With the media reporting "about" Bill Ayers, and not one opportunity to hear what he actually said in 2001, it is helpful to read his own words in 2001 at the time his memoir was published.


http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/2...imes-9-15-2001/

September 15, 2001



To The Editors—



In July of this year Dinitia Smith asked my publisher if she might interview me for the New York Times on my forthcoming book, Fugitive Days. From the start she questioned me sharply about bombings, and each time I referred her to my memoir where I discussed the culture of violence we all live with in America, my growing anger in the 1960’s about the structures of racism and the escalating war, and the complex, sometimes extreme and despairing choices I made in those terrible times.



Smith’s angle is captured in the Times headline: “No regrets for a love of explosives” (September 11, 2001). She and I spoke a lot about regrets, about loss, about attempts to account for one’s life. I never said I had any love for explosives, and anyone who knows me found that headline sensationalistic nonsense. I said I had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength. I told her that in light of the indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese, we showed remarkable restraint, and that while we tried to sound a piercing alarm in those years, in fact we didn’t do enough to stop the war.



Smith writes of me: “Even today, he ‘finds a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,’ he writes.” This fragment seems to support her “love affair with bombs” thesis, but it is the opposite of what I wrote:



We’ll bomb them into the Stone Age, an unhinged American politician had intoned, echoing a gung-ho, shoot-from-the-hip general… each describing an American policy rarely spoken so plainly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Poor Viet Nam. Almost four times the destructive power Florida… How could we understand it? How could we take it in? Most important, what should we do about it? Bombs away. There is a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance. The rhythm of B-52s dropping bombs over Viet Nam, a deceptive calm at 40,000 feet as the doors ease open and millennial eggs are delivered on the green canopy below, the relentless thud of indiscriminate destruction and death without pause on the ground. Nothing subtle or syncopated. Not a happy rhythm. Three million Vietnamese lives were extinguished. Dig up Florida and throw it into the ocean. Annihilate Chicago or London or Bonn. Three million—each with a mother and a father, a distinct name, a mind and a body and a spirit, someone who knew him well or cared for her or counted on her for something or was annoyed or burdened or irritated by him; each knew something of joy or sadness or beauty or pain. Each was ripped out of this world, a little red dampness staining the earth, drying up, fading, and gone. Bodies torn apart, blown away, smudged out, lost forever.



I wrote about Vietnamese lives as a personal American responsibility, then, and the hypocrisy of claiming an American innocence as we constructed and stoked an intricate and hideous chamber of death in Asia. Clearly I wrote and spoke about the export of violence and the government’s love affair with bombs. Just as clearly Dinitia Smith was interested in her journalistic angle and not the truth. This is not a question of being misunderstood or “taken out of context,” but of deliberate distortion.



Some readers apparently responded to her piece, published on the same day as the vicious terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, by associating my book with them. This is absurd. My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy. It begins literally in the shadow of Hiroshima and comes of age in the killing fields of Southeast Asia. My book criticizes the American obsession with a clean and distanced violence, and the culture of thoughtlessness and carelessness that results from it. We are now witnessing crimes against humanity in our own land on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we might soon see innocent people in other parts of the world as well as in the U.S. dying and suffering in response.



All that we witnessed September 11 — the awful carnage and pain, the heroism of ordinary people — may drive us mad with grief and anger, or it may open us to hope in new ways. Perhaps precisely because we have suffered we can embrace the suffering of others and gather the necessary wisdom to resist the impulse to lash out randomly. The lessons of the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s may be more urgent now than ever.


Bill Ayers

Chicago, IL

So in your opinion this absolves Ayers of any wrondoing??? So laughing....

It's not about absolution of wrongdoing. Please try to pay attention. It's about accounting for the indiscriminate murder of human beings, regardless of whether it's fanaticism, policy (aberrant at that), or the color or race of the victims of that murder (we prefer the cleaner term, collateral damage).

No doubt Ayers did things that were wrong to oppose and fight actions that were wrong. As it ever has, two wrongs don't make a right. But I doubt we'll ever learn, either as individuals or as a nation.

Sg

Anyone who honestly believes that Vietnam wasn't a complete waste of lives and resources is an idiot .

I don't see anyone defending Ayers...I see a few folks pointing out that McLame is so far down the road of "No Political Career Forthcoming" that he's bringing Ayers into the conversation...and they're also bringing up that a handful of seriously deranged folks, like those who attended the recent McSame rallies, actually believe that it is relevant.

