have lived through this time, and only have Iraq I, Panama or even Afghanistan or the current Iraq war for perspective, the anger that drove people like Ayers is not understandable to them. By the time the Vietnam war was finally over, the U.S. had lost 58,000 troops, had triple that many injured, and Vietnam had millions of dead and injured.

As a young idealist, Ayers got caught up at the extreme end of the protest spectrum. That was unfortunate. However, he was not guilty of any actual act of violence, and has since progressed to make a respectable contribution to society. That you should demean that is narrow and unbecoming of you.

Whoa there, lil fella. "Extreme end of the protest spectrum"??? Are you prepared to swallow that kind of a characterization from a Klansman who says the same thing about James Earl Ray? A little perspective, please. Let's be clear: it's "unfortunate" if a teenager sprouts a blazing carbuncle in the middle of his forehead on the night of the junior prom. It's diabolical when somebody makes nail bombs and targets them at people.

Hilzoy is dead on. When Ayers talks about "profoundly dishonest drama" he is missing that beam in his own eye. He and his friends never did get it that when you make war against war, you are really just making war - and he still doesn't.

"Half from the botched up government that could not indict him"

Actually the Feds did indict him. They just couldn't get a conviction. Which is really surprising, the Feds almost always win. Part of it is that they hire the best and brightest. But the real reason the Feds usually win is that they have a much lower case load than you're typical DA. They have more time to build their case. That they couldn't build one against Ayers is simply astonishing. The federal attorneys that worked on that case should hang their heads in shame. Ayers was guilty as sin, how do you lose that case?

Hey Hilzoy, lazy demonizing and ripping quotes way out of context is just as unattractive when it's done by a liberal. And baseless insinuations that the Greenwich Village explosion wasn't really an accident? Classy.

But I think for those who are too young to have lived through this time, and only have Iraq I, Panama or even Afghanistan or the current Iraq war for perspective, the anger that drove people like Ayers is not understandable to them.

And sadly, this extends to also not understanding what drives young men and women into extremist groups. So it is now de riguer to speak of radicalized Muslims as 'evil' (even Obama is guilty of this) and ignore the circumstances that created them so we don't have to feel the least little bit culpable.

I'm not excusing, for example, the Mumbai shooters, but you can't talk about dealing with that particular terror without admitting that the Indian Muslim minority has decades, or centuries, of legitimate grievances against the Hindu majority. In France, the disaffected burn cars and riot in the streets. If they are left out of the system another generation or two, expect them to grow their own Tim McVeighs and Keibolds and Harrises. The recent Mumbai attacks, imo, were not India's '9/11' as many have claimed, but India's Columbine, or Oklahoma City. A wake-up call, to be sure, but we have to make sure we're not just using it as another excuse for war profiteering, as the bushies did with 9/11.

The protesters of that era were breaking new ground every day. Every step they took was going down a road for the first time. So it was inevitable that some would go too far, but it was more out of innocence and idealism than anything else. I can forgive that.

But those who planned and carried out terrorism in the name of the US military machine were entirely different. They are still around today, too, you know. Those bastards I don't forgive.

Fostert, I think there was a little thing called illegal wiretapping to gather the evidence against Ayers....

The sort of stuff that used to get evidence thrown out of being admitted at trial. Because it was, y'know, illegal.

It's a bold and thought-provoking post to find on a blog like this, so thanks Hilzoy.

I was around during that time, and I don't think violence as a means to end violence is morally justified nor do I think it's what ended the war.

What a horrible time in our history. But we have lots to learn and putting a sanitized spin on things does not help enlighten or educate in the slightest. Seems like a missed opportunity and rather opportunist of him to exploit this now.

It's kinda sweet that Hilzoy and some of the commenters here have never had to undergo the stresses of a major illegal war, with a full scale draft sending troops to destroy a society that had nothing to do with us.

And why is it that Hilzoy and some other have never had to experience this? Because 500,000 young American men went to Canada to avoid the draft. Because others went to prison. Because hundreds of thousands of people marched and demonstrated. And above all, because the Vietnamese never gave up their struggle for freedom.

And who are the real terrorists? Well, the US government never stopped sponsoring terrorism. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia- all nations where we helped install dictators who killed hundreds of thousands. Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua- add a few hundred thousand more killed by death squads we sponsored. Afghanistan, where we sponsored the "freedom fighters" who murdered all the female nurses and teachers. Heck, I'm not even going to dredge my memory for the murderers we sponsored in an effort to prop up apartheid South Africa. And of course the murders go on in Colombia and Haiti and probably in other places I've just lost track of because after an entire lifetime of keeping count you get tired and disgusted by it.

So, you say you think Bill Ayers was a terrorist? If that's what you're saying, I think you really just haven't grasped how it works. But that's an understandable mistake when people haven't faced any real challenges in their life. Stick around, you may still get a chance.

"Maybe you weren't around in the 60s to witness the monstrous carnage of the Vietnam war, or to experience the draft, or the deceit and illogicality on which the project was based, but if you were, or had been, you would certainly appreciate the frustration, fury and indignation felt especially by young people in whose name the obscenity was being perpetrated. That's no excuse to engage in violence as a form of protest, but it is understandable."

I was born in 1959, but I was always interested in politics, so I followed a lot of this, demonstrated when I was a kid, etc. I do remember it. It's because I remember it that I mind the people who trashed the movement.

Having been furious and frustrated about the war in Vietnam, I find fury and frustration completely comprehensible. Likewise, after 9/11 I find the desire to protect our country comprehensible, since I share it. But in exactly the same way that I say: that doesn't excuse torture or extraordinary rendition, I also say: the fury and frustration about Vietnam does not excuse the Weathermen. Having good motives does not absolve anyone of the need to think about the means they use.

I did not mean to insinuate that the Greenwich Park explosion was not accidental. I meant: when they (accidentally) blew themselves up, they were planning to kill a lot of people, specifically all those non-commissioned officers and their dates for whom they were preparing nail bombs.

I, too was around during that time - in college in DC, no less. After the radicals like Ayers became prominent in the anti-war movement most people I know stopped going to demonstrations because they did not want to be associated with violence. The radicalization of the movement strengthened the right by scaring the American public. The has effectively right used this fear as a weapon against Democrats for years.

As for not hurting people, some of Ayers associates were also involved in a Brinks robbery during which three men were murdered. Ayers wife refused to testify against one of the participants.

The federal government had essentially declared war on the anti-war movement, so it shouldn't be surprising that they fought back to some extent. Focusing on the "harm" done by somebody like Bill Ayers has the inevitable effect of minimizing the extraordinary criminality of the people they were fighting.

Somebody like John Kerry, who by his own admission participated in war crimes in the service of the reprehensible invasion of Vietnam, did much more despicable things as a young man than Bill Ayers. So if you want to condemn Ayers, fine. I hope you would apply the same standards to somebody like Kerry.

What a remarkably stupid set of comments by hilzoy. Ayers did important things back then, and there was a lot of shit going down. Of course, it isn't important that 51,000 men died in Vietnam, that the war was sucking us dry, and Ayers tried to stop the war? What was important, according to this idiot Hilzoy, is that there was a riot?

Try to learn, Hilzoy. You are clearly young and very stupid.

"I think there was a little thing called illegal wiretapping to gather the evidence against Ayers"

Yeah, but any federal prosecutor should know it was illegal. They were just stupid to do it. And they didn't even need to do it. They could have made a case through legal means. But that won't happen again. There's no such thing as illegal wiretapping now. It's all legal now. That's why I make sure that the statute of limitations has run out on any crime I'll admit to on the internet or on the phone. I did the distribution of LSD across state lines thing, but with The Dead being dead, it's hard to get Sandoz recipe anymore. So I'm out of that business. And the statute of limitations has run its course.

Just a few bombs in empty buildings. No bigee. What could have possibly gone wrong? Lighten up.

And Ayers comrades who went boom? Sure, they lived on a crowded street, and might have conceivably have killed a few of their neighbors.

But you can't make scrambled eggs without cracking a few shells.

I wish that commentators to this piece would disclose if they were subject to the draft. I was, and I was pretty happy to see anyone helping stop the draft. I was not interested in going to 'Nam and losing either my life, my legs or my freedom from heroin.

And for those of you whose parents were not alive during Vietnam, do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

"Of course, it isn't important that 51,000 men died in Vietnam, that the war was sucking us dry, and Ayers tried to stop the war?"

If you try to stop the war by means that (a) have no chance of actually stopping the war, and (b) run a serious risk of harming other people, you are doing something stupid and wrong.

If, for instance, I decided to open fire in a shopping mall in order to end the war in Iraq, saying "but the war is really bad!" wouldn't begin to excuse me.

Someone explain to me how what Weatherman did was different from that.

And be clear: I'm angry at him in part because I was against the war.

An honest discussion of his past that showed how he had changed and why might have made it possible for Ayers to continue in some role in Chicago educational reform and political circles. This wasn't it. I can't imagine that he'll be invited to a lot of meetings after this. And that he managed to be "rehabilitated" in the first place, with this lack of reflection and repentance, demonstrates a real failure of the social vetting process in this city.

ayers was an agent provocateur. in the employ of the us intell services. as was dohrn.

Having been disgusted by the way the right tried to use Ayers to tar Obama during the election, I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt when he emerged from his silence. (I hadn't read "Fugitive Days.") Then I listened to his Fresh Air interview and read this morning's Times editorial. Regretfully, I now have to admit that, while their attempt to connect him to Obama was dispicable, the Republicans did get the "unrepentant terrorist" description of Ayers exactly right.

I lived through the Vietnam era, and it was an extraordinarily difficult time. But many, unlike Bill Ayers, worked against the war and helped to end it without descending into evil. I don't doubt that he has done much good since. But his attempts to justify his past crimes--justification that began long before he became an issue in the election--I can, like Hilzoy, do without.

So, since apparently one has to post one's bona fides in order to have an opinion, I will say I was draft eligible during Vietnam, took part in various marches, ran from tear gas, occupied college buildings, and was young and stupid. I think Bill Ayers was young and stupid then, too, but on a felonious scale. To plan on killing people with nail bombs is despicable. So, on a larger scale, is dropping napalm on villages. Does the latter justify the former? I don't think so.

However, people, their actions and their legacies can be complicated, as it appears is the case with Ayers. As complicated as it appears talking about Vietnam still is. I share the sentiment of younger people who think it's time to stop carrying on 40-year-old arguments.

&bonafides per jrw

I'll even grant that Ayers can still claim moral justification, though I won't support that claim.

What I can't understand is not regretting doing things that were stupid and counterproductive. Being 18 can't be cured instantly, but I still wish that I had done better.

Everyone here seems to think that the war ended at some point.We are still fighting the same war.

The protesters never read Dale Carnegie, that's for sure.

Steve Gilliard always maintained that the acts of people like the Weathermen are what helped keep us in Vietnam. Instead of sane, soberly-dressed marchers such as were found in the civil rights marches, the anti-war protesters not only dressed ad acted in ways guaranteed to alienate most Americans, but veered between doing silly things like trying to levitate the Pentagon and stupidly violent things like blowing up buildings. The law-and-order backlash against this is what gave the Republicans wins in the 1970 midterms and a Nixon landslide in 1972.

If the use of violence to promote the government and government policy is legitimate, why is the use of violence to oppose the government not legitimate?

If liberals can favor violence as being a legitimate policy for the "greater good" why can't radicals?

As long as the United States devotes resources for a military to project power around the world (empire, economic colonialism, whatever the label), why is it illegitimate for people opposed to these policies?

That said, Ayers is a privileged rich kid who seems to assume he has a constituency without much evidence anyone supports him. Getting in the media is not the same as having a following.

"If the use of violence to promote the government and government policy is legitimate, why is the use of violence to oppose the government not legitimate?"

This question is only valid if violence were the only option available to people who oppose the government. It isn't valid now and it wasn't valid then. Far more people -- far more bravely than this jerk -- opposed the Vietnam War but didn't have to blow anyone up.

The only good thing I can say about Ayers is thank God he kept his mouth shut during the election.

If you try to stop the war by means that (a) have no chance of actually stopping the war, and (b) run a serious risk of harming other people, you are doing something stupid and wrong.

Bang on, Hilzoy. And I thought that commitment to morals was supposed to be something the left believed in.

Truth is truth. Ayers op-ed was as evasive as Nixon's "mistakes were made." He still refuses to think that killing the foot soldiers of the "establishment" was wrong - not to mention totally counter productive.

I do remember that time. Every single act of violence by the left allowed the right to shift the narrative to talk about that.

And anyway, let's remember the non-violence of the black civil rights movement. They faced more than most of the Vietnam protesters ever did.

It is just sad to watch the left get all morally superior about every single fault of the right, then be unable to criticize anyone on their "side."

The romance of violence - or at least the romance of posing as a brave warrior. Just as sad when the left does it as when the chickenhawks do it.

(Ayers) and his friends never did get it that when you make war against war, you are really just making war - and he still doesn't.

Word.

You are clearly young and very stupid.

And for those of you whose parents were not alive during Vietnam, do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

My father fought with the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines during World War II. I was born in 1963. Neither of those things have anything to do with anything, and you know it. As far as I'm concerned, if a 12-year-old kid has a cogent argument on this topic to present here, he or she can have at it.

It's a pity you can't carry on a civil conversation without resorting to ad hominem attacks. I don't take people like you seriously. You, and a few others posting on this topic, clearly need to seek professional help to deal with your anger. Clearly it's been festering inside your soul for the past four decades. Your anger doesn't intimidate me; it saddens me, and hurts only you.

There is no moral justification for resorting to violence in the name of peace. Period.

I'm pretty sure I can predict your response, so you can keep your "fuck offs" to yourself.

I share the sentiment of younger people who think it's time to stop carrying on 40-year-old arguments.

Not so young anymore, but clearly in that camp.

Personally, I think Bill Ayers should bring suit against the GOP and it's talking heads.

This man was not running for public office. He went through invasion of privacy. Slanderous/libelous of character.

Stupid Sarah Palin ran with this -

"Where are your medical records Sarah?"

I can almost assure you, Sarah has nude photos out there, if not destroyed by McCain legbreakers. Almost all beauty pagent contestants have something dirty on them while seeking fame.

"Then I listened to his Fresh Air interview and read this morning's Times editorial. Regretfully, I now have to admit that, while their attempt to connect him to Obama was dispicable, the Republicans did get the "unrepentant terrorist" description of Ayers exactly right."

Exactly. I heard the same piece and the guy came off as a complete jerk.

Hilzoy -
my reaction to your post was provoked by its heading ("Bill Ayers: Please Go Away"), which struck me as fearful. Clearly, the Weathermen's espousal of violence contradicted the ethos of the peace movement. That the demonic savagery unleashed by Manson's messianic derangement was invoked as laudable method shows how far off the rails of moral restraint these people had fallen. What it also indicates, however, if one can stand back a little, is exactly how corrupting the effect a brutal war can have on sensitive minds. It is dehumanizing. And don't forget, Vietnam was the first 'television' war: a daily diet of carnage, mutilation and burning children in mothers' arms fleeing napalm attacks. People were shocked and profoundly disturbed at what they saw happening in their name and to their loved ones. You cannot discount that when judging the behavior of some over-zealous, albeit misguided youths.

I really think the equation with terrorism as we know it today is false. These people were protesting mega-violence perpetrated by their government in their name and, mistakenly, turned to violence (or, as Ayers terms it: "symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism") in their attempt to influence policy. They were not attempting to establish some alien caliphate - they only wanted their government to stop killing other people. If there is any similarity at all with real terrorism it is in its ultimate ineffectuality.

Goldilocks, you hit the nail on the head.

Alot of these people are falling for the tactics used by the GOP in every election. The Lee Atwater tactics. Challenge your oponents on patriotism, racism, any and everything thrown in the pot.

Yet, no mention of the car bombings that took place in Arizona in respect to the Lincoln Savings & Loan scandal to prevent witnesses from testifying.

No mention of Jack Abramoff, and McCain.

No mention of Sarah Palin and her witchcraft minister - hey didn't the christians ban witchcraft with the Salem Witchcraft Trials/Hunt

No mention of Sarah Palin endorsing teenage pregnancy/fornication - where's the moral of this with the christian right?

No mention of Sarah Palin and the AIP - talk of hating America - isn't this hate speech the same that terrorist groups are using?

BTW, people think it's so important to keep digging up the past of Bill Ayers

What about who was involved with the cover-up of Mark Foley, you know, the senator from Florida, having sex with the underage male whitehouse pages?

Shouldn't that be a talking point? If anyone of you on this post has done this, you'd be in prison, and labeled a pedophile.

The GOP needs to stop trying to attack people with all of the skeletons in their closet. Sad thing is, people tend to believe them everytime!

"I wish that commentators to this piece would disclose if they were subject to the draft."

For the record, I wasn't. I was too young. But my uncle went. He got a deferment to go to medical school. But the condition was that he'd spend a year in Vietnam as soon as he graduated. To his credit, he volunteered for two extra tours. He never saw combat, he just saw the results. Those results weren't pretty. And after Vietnam, he did research on the effects of Agent Orange. That research helped Vietnam Vets get some extra benefits. My current roommate is one of those beneficiaries. Sadly, the extra benefits don't really make up for the cancer. But, hey, my uncle did his best.

It's a pity you can't carry on a civil conversation without resorting to ad hominem attacks. I don't take people like you seriously. You, and a few others posting on this topic, clearly need to seek professional help to deal with your anger.

Oh, irony.

Awesome post. If Ayers had any interest in progressive causes he would just go away. But his main interest is, and always has been, himself.
Because of their self-righteousness, he and his friends in the radical left handed an absolute political gold mine to Nixon and the radical right. Later Reagan, then Gingrich, then Bush. If you are in favor of progressive causes, Ayers is the enemy.

The good Dr. Bok, aka Hilzoy, is too young at age 50 to remember and appreciate the extreme sense of outrage that our government inspired by it's wanton slaughter of innocents in Vietnam. Extreme antiwar groups like the Weather Underground were not in any way seen as "terrorists" as that term is understood today; they were seen by large and growing segments of the population as heroes standing up to an out of control criminal government. What Hilzoy is incapable of knowing,since she was only 11 in 1969, was the palpable fear and disgust felt by a generation of young men who were being conscripted against their will to fight this criminal war. I was 18 in 1969 and I never felt the antiwar movement was a criminal or terrorist enterprise fought by spoiled rich kids; I thought it was a logical and necessary response to our government's crimes. People like Bill Ayers were heroes to many of us in those dark days. Hilzoy is too young to remember them, and reading about the era in history books is not the same.

Hilzoy,

You could do us all a favor of giving us all the information on Sarah Palin, given she was not fully-vetted, has not voluntarily given up her medical records.

Since Palin and Huckabee tend to run in the 2012 elections, the American people have a right to know who these people really are.

I think you would serve a great purpose to give us more details of their friends from childhood, teenage years and now.

I don't think Sarah Palin has a community college degree. And if she does, she's still out of her league, most of these guys have owned/ran corporations (sadly, even Boy George), law degrees, medical degrees, economic degrees.....

Angry, no. Foul-texted, yes.

And, yes, I am very tired of idiots posturing about Ayers, helping the Republicans demonize this guy. Was I a Weatherman? No. I went to one march at U of I in 1971, saw that the marchers smashed windows and stole stuff, and stopped going. My draft number was high enough to keep me out.

But for the children who are making comments here who did not have to go, and did not have to make decisions, yeah, shut the fuck up. You get to sit here in your PJs and didn't have to decide "Canada? Nam?"

51000 dead. So shut up, unless you were old enough to actually think about the draft. And that include Hilzoy. Really a stupid piece from start to finish.

In the fall of 1969, I was a freshman at the University of Chicago. Guys in my dorm were following the Weathermen around with microphones for the college radio station, WHPK.
on December 4th, 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered in their beds by Chicago Police officers firing automatic weapons at 2337 West Monroe. Hampton and Clark were members of the Black Panther Party of Illinois.
This was not irresponsible public policy fighting a war half a world away. This was police murdering revolutionary black men and being hailed as heroes.
The Weathermen were crazy. They did more harm than good. They were moreover doctrinaire (if heretical) Marxists.
But nobody protesting the war in 1969 or 1970 in Chicago did so without Hampton and Clark burned into their minds.
The Weathermen were counter productive: we knew that at the time, and wanted nothing to do with them.
But Jesus Christ, they weren't Underpants Gnomes.

"There is no moral justification for resorting to violence in the name of peace. Period."

I assume that categorial "period" extends to self-defense?

One final point: It is arrogant and extremely rude to request that someone like Ayers who 1) paid his debt to society 2) rehabilitated himself and 3) went on to make minor but important contributions to "go away". What right does Hilzoy, a child of priveledge who never had to make a decision about going to Nam or probably much else, have to request that Ayers shut up? Pretty fucking arrogant, I sez, sez I.

I do not understand why liberal-type persons do not take the attitude that he has paid his price, and now should be given the full rights of a citizen to his own good name, and to the defense of that name. I for one wish that more young people today were as mad about Iraq as Ayers was about Vietnam. That's one reason we are still there.

jeebus: "Somebody like John Kerry, who by his own admission participated in war crimes in the service of the reprehensible invasion of Vietnam, did much more despicable things as a young man than Bill Ayers. So if you want to condemn Ayers, fine. I hope you would apply the same standards to somebody like Kerry."

okay, this is hard and disturbing for me to deal with. i'm going to admit that up front. i really, really don't want to equate U.S. soldiers fighting in vietnam with the Weathermen, but ATST i can't deny that those soldiers did things which which were unimaginably worse than anything that Bill Ayer ever did. how many hundreds of innocent vietnamese did your typical fighter bomber pilot kill? and how many lives would have been saved if the war had been stopped two years earlier--by any means necessary? If we can justify so-called "collateral damage" in war by advancing a utilitarian argument that those deaths are necessary for a greater good, then the Weathermen can justify their terror campaign in the same way. Can't they?

hilzoy is right that the weathermen were counterproductive, and what they did was stupid and evil. BUT--isn't it still more defensible than what john kerry did? at least the cause Bill Ayers was fighting for was morally right; but the U.S. cause in vietnam was evil. For that evil cause millions died. as I said, this equivalence is hard for me. a couple points in response:

1) the very easy way out of accusing u.s. troops of being "evil" (and the way i want to take) is to hold them not personally responsible for their actions. they're soldiers; they have to follow orders; they have no say in what those orders are. so we call them the victims of the nefarious policymakers who sent them to vietnam and forced them to fight and kill there. meanwhile, we can still praise their bravery and sacrifice, because they are "our" troops, fighting for us and protecting our society--with good intentions, if appalling results.

2) the problem is that, in some sense, the troops fighting in Vietnam DID choose to be there. there were lots of people who refused to fight by deserting or running to canada. you could argue that most of the kids shipped overseas didn't know what they were getting into, but once they did, they could become conscientious objectors and refuse to fight. the way out of point 2, in my view, is to again downgrade the moral volition of u.s. troops. it's simply too much to expect an ordinary person (especially a kid) to somehow have the strength and wisdom to make complex ethical judgments about just war theory while they're going on life-and-death missions in the jungle. that doesn't them evil, just young and ignorant and stressed and powerless.

3) the problem with point 2 is that this same reasoning also applies to Bill Ayers and co. Ayers was also just a young kid, with good intentions, in the service of a good cause, swept up in the fervor and the confusion of an extraordinarily disturbing time. Okay. i accept that ayers didn't know what he was really doing, and it's clear in hindsight he wouldn't have done it if he could have a redo (though he SHOULD apologize!). there's one important difference, which is that soldiers have to follow orders. But nobody forced bill ayers to join a terrorist group and plant bombs. Ayers was one of the ringleaders, he planned the attacks. he seems responsible for his actions in a way that most u.s. troops were not (certainly, decision-makers like kissinger and LBJ were culpable). i don't know--I'll admit that after thinking about it a bit more i'm more sympathetic to Ayers than I was.

4) American soldiers were killing Vietnamese; the weathermen was trying to kill americans. for most people that makes a big difference. am i going to defend that? well, sort of. there just seems something more reprehensible about killing your "own" people as opposed to "other" people. OTOH, you could argue that Ayers was trying to kill some americans to order to save many more americans from death. that's hard to refute.

5) soldiers/politicians/most protesters were operating within the traditional institutions and structures of society, while Ayers was going beyond the law, outside of the system, and using violence to attack those who remained within. It seems right to condemn rebels and revolutionaries more heavily than people who are really just acting in accordance with social convention. it was normal to be a soldier; normal to be a protester; but exceptional to be a domestic terrorist. maybe we ought to weigh exceptional crimes more heavily.

Obviously off subject, but I'll say it anyway. Living with a Vietnam Vet has brought up an interesting issue. The experiences of my roommate and my uncle are profoundly different.

My uncle tried his best to adhere to US policy, but the Hippocratic Oath always trumped that. He treated the locals, because that's what doctors do. Because of that, he could walk into town and nobody would mess with him. They knew that if their daughter was sick, he'd be the guy treating her. He was treated like royalty by everyone.

But my roommate was just a grunt soldier. He never saw Vietnam. He couldn't leave the base. His experience was on an island in the Mekong Delta. But he was lucky. He got exposed to way too much Agent Orange, but he didn't see much combat. But he could never go into town and experience the wonderful culture. And he had to eat MREs instead of the awesome Vietnamese food.

"Unrepentend Terrorist" == Someone prepared to scare you into doing the right thing.

"National Hero" == Someone prepared to scare you into supporting destruction of our republic.

Yes, I'm old enough to have been drafted.

For a better understanding of terrorism, talk to relatives of our "collateral damage." There's millions of them, shouldn't be hard to find.

And all of you so damn certain about Ayers' guilt, you weren't there.

If the use of violence to promote the government and government policy is legitimate, why is the use of violence to oppose the government not legitimate?

If you accept the government's logic, why would you be opposed to war? The war's not legitimate because killing people for political purposes is not legitimate. Blowing people up to oppose the war is not only a crime, it makes no sense.

Does Bill Ayers embarrass you now? You would like to start fresh as though the progressive movement in America started the day that Obama gave the keynote address in 2004.

Sorry

THere a long history here, and lots of it is tangled and messy, all the way back to John Brown, who raided a federal armory to steal weapons to give to slaves so they could rise up in bloody rebellion against their masters. And John Brown was supported by prominent respectable citizens.

It's bloodshed and violence and quasi-treason all the way along, and some of it was crazy, and some unwise and some counter-productive and some was filled with hate. But everything we have won comes down through the same historical process.

Let Bill Ayers have his say. His sense of entitlement is still visible. Everybody knows who he is.

But no one ever goes away, hilzoy. You have fallen for the "denouncing game." After we have denounced Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, then we will move on to the demand to denounce Jesse Jackson, Sr. and remember that John McCain wanted Obama to denounce John Lewis. And once, we are all done denouncing that list, they will have another list, of people that we have to denounce to prove our patriotism. Maybe you'll be on that list Hilzoy, or maybe the one after that.

Why would you want to play that game?

I'm 49, not 50. No, I never stood a chance of being drafted, what with being female and all. But I didn't read about it in history books either.

I have never wanted to take away any of Ayers' civic rights. As far as I'm concerned, he can vote, practice his religion freely, get a passport, and do all the other things that he has a right to do as a citizen.

On the other hand, I don't see why I don't get to criticize him. "Helping the Republicans demonize him": as far as I'm concerned, he did a perfectly good job of that himself. "Fitting into right-wing frames": ditto.

Nixon wanted to say that all the people who protested against the war were idiots. The Weathermen, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give him a perfect example. And for what?

dr2chase: most people, including i imagine most of the vietnam protesters, are not pacifists. WWII is the paradigm example of a just war, and u.s. bombers would just fly over german cities and drop millions of tons of bombs on them, women, children, everyone. but we think that was a just war. the American Revolution is another example.

in another time and place MLK and Gandhi would have been the leaders of violent terrorist groups, just like Mandela was. it happens that they lived in societies where they were afforded the luxury of peaceful protest. But not all societies are like that. personally, i understand where ayers was coming from--he was stupid and wrong--but i understand those impulses. sometimes working within existing social institutions doesn't work.

"BUT--isn't it still more defensible than what john kerry did?"

Umm, no. But what Bob Kerry did is far worse. Bob Kerry committed war crimes (and got the Congressional Medal of Freedom for it). But he's admitted it, and has apologized for it. And the Vietnamese accept that apology. The Vietnamese understand that forgiveness is actually a form of strength. It would be nice if we learned that lesson. As reprehensible as Ayers' actions were, I can forgive him. But I certainly won't agree with those actions. But I can't forgive Kissinger until he acknowledges what he did. And he's too racist to accept that killing slanty-eyed brown skinned people is somehow wrong. In fact, he's always hated Asians and was quite happy to bomb the shit out of them. Kissinger deserves nothing but scorn.

Wow, hilzoy and I are about the same age. Old enough to be aware of the Vietnam war, young enough to avoid it, and fitting in that tight window where we never had to register for either the "old" draft or the "new" draft. We privileged few, etc. etc.

About Vietnam: nonviolent protest was tried, and seemed to have little effect. Sure it could have been done "better", and garnered more public support. But that public support was never going to include the 28%+ 'dead-enders', and didn't seem to have much actual effect on the war, at least until Nixon left for unrelated crimes.

So I have a question: exactly HOW bad does it need to get to justify violent opposition?

If your answer is "it's never justified":
were Washington, Jefferson, etc., justified in violent rebellion agaist the crown? Certainly they tried reasoning and civil disobedience. Didn't work. Of course, in their case violent rebellion ultimately worked, but post-hoc justification isn't satisfying.

Was the violence (and the inevitable deaths of innocents, by accident or certain retaliation) of the French Resistance during WWII justified? In some sense it "didn't work", and never had much chance of working all by itself. Does that make a difference? Should the people of Nazi occupied France just sat back and waited to be liberated by the Allies?

Those examples are at a safe distance, historically. The wounds of Vietnam are still raw.

In this sense Ayers is correct: it would take much more violence, and much more profound violence, to stop the Vietnam war. I don't think that was ever in the cards, but if it had happened that way, I think America would be a very different country today.

"You have fallen for the "denouncing game." After we have denounced Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, then we will move on to the demand to denounce Jesse Jackson, Sr. and remember that John McCain wanted Obama to denounce John Lewis. And once, we are all done denouncing that list, they will have another list, of people that we have to denounce to prove our patriotism. Maybe you'll be on that list Hilzoy, or maybe the one after that.

Why would you want to play that game?"

On the other hand, we could start playing the "never criticize anyone on our supposed side" game, and then we'd be RedState. I don't much care for that game either. I'd rather take my chances trying to be a decent person, and risking getting denounced. It's not like it hasn't happened before.

hilzoy, you're right. some of the commentators want to equate the Weathermen and the anti-war movement, when those are very different things. The anti-war movement was a great thing which eventually forced the withdrawal of the U.S. from vietnam; Bill Ayers and friends, not so much. they were stupid clowns who set back both the anti-war movement and progressivism, who if they had their way would have killed dozens of innocent people with nothing to show for it. That's not a "right-wing" distinction--it's a distinction between success and failure, between effective social protest and counterproductive terrorism. To lump in Bill Ayers with peaceful anti-war leaders is offensive, just like someone trying to conflate the Black Liberation Army together with MLK (who was also a harsh critic of the war). why can't we denounce unrepentant domestic terrorists, exactly?

anyway, as I said in my first post, I am TIRED of discussing this man and his various antics. I regret that gave this damn thread so much time and thought. Bill Ayers is irrelevant; it's possible we got some more pressing and immediate problems right now, you know? so please carry on without me.

The radicals of the 60's have left their mark. Its time now to move on. This is the 21st Century.

I am a few years younger than Hilzoy. So obviously, that meant I was not old enough to be drafted, and the fact I am a female.

However, that doesn't mean I wasn't affected by the war.

My father was killed over there. I don't even remember my father because I was a baby. Yet, I was denied social security over and over again.

So, just because some of us wasn't drafted doesn't mean it didn't affect us.

As far as I'm concerned, it was the 60's that have really made a profound effect in almost everything this country has progressed to, that is until Boy George and his base was able to destroy all that in 8 years.

Ahhh, Hilzoy, I'm confused a little by the vehemence in your piece. A few days ago your thoughts and prayers were with Attorney General Mucasey after he collapsed while giving a speech to the rightwing fascist Federalist Society defending torture and abusing the constitution and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

It seems that you have more disgust for Ayers than for Mucasey.

But for the children who are making comments here who did not have to go, and did not have to make decisions, yeah, shut the fuck up. You get to sit here in your PJs and didn't have to decide "Canada? Nam?"

What an utterly despicable statement. It is exactly the same of as the language of the right directed to the left. "If you didn't 'serve' you have no right to talk." Anyone has a right to talk.

It's also totally a false choice. It wasn't "Nam or Canada" it was political opposition vs. civil disobedience vs. criminal activity that didn't hurt the actual war machine at all.

Ayers' activities were not courageous opposition to the war at all. And his lack of willingness to grow up about it now is just sad.

Just because you're on the left doesn't mean you get a pass on your moral choices.

The shadow of Vietnam has lain across every presidential election of my adult lifetime (like hilzoy, I'm 49). You'd think that by now it would be fading, but in fact it's been if anything stronger during the past two (swiftboating in 2004, Ayers in 2008). More out of hope than evidence, I'm going to guess this was the last election cycle where Vietnam would be involved; by 2012 there'll really be no point in bringing Ayers up, and by 2016 even the youngest vets and ex-protestors will be pushing retirement, with the major old lions out to pasture. Then we can start having intractable arguments about Iraq instead.

JimBOB I agree with you 100%.

What should be the talking points right now, are the vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that are denied benefits, quality healthcare......

We should also be talking about the profiteering involved in this war
1)Blackwater - they have just recently been accused of bringing in South Asians & Somalis for work. Yet, locking them up like prisoners. Some are sleeping 4 to a bed. If they try to leave because of non-pay or treatment, they are shot at.

2)Triple Canopy - bringing in mercenaries from Peru and paying them $30 USD a day.

There's so much corruption going on over there. And to top it off, this country did not sell war bonds to fund this war, at the same time cutting taxes to the wealthy. Jobs sent overseas, and the ones left here - corporations brought in and solicited illegal immigrants to take from U.S. citizens, students and senior citizens working to supplement their social security.

When I think of the millions murdered in Vietnam and Iraq and elsewhere, who could have been defended had people stood up, I really wonder how the pacifists can sleep at night. I wonder how it would feel to know that your actions caused and still cause needless and unnecessary deaths. It's very easy to think changes can be made by wishful thinking or words, but in the real world it just doesn't happen that way. Never has, never will.

Ayers did nothing wrong and never set out to harm innocent people. Today, you can only protest war from an approved out of sight cage or a licensed parade.

So you see absolutely no reason why bombs that were planted by protesters would lead to separate "free speech zones" away from everyone else?

I think "counterproductive" is the best term for Ayers's actions in the 1960s. Because of him and people like him who resorted to violence, protesters were herded into small spaces away from the people they were protesting against in case one or a few of them was a Weatherman who was planning to do something stupid.

I'm not justifying what he did. However, sometimes it takes drastic measures/events to make the government do something.

Example, people have been crying out to the government for months if not years about job losses, illegal immigration....what have they done?

People want Boy George to do something about this economy, what is he doing? Nothing short of signing away more of our rights, and still wanting those trade deals with Columbia & Panama!

To repeat: Bill Ayers has never in his life done anything as harmful as John Kerry, John McCain, and anyone else who participated in the mass terrorism of the Vietnam war. Does Hilzoy condemn them when they publish an op-ed in the New York Times?

Well here is Hilzoy taking another position with which I must disagree. If there had not been a violent, yes violent, opposition to the Vietnam war, there would have been many more thousands of american soldiers killed or maimed, and there would have been many tens of thousands of vietnamese murdered as well. The truth is that the level of moral corruption was at that time at an all time high (until recently). I'm sure that Ayers is coloring his past to suit his needs, but I would be reluctant to get on a high horse over it. If you lived through those days as an adult and had a conscience, you would have concluded that the violent overthrow of a government was in order for the second time on the american continent.

Bill Ayers: Please Go Away

How convenient that all the Vietnamese we killed (who never threatened us) have gone quietly away. Had they not been little third-world yellow people -- had they been Europeans, for example -- then we might by now have elevated Ayers to the status of a hero for trying to stop the massacre. But trying to stop a massacre of Vietnamese? That doesn't cut it.

If Ayers had any interest in progressive causes he would just go away. But his main interest is, and always has been, himself. [...] If you are in favor of progressive causes, Ayers is the enemy. -- spensercat on December 6, 2008 at 10:27 PM
Yes. Like hilzoy, I'm female and was a child during Viet Nam. But I sure do remember some things. One of those things was how useful the bomb throwers were for those who wanted to demonize all opposition to the war. Another thing I remember too clearly is how WWII era folks over-dominated the entire society at that time. Now, I can understand why old warhorses from the 60s want the same excessive influence today that their parents' had & abused 40 years ago. But, I don't recall that it was good for America then to have the GI generation calling all the shots, all the time, without regard for anyone else. I don't believe that over-domination of our society by mired-in-the-60s Baby Boomers has been all that beneficial during the past 8 years either.
The past has it's place. It should be kept in that place. And it damned well shouldn't be re-written to suit anyone's interests.
Ayers was badly misused & misrepresented by the ultra-Right. But.... he is a self-dealing jerk, nonetheless. His weasel words in that op-ed were chosen to disguise the nature of what the Weathermen were actually doing. Ineffectual though they were, it was terrorism that they were about. Violent, bomb-throwing terrorism. And they did more to advance the interests of their opposition than those of the peace Movement.
That is why today's ultra-Rightist propagandists put such effort into sneering at "Kumbaya" singing "Liberals". It's not the bomb throwers they need to sneer at. The bombers work for them.

I was watching Faux yesterday, and they are thrilled, thrilled I tell you that Mr. Ayers has opened his pie hole. It gave them a whole half hour of TEE VEE filler, while they bantered back and forth about it. It gave us 95 comments worth of concern. Please Mr Ayers go away. I don't care , really I don't care about you or your life or any right wing fantasies about you and your ilk.

Ayers and the Weathermen are part and parcel of the Days of Rage, and unlike some posters understanding, the Weathermen and the SDS and the Student Mobilization Committee were all born from the antiwar movement. If you didn't live through it, you don't understand it. The rage simmered, boiled over, and people were hurt. Interesting how everyone focuses on Ayers and the Weathermen, but no one wants to discuss the bully tactics of Daly's police force during the 1968 Dem Convention, and it's very interesting how the Kent State killings are now seen as justified (yeah it must have been really threatening for armed National Guard units to face rock throwing students). Or what about the day when the hardhats rioted against the students - lots of bloodshed then with malice aforethought. Americans love to rewrite history - after all to the victor belongs the spoils, and one of those spoils is the ability to revise history. Next thing you know we'll be reading how Bush saved Iraq from itself.

No one has mentioned the figure, but it's crucial to understanding the history. Yes, 58,000 U.S. troops were killed, but this is only a tiny fraction of the horror of the war.

We killed 2,000,000 in Vietnam. I saw a documentary on the Weather Underground, and a (repentant) Mark Rudd was trying to explain why they did what they did, to an audience that largely either never knew or doesn't want to face the nature and scale of the evil of Vietnam. He said (I'm paraphrasing), "The Vietnam war drove us crazy."

The irony is, you'd have to be insane for the Vietnam war not to drive you crazy. I sympathize with Rudd a great deal. Rudd took the trouble to understood what was going on in Vietnam, and saw that nonviolent protest was not stopping the war. In that situation, anyone that seriously engages the question inevitably will start thinking beyond nonviolence. It goes without saying that where Rudd and Ayers went from there was catastrophically mistaken. I'm grateful I didn't have to stand in their shoes, for fear I would have made those same mistakes.

And to repeat, and as Ayers notes, a fact that more than a few people here are telling themselves fairy stories in order to avoid: the protests did vanishingly little to end the war. Someone noted Gilliard's view that the protests actually lengthened the war. Do you think Nixon saw antiwar protesters as constituents he needed to satisfy? The Watergate crimes were mostly about getting McGovern nominated. This was to make sure that the protesters would very publically endorse and support his opponent, the better to politically destroy him. This worked as designed.

So enough fair tales. Terrorism ended the Vietnam war.

By the early 70s, the Army had lost control of its troops. Not only were soldiers refusing missions, it became common to kill in cold blood the officers who ordered such missions. "Fragging" was in part an act of self-defense, but it was also intended to send a message: if you want to chew us up in your war machine, we will destroy it by any means necessary. Is this not terrorism?

What kind of judgment do you pass on a Vietnam draftee who frags an officer under those circumstances? How is the situation different from a draft resister phoning in a warning, watching the evacuation, and setting off a bomb in an induction center -- except that the bombing doesn't involve a premeditated murder?

Insubordination, and fragging, toward the end of the Vietnam war were not isolated. They were so widespread that the war simply could not be prosecuted any further. That's what ended the Vietnam war.

Did the anti-war movement play a part in ending the war? Yes, the movement worked closely with soldiers, or rather, soldiers were a critical element of the movement. Movement civilians were a critical source of information and support for military personnel, and this had a radicalizing influence on them. And of course the military gave back to the movement, as veterans returned and formed groups like VVAW, and gave it new leadership, like John Kerry.

And public protests weren't without effect, either. They reinforced movement solidarity; they also radicalized participants and deepened their commitment, by exposing them both to highly-committed others, and to state repression. Greater commitment gave the movement access to greater resources.

The movement also had an effect long after the Vietnam war ended. The U.S. did not send troops abroad again for roughly a decade, the longest such stretch since the Second World War. Go to c-span and watch Jimmy Carter's 1980 renomination speech, in which he touts keeping the peace as one of the primary successes of his administration.

The appeal is an anachronism; since Reagan, it's unseemly for politicians to speak too enthusiastically about peace. From this it's argued that we've broken the "Vietnam syndrome," but that is arrant nonsense. It's universally understood that Americans will not accept a war that yields U.S. casualties on anything like the scale of Vietnam. This is a major constraint on U.S. imperialism.

Still, while the antiwar movement accomplished a great deal, its protests did not move Nixon to end the war one day sooner. That was done by enlisted U.S. military personnel refusing their officers' orders - often simply by killing them.

He was interviewed on NPR a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to hear what he had to say given everything that had gone on the past few months. My conclusion is that he is a grade A kook, who is truly unapologetic and deceptive about the Weather Underground's actions during the late 60's/early 70's. He was completely disimisive of the damage they caused, and the possibility of injury that could've occurred. Let's hope that this guy sinks into oblivion of history soon.

This really shouldn't be about Ayers. The post Hilzoy should have written would have been titled: "Attention New York Times: Publishing Bill Ayers is not a sufficient penance for David Brooks and Bill Kristol."

The score of washed-up ideologs published in the Times now seems to be Left 1, Right 47,800,203. (And the right-wing ones even continue to spread evil, which Ayers appears not to have done.) It would be nice if the Times would follow this up with at least one progressive op ed a day; in 40 or 50 years they would just about achieve historical balance.

I'm 53, and if you'd told me some 35 years ago we'd still be discussing Viet Nam, I would have laughed in your face.

The Class of 1973 got the cards but the war was over. That doesn't erase the memories of the nightly death counts by Walter Cronkite or the terror in general we faced in a country run amok. No matter your stance, if you lived through those times, chances are you were bat-shit crazy.

Can we please forgive ourselves and everyone involved and move the fuck on? I propose a "Viet Nam Reconciliation Day" where all still living and toting demons about it can come together. Maybe we'll even forgive Jane Fonda, bless her heart.

Sheesh!

With the release of more Johnson tape recordings, we learn again that Johnson knew the Republicans were sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks in 1968. If Johnson had publicized this Humphrey would have been elected (over 60% of the people wanted the war ended) but Johnson chose not to publicize this so that if Nixon were elected his prestige wouldn't be damaged.

That's how things worked at every level in the 60s. Nixon wasn't elected because of scruffy anti-war demonstrators, he was elected because black people burned down the cities. The reasons the black people burned down the cities were many, but being murdered in the streets by policemen was usually the spark.

The anti-war movement wasn't a government with laws everyone had to obey. It was a bunch of people who had been pushed past the limits of sanity, at a time when sanity was defined as doing what your government told you to do. Most of the people against the war were not pacifists or Quakers. They were just ordinary people who had finally decided that the American government, not themselves, was the criminal element.

Naturally people born after 1960 can't understand this, because they have no idea of what life in a totalitarian society is like. By 1965 people were challenging and questioning and doing all kinds of things you just didn't do in the 50s.

But anybody who thinks the Abolitionists or the Suffragettes or the union movements were nonviolent simply doesn't know what happened.

For example, one day in the early 1920s, hundreds of women wearing long coats circulated on the streets of New York. At an agreed time, they suddenly pulled hammers out of their coats and started smashing windows and then, a minute or so later, all dropped their hammers and fled, leaving tens of thousands of smashed windows.

That's the kind of thing you need to learn to get a better picture of American history.

Americans prefer to blow up Arab families rather than national guard armories. Its the Diaper Head theory of citizenship.

I have to agree with the sentiment that Hilzoy is simply too young to understand anything about the texture of the times during which these events happened.

If you were alive and of age during the Vietnam War, then you had friends who had been killed in it. Chicago was not the only city where demonstrators were subjected to violent and brutal suppression. There were police riots at Century City in Los Angeles, and elsewhere. I was present at Century City, where demonstrators were herded into a cul de sac and beaten. The collaboration between FBI and local law enforcement to illegally suppress dissent is now well documented, as are the brutal, pre-meditated, extra-judicial murders of members of the Black Panthers and other dissidents.

To suggest that it was Ayers fault that we are now confined to "protest cages" is simple ignorance, and displays how docile and naive the current generation is with regard to political action.

Ayers has acknowledged on many occasions that he does not necessarily believe that his decisions at the time were the right ones. Under those circumstances one could not know what the right decisions were. I saw his interview, with wife Bernadine Dohrn, on Democracy Now! and found him to be thoughtful and accurate in his depiction of the historical context in which the actions in question were taken. I find Hilzoy's comments cartoonish and simple-minded.

To suggest that it was Ayers fault that we are now confined to "protest cages" is simple ignorance, and displays how docile and naive the current generation is with regard to political action.

exactly. If 'free speech zones' were a product of the protests of the sixties and seventies, one has to wonder why it took thirty years for this to be instituted. they are, in fact, products of the Bush administration's constitutional overreach, enabled by a population shellshocked after 9/11.

Hilzoy did a great service by writing this post.

I'm 62 and I was around during the Vietnam war, protesting it all the way. The big thing that struck me -- a progressive liberal then and now -- was how much the Social Workers Party guys loved fistfights with PL more than they loved building a mass movement. Here we had the splendid example of Martin Luther King Jr. on one side and the macho idiocy of the Weathermen and their ilk on the other. It didn't take a lot of intelligence then to choose between the two courses, but non-violence is often trumped by violence. In the end, the lasting legacy of our Vietnam protest movement was to enable the spectre of an ineffectual ex-wannabe-terrorist to threaten the electoral chances of the lasting legacy of Martin Luther King's protest movement -- Barack Obama.

I see clear parallels in political immaturity between people who took the Weathermen road in the Vietnam years, and those who took the Nader for President road in the Bush years. Both groups set back the cause of peace, justice, and freedom -- and they did so by taking actions that made them feel righteous, but that had no clear path to success.

As a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and one who protested against the war before and after my service, I completely understand the "whys" and "wherefors" of Bill Ayers actions.

Having said that I was also heartbroken by the violence of the anti- war/anti-establishment movement.

None of this is simply understood or able to be easily characterized and explained. It was a truly unsettling time full of rage, fear, and a surprising hope of extremely high ideals. Families, communities, and friends split over these issues as the future of humankind was being fought over.

We can now see that the results of that struggle (which obviously is still being fought) are also not easily discerned or understood.

I again was heartbroken at the inclusion of "The Weathermen" and all they represent in the latest manifestation of the struggle for humanity, but since Ayers was dragged into this I wholeheartedly support his right to speak up.

The "Weathermen" weren't right when they embraced violence, but they weren't completely wrong either.

I don't think it serves anyone or anything to simplistically look at any of this and deem who are the "good guys and who aren't.

Just my two cents worth.

Thoughts?

Thank you, bjobotts, for your rage about Vietnam.

I don't know how old Hilzoy is, but the attack by our government on young citizens at that time was the true terrorism.

I never agreed with blowing up buildings, but if someone had taken out the Pentagon at that time, I would probably have cheered.

I had a selective (protective) memory loss, but then I visited the Vietnam memorial, and all the old feelings came flooding back. My rage and hate for all those who perpetrated that war were back again. And all that even though as a woman, I was never personally subjected to being forcibly taken and inserted onto the front lines as cannon fodder.

Sorry, Phoenix woman, but there were plenty of clean, well-dressed protesters against Vietnam, including MLK, Jr. himself.

The civil rights and anti-Vietnam protesters overlapped to a great extent, and I know as I was one of them.

I think you are confusing hippies with the anti-war crowd. Ever see Daniel Ellsberg? Pretty clean, well-behaved and well-dressed.

The so-called "law and order" backlash was exactly the same people as those who constitute the ReThuglican party today: authoritarian dupes.

"Hilzoy did a great service..."??? Puh-lease!

The 60s, apart from everything else, was a chronology of events. By the time the Weather Underground was formed, Martin Luther King had been dead for 2 years, killed by an assassin's bullet. That assassination in turn formed context for subsequent actions and decisions. I'm glad that in retrospect you can so easily choose the "right way to go" while others were flailing about in the fog of events as they occurred. Sheese! Didn't Ayers know that by behaving thus he might squelch Obama's ("the lasting legacy of the protest movement") chances for the Presidency, because cynical and desperate Republican candidates would use despicable McCarthyite tactics to win? How could he be so blind? If you will excuse me for saying so, Mr. Crockett, one old fart to another; you're beginning to sound like an old fart.

In Bill Ayers' thoughtful op-ed he writes "I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long." Hilzoy's piece sounds to me as if she were not reading for comprehension.

Bill Ayers has every right to defend his name and try to explain and contextualize his actions. He is a significant part of an important history. As I mentioned before, the "Days of Rage" riots happened, and were a response to, several years of brutal suppression of peaceful protests by a concerted effort of the FBI and local police, aided by domestic surveillance involving the CIA. They occurred within a much larger environment of active harassment by police against people who simply dressed differently or grew their hair long.

At the same time, soldiers were returning home with tales of as yet undeclared illegal wars in the countries neighboring Vietnam. The U.S. dropped 260 million cluster "bombies" on Laos, 80 million of which remain unexploded and are still taking their toll almost 40 years later. Our government was acting with extreme recklessness, and that inspired recklessness and desperation amongst even the more thoughtful members of our citizenry.

In 1966, when I was in my teens and traveling between Los Angeles, and New York, I stopped in my hometown of Spokane, WA. A small number of members of a local anti-war group were planning to leaflet at the annual Boy Scout Jamboree, in Farragut State Park, Idaho. I was invited to join them.

The Jamboree was an international event, and we thought that it would provide visibility for our views. When we arrived, before we had even taken out our printed leaflets to distribute, we were followed by a large contingent of boy scouts. When we began distributing them, our leaflets would be ripped out of the hands of whoever we passed them to. Finally a group of large teenage boy scouts surrounded us, and a Sheriff told us that we had to leave because we were causing a disturbance. Mind you, we were on public property, and had a First Amendment right to do what we were doing.

When we returned to our cars, we discovered that, in a large parking lot of perhaps a thousand cars, ours were singled out and all had their tires slashed. One couple, whose car had broken down on the highway to Farragut, had been picked up by a Sheriff, driven about 15 miles into the woods and uncerimoniously dumped out. IOW it was clear that they knew we were coming long before we got there.

This small anti-war group consisted of, amongst others, a sociology professor from Gonzaga University, the art curator from Cheney Cowles Museum, several other citizens. None of us had heard of Cointelpro, but we were certainly seeing its effects, even in a small anti-war group in a mid-size town in Washington as early as 1966. Responding to our little threat had involved a concerted effort by authorities in Spokane, the Coeur d'Alene County Sheriff's department, and whichever agency (FBI, CIA) had infiltrated our group to provide the intelligence, not to mention cooperation of the Boy Scouts of America, which was (and still is) closely aligned with the military.

Unless you were a dissident and working within the various anti-war factions at this time, you would not have seen or experienced the accumulation of similar little occurrences that lead to the paranoia and excesses of the later 60s and early 70s. Unless you were actively involved in the organizational work of the anti-war movement, dealing with the myriad roadblocks put in the way of dissent, you would not understand the frustration, and the toll that it took over the years. Like I said before, unless you were there you cannot understand the texture of the period.

William E. Elston says: Unless you were a dissident and working within the various anti-war factions at this time, you would not have seen or experienced the accumulation of similar little occurrences that lead to the paranoia and excesses of the later 60s and early 70s. Unless you were actively involved in the organizational work of the anti-war movement, dealing with the myriad roadblocks put in the way of dissent, you would not understand the frustration, and the toll that it took over the years. Like I said before, unless you were there you cannot understand the texture of the period.

Sure, I can understand why people made mistakes. Some people made mistakes in honest confusion and frustration, and some people made mistakes out of vanity and arrogance. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still doing the wrong thing. And the fact that our government was responsible for much, much worse things doesn't make the Weathermen's actions right, let alone strategically intelligent.

The point is to get the right thing accomplished, not to just hope that it happens when you lash out in frustration. And we can't justify our own mistakes by the mistakes of our opponents. Because Martin Luther King had been dead for two years did not make his tactics or his goals less relevant.

Many, many of us were present in the laste '60s and early '70s working for peace and justice in a way that the Weathermen weren't. It is true that we didn't achieve that goal either, but neither do we have nail bombs to rationalize away.

Walter, I suspect that you came to protest the war late in the game.There was probably not a lot of history driving the conclusions that you reached or the actions that you took. It was not the same for everyone.

When the fascists take over, I for one would like to see the citizens express their disaffection with bullets and bombs. Pretty words and elegant gestures simply don't cut it. By the late 60s the fascists had pretty much taken over. To what degree they had was an open question, but look at the litany, all of which is now well documented:

Murder of dissidents, especially targeting black dissidents, by forces in local law-enforcement and in the FBI.

Suppression of dissent and infiltration of legal dissident groups by agents and provocateurs from FBI and CIA.

Some of those undercover provocations by agents of the FBI and CIA resulted in real deaths, now well documented.

In the early 70s, illegal manipulation of the electoral process by the party in power, including break ins and burglaries.

Ongoing police harassment of dissidents and youth.

An illegal and corrupt ongoing war costing millions of lives.

Other illegal and undeclared "secret" wars, destroying societies and killing innocents.

Active sabotage of the official peace process by the Republican party, for electoral advantage.

Consistent and relentless lying to the American public about the true nature of the war and our prospects for victory or defeat.

Finally, the pre-meditated murder of young American students at Kent State. No one who has seen the tapes of these killings believes that the National Guardsmen were not acting under orders.

I understand your argument about vanity and arrogance, but that simply suggests that you have privileged knowledge of Bill Ayers real intentions, which I suspect you do not. Bill Ayers actions make perfect sense in the context of the times, to someone who accepts that the country had veered toward fascism and needed to me defended from such. I would hope that you have the courage and guts to do the same, when the time comes.

Hilzoy: Nixon wanted to say that all the people who protested against the war were idiots. The Weathermen, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give him a perfect example. And for what?

Great question. The antiwar protesters were, I'm afraid, "useful idiots" to both Nixon and the Weathermen. Such idiots got Nixon easy votes, true, but the Weathermen could also operate under cover of the protest movement. Protesting was never their goal, period. They wanted to "raise the consciousness" of the masses to take the US out of the hands of politicians like Nixon.

Now that's a bit breathtaking, but if you don't understand that, you don't understand anything about the far left. Life was filled with people like that back then.

To pretend that they were humanists all along is what the right wing does, and I think it denies them the dignity of failure, for out of failure comes something new, which in Ayer's case is probably someone respectworthy. (I don't know the guy at all.)

Oops, I'm not saying the protesters were idiots, but that both Nixon and the Weathermen saw them as useful idiots (Lenin's term, I think).

William Elston,

thanks for your comments. Yes, I am a few years younger than Hilzoy. The point is I grew up in Los Angeles. My father was killed in that war. I was a baby, so I don't remember my father.

However, I pointed out, that the 60's is what changed the country for the better. That is until Boy George, destroyed it all in just 8 years.

I also mentioned that sometimes violence is what the government understands. Yet, I must say, I am not saying what was done was right or wrong.

"Posted by: William E. Elston on December 7, 2008 at 6:47 PM"

Thank you for intoning the environment of those days. So many here seem to know what was really going on and others don't realize how the nation was slipping into militarization.

One point to make is no one died but the weathermen members themselves. They and Ayers are being condemned for their intentions...what Hilzoy assumes they would do that they did not. What Hilzoy cannot see is how the Republicans want her to demonize Ayers because it translates in their minds to all the dirty fucking hippies, liberals and war protesters and anyone else who dissents from the government's military operations. We're just like Ayers only not 'quite' as radical.

A far cry from how we think of terrorism today or even domestic terrorists like those shooting abortion people who work at abortion clinics. Hilzoy should have taken her own advice and just let it go quietly but assumed it important enough to drag up the Viet Nam era experience which divided a nation with so many dead. 58,000 kids.

It took all that happened (not any one particular incident) to stop that war. But had it not stopped...had it went another direction and turned to military imperialistic corporate fascist capitalism and a huge war machine then there would have been many more bomb throwers ( another demeaning name calling since that didn't happen). So really it was just a matter of degree..."almost" blowing up soldiers..."almost" becoming a fascist state. I'm glad it went no further on either side of that equation. Still, in my mind Bill Ayers did so little for some people to be walking around saying "now we must never forget what an asshole Ayers was 40yrs ago". He was only mentioned because republicans thought they could make something out of it and they made it seem like he was a Hitler wannabe.

Hardly worth the condemnation all over again...and hardly worth trying to make sense of it in connection to that tragic era which began with the Kennedy assassination...and pretty much ended with Nixon's resignation...what a coincidence. I hope it never comes down to a choice of freedom or peace because with the right drugs...anyone can be "made" to feel at peace.

Imagine if John Lennon had caused the war to end, and Nixon had never sent the US navy to bomb Henoi. John McCain would never have been shot down and spent 5 years in the Hanoi Hilton.

William E. Elston said: Walter, I suspect that you came to protest the war late in the game.There was probably not a lot of history driving the conclusions that you reached or the actions that you took.

Well, that's a tad softer than your first response, in which you called me old fart, but it's still ad hominem based on no knowledge of my life. No, I didn't come to the protest late in the game. I was protesting the arms race in Washington in 1962, at 15 -- and didn't stop. But that's not the point. The point is that you don't defeat tyrants by becoming them. Or fascists, or torturers, and so on.

I do not deny William Ayers the chance to contribute to society today, and it seems he has done just that since his Weatherman days. But there is no glory in what he would have done back then had he been more skilled in the deadly arts.

For the record, Walter, I said you were "beginning to sound like an old fart," prefaced it by saying "one old fart to another."

Au contraire, I believe that you do defeat fascists by force, unless you want to see a lot of innocent people get gassed. I certainly don't equate resorting to violence with becoming a tyrant or a fascist. Pacifism is great as far as it goes, but sometimes that just isn't far enough.

Nor has Bill Ayers suggested that there was glory in his behavior then. IOW what kind of BS is this really? Why all this useless butt-pinching? Is he just a foil to your moral high ground? You made ineffectual moves against the government, he tried others. It's your lack of empathy that suggests to me that you weren't there or were a fake.

There are new Nixon tapes just released in which discussions focused on how difficult it was to both prosecute the war and maintain domestic stability. Whatever one thinks of violent versus non-violent resistance, this factor should be part of any historical discussion about resistance to the Vietnam war.

Ayers never fragged his commanding officers after being ordered to kill civilians or to take the point while on patrol in Vietnam. Ayers attacked institutions that represented those commanding officers' tactics. Some say that is why he deserves criticism and banishment from the public dialogue now. Had Ayers gone to Vietnam, successfully fragged his immediate superiors there, or killed civilians, and never been charged with the crime, those criticizing him now would honor his service to LBJ's mission and think him an excellent moderate choice for political office.

For the record, Mr. Elston, non-violence is not pacifism. You have empathy for the guy who tried to change the government via nail bombs, but you assume the guy who worked for peaceful change is a fake. I don't think any further comment is necessary.