“Madame Clinton is a good friend of Afghanistan, a close friend of ours,” Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said. “But if somebody believes that our government, the government of President (Hamid) Karzai is involved as a government entity in the production of drugs, this is absolutely wrong.”

Clinton also descibed the Afghan government as highly “corrupt,” which did not charm her Afghan counterpart either.

The real problem, Spanta told the Associated Press, is that the Afghan government is not in control of Helmand province. This province is one of the most violent of the country. The Taliban are still strong in Helmand where they encourage farmers to produce opium. Part of the opium money is used by the Taliban to buy weapons and influence.

“The main production center of drugs is Helmand, and we are not in charge. Helmand (is) not under control of my government,” Spanta said. “If the international community is serious about fighting drug production and drug trafficking, they have to bring Helmand under our control.”

He added that Kabul only controls the province’s capital and some “islands” of territory around the rest of the region.

There are two sides to Clinton’s remarks; firstly, Afghanistan is a narco-state because the far majority of the world’s opium is produced in this war-torn country. Secondly, the other side of the story is that the Afghan government is no promoting opium production. It has in the past been willing to destroy opium farms but it simply lacks the strength and means to a sizeable part of the country’s opium farms.

Clinton and Spanta should both also keep in mind that opium is the only product farmers in Afghanistan can grow and make a profit. The country is nearly unfriendly to human life. Farmers are not growing poppy because they want to but because they have no alternative.

Rather than destroying these farms and taking their livelihood away from Afghan farmers, Kabul and Washington have to use Afghanistan’s opium for medical purposes. World opium and medicine organizations and businesses have long complained that they cannot get their hands on enough opium for medicinal purposes. Using Afghanistan’s opium for these purposes would help the world and Afghanistan itself.

Lastly, although Afghanistan is the world’s number one opium producing country, Clinton should express herself more carefully. She is no longer campaigning; she will be America’s secretary of state, which means that she will have to improve the country’s relationship with enemies and friends. Insulting them is not helpful.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

“I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it,” she told Fox’s Chris Wallace. “And other things that are maybe time that is spent better looking to the future rather than to the past.”

Pelosi’s remarks come shortly after Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he wants to look into whether the Bush administration broke the law by taking the nation to war against Iraq and instituting aggressive anti-terror initiatives.

Conyers called for an “independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities.”

President-Elect Barack Obama told ABC News a week ago that he believes that Washington should look towards the future rather than the past. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he told ABC News a week ago. “On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

Pelosi explained that Obama and Conyers are not “that far apart. There are different subjects and you treat them differently.

“We cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the Justice Department to go unreviewed,” she added. “I want to see the truth come forth.”

Although it was an unpopular decision, President Gerald Ford was right not to press charges against President Richard Nixon. Prosecution would have damaged the American people’s faith in government and it would undoubtedly have torn the country apart. Prosecuting top Bush adminstration officials will have the same effect. If Pelosi and Obama are serious about bringing the country together they have to let byones be bygones and focus on the future.

Pelosi and Obama are not the same kind of politician, however. Where Obama ran as a moderate last year, Pelosi is known as an ideoligical liberal partisan hack who detests compromise. If one Democrat is indeed likely to prosecute Bush officials just to get even it is her.

Moderates and conservatives can only hope that Obama will have tremendous influence over the speaker, and that he will curb her desire for revenge.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

Neither Mattson nor her organization have been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they had “a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking” the group to Hamas and other radical groups.

There’s a twist, of course.  Mattson and her group have worked with the Bush administration, providing religious training to the FBI.  Wait a second.  Does this mean the Bush administration is responsible for aiding and abetting terrorists?

Despite the sensationalistic headline that I’m only helping to propogate, Haaretz notes that Mattson and her group, The Islamic Society of North America, have not actually charged with anything.  And from what it seems, Mattson been rather known throughout the community in actually denouncing terrorism.  The case is a complicated one:

All this was going on while officials in the law enforcement and intelligence community apparently had evidence that the Islamic Society of North America had ties to terrorists and to the Holy Land Foundation. That foundation and five of its former leaders were convicted at a retrial in November of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.

Mark Pelavin, director of inter-religious affairs for the Union for Reform Judaism, another organization participating in the prayer service, called Mattson “a really important voice denouncing terrorism.”

“Clearly, Dr. Mattson has been welcome throughout the government,” he said. “I haven’t found anyone anywhere who’s found anything Dr. Mattson has said that’s anything other than clearly denouncing terrorism in quite explicit Islamic terms.”

The government may not even have a case at all:

According to e-mails filed in the court case, one of the prosecutors seemed willing to ask the judge to remove the group from the list.

Or if they do have a case, maybe they just don’t want nasty questions as to why they didn’t better vette the group first before working with them.  Take your pick.

Still, an investigation is just an investigation, so Obama probably doesn’t have much to worry about for Wednesday.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

“Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say one of his first duties in office will be to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. That executive order is expected during Obama’s first week on the job - and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers.”

Here was Olbermann’s take on this - and Obama’s ‘looking forward’ policy - last night, with great commentary from constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley:

As the Huffington Post piece notes, however:

“As pointed out by Think Progress, Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel, has said that the next president should avoid “any temptation to simply move on.” Here is the relevant quote:

‘We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation’s past transgressions and reject Bush’s corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure.’”

Obama’s response to this issue strikes me as his usual pitch-perfect politics. The man is naturally forward-thinking, that rare breed: an optimistic and (yes) hopeful politician. But he also seems to hold certain strong beliefs and values (such as ‘torture is wrong’). So how do you balance those things? How do you look forward - get the country to be excited and optimistic and hopeful with you - while also look backward, at the horrific, dark realities of what has been performed in your name?

And while I understand this pitch-perfect playing - and realise that what Obama is mooting now won’t necessarily reflect his actions in the upcoming weeks and months - I think there’s a lot to be said for being unable to truly move forward without addressing the issues of the past. And I think there’s even more to be said for not letting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al get away with the crimes they committed. We’ll see.

There’s absolutely no good reason for Obama not to close Guantanamo immediately and simply try the detainees in our already-extant courts of law.  That’s how we’ve convicted all sorts of accused terrorists in the past.

Let’s take as assumed all of Greenwald’s key factual premises, add a few points that Greenwald omits, and note what Greenwald, in his ideological extremism, refuses to talk about:First, let’s highlight Greenwald’s factual premises and take them as assumed to be true:

1.  That treatment in violation of Geneva Conventions and certainly in violation of criminal procedure governing interrogations has occured.

2. That the alternative to Guantanemo Bay is trial in standard U.S. courts under standard criminal laws and procedures.

And now let’s add some important and relevant points that Greenwald consistently omits from his posts in spite of their length and purported thoroughness:

1. In addition to rules about treatment during interrogation, standard criminal trials have complex and detailed standards governing chain of evidence and territorial jurisdiction.  Since soldiers on the battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not trained or equipped to ensure proper chain of evidence, use of criminal trials would ensure that most detainees would be acquitted even in cases where torture is not an issue.

2. The response to acquittal in a criminal trial is outright release of the defendant.

3. Many of those already released from Guantanemo have returned to the field in the service of al-Qaeda with the explicit intention of killing people in large numbers.

What these points add up to is what Glenn Greenwald apparently doesn’t want to talk about.  Specifically, that his purist approach limiting the U.S. response to global terrorist networks to the use of criminal trials would result in the outright release of many, if not most of the defendants.  Many of those defendants would then dedicate themselves to killing as many Americans as possible, with nuclear or biological weapons, if possible.

Why does Greenwald refuse to discuss the implications of the plan of action that he angrily at at length insists is the only way forward that is even worth of discussion?

Let’s be clear: Torture is a travesty against American values that is wrong regardless of whether it is effective or not and regardless of whether our refusal to use torture is reciprocated when American servicemen are captured.  I am not endorsing torture.  But Obama’s recent moderation of his plan to close Gitmo seems to me a responsible acknowledgment that there are potentially dangerous implications to simply opening the doors and letting Gitmo prisoners to go free because the Bush administration grievously mishandled their interrogation.  Obama’s call for the creation of some alternative process that would balance the deeply conflicting interests that we have in the current situation is laudable.  Greenwald’s demagoguery and extremism is contemptible.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

With the president-elect just a few weeks from taking the throne in Washington DC, Barack Obama has been largely absent from the diplomatic maneuverings attempting to put a halt to Israel’s military excursion into the Gaza Strip. His absence, some argue, only makes the situation worse.

At least Jewish American blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes at Tikun Olam, thinks so:

Where is Barack Obama? I know he’s in Hawaii soaking up those rays of glorious sunshine. But that’s not what I mean? Where IS he? Gaza is in flames. Bush is doing worse than nothing. He’s actually making the situation worse with his nonsense about calling Hamas thugs and claiming the Palestinian movement caused the Israeli violence and can end it.

Obama’s response is becoming less and less satisfactory as the killing mounts.

…I can understand that the Gaza massacre is not nearly as important to the American people as the Wall Street collapse. But when the economy imploded you didn’t hear Obama’s people deferring to Bush. He consulted with Bush. They worked out a common strategy. They each tried to look energetic, diligent and thoughtful.

In a post called “Stupid Logic Mr. Obama” Ampal — American Palestinian had this to say on the future president’s policy towards Palestine:

Obama said : “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

RESPONSE: If someone was starving my family, bombing my sewage and electric power plants, traumatizing my children by daily sonic booms, preventing my sick children from seeing a physician, keeping my college aged students from receiving the scholarships they deserve, causing half of the child population to have anemia, then I would launch every thing including the toilet and sink at them. Come on, Mr. Obama lets show a little more understanding than the current administration.

The “anti-zionist blog” Jews Sans Frontieres thinks maybe Obama wants to project a different image of US power.

…Obama's refusal to comment on this latest batch of war crimes may be significant if only to suggest that Obama wants to project a more reasonable image than offering open vocal support to a regime for whom violence appears to be and end itself.

Now Israel has targeted a Palestinian university you might expect Engage to at least say something but no, not a word.

After linking to a comment from Obama spokesman David Axelrod who argued that Israel is merely responding to the shelling of its cities, VivirLatino came away less than impressed:

I am ashamed and disgusted, especially if this is the change that the United States electorate was and is supposed to believe in. I am haunted by the words and images of people, men, women, and children and how my tax dollars are being used to oppress and make invisible people who aren't even deemed worthy of by some to be people, to have land, a home.

Some commenters have acknowledged that Obama needs to be careful not to step on the shoes of outgoing President George Bush.

Alex Stein, who has resided in Israel and writes the blog False Dichotomies, defended the president-elect's actions:

The criticism of Obama’s silence over the hostilities is