Fish on...

Todd

I'm glad Ayers has finally come out and cleared the air! Good for him. Now we should all shake his hand, hug him and tell him all is good because he was just trying to stop the violence. BS!

Civil Disobedience does not include the right to destroy property, even if it is government property, assault police, block traffic, commit acts of vandalism/bombing, attack citizens and any thing else that you can mention.

Who and what gave him and his band of terrorists the right to cost us, the taxpayers thousands so they could get their point across?

He can attempt to explain it off any way he sees fit but he is still a street punk, just like the cowardly little anarchists who run out and break sh-- at every protest with their faces covered trying to look like badasses. And anyone who associates with street punks for any purpose other than to reeducate them by any legal means available is no better and can only expect the scum to rub off an them.

Now do I believe Bill Ayers? Sure I do! The problem is he doesn't know right from wrong!

KK I stopped responding to any of bwp posts a long time ago. I found that if you wait 5 minutes he always losses to himself in a debate. I think he has multiple personalities that often debate against one another in a bwp thread.

He has recently posted here as a Redneck Hillbilly, and could always count on Aunty M for support and encouragement. Without A M, he's like Bush without Cheney and he's Bush. At other times, he claim's to be the son of a black share cropper, and will vigorously defend OJ Simpson, insisting that if the glove didn't fit (after it was soaked in the blood of the victims) they had to aquit. At times he's the male hating, feminist and liberal Democrat, that's still angry Hillary can't be president. He's currently personified once again, as the Rednecked- self hating blackman, bwp. According to his logic, he would support OJ before Obama, while proclaiming one as a terrorist (Obama), and the other (OJ Simpson) as innocent as the freshly driven snow, and that he was framed, railroaded and treated unfairly by The Man.

Was bwp the character they cast Steve Martin as, in the movie "The Jerk? He's (bwp) probably celebrating right now (his name in print in the new phone book) over a jug of corn whiskey, with late night drop in's, Bubba and the Boy's. Big Daddy will chime in soon and ask for clarity, when one of his post begs the question..."what in the #*@% is he talking about?" To which he will reply.........."some strange guy's just showed up at my house after midnight and we are drunk and they are curious and asking ....... blah, blah blah, blah..............

Folks we a dealing with a classic case of schizophrenia. This is text book stuff here! I never intend to tease or make fun of the disable, but in this case I hope I'm forgiven. Who know's, it just might help bwp and other's that are dragging knuckles because of this disorder, find the help they need. Many of these cases can be traced back to a tortured childhood of incest and molestation by friends of family, and or relatives. Not sure which it is in this case, but as we go forward "more will be revealed." Let's keep and eye out and be proactive if necessary. It could save lives.

That is about the most rational post I have seen you post hear. With that, I will gladly change my opinion of your BB character. Now I see you are doing it for fun and were only venting because Hillary lost in the primary, and that's kool. Remember when I was posting that crap about wanting Cheney to run for president and yelling 8 more years ? I did that out of frustration from all the hate and fear Obama was getting on this BB from AM and others. After Hillary lost, I was really surprised when you started coming off as a narrow minded neo-con. Again, now I understand, as it was similar to my own frustrations at one point in the election.

The truth is, if Ron Paul was cast as the strongest of the republican candidates earlier on and had a chance, this Independent would have been on his banwagon %100. This is a year that we need a winner to begin cleaning the scum from our memory. If things are not looking up under the democrats, you can bet that Independents like myself, will be voting Republican next time around, just like we did for John Anderson, R R, and HWB.

I think the purpose of my post worked, and maybe we both can see the humor as I did of some of the stuff we post and how it gets interpreted.

Crap, JLH and BWP are rational human beings? Where's the fun in that? What next, ND doesn't really drag his knuckles? I suppose someone will tell me that KK isn't even a real person, but just an internet persona. My faith in the interwebz is getting stretched to the limit.

I'm an anti-drug crusader.

Just so you know, it isnt my knuckles that drag

Spoken from the perspective on his knees whilst worshipping the Obamessiah
Oh wait, that's Toddbama!!

Yeah, Dan, I thought that about you. Naw, I didn't. Guess I'm flip-floppin'.

What a webzsite. Is ND braggin' or complainin' that his knuckles aren't dragging? One of those indiscernable things about the internetz. Is it the information highway, or just entertainment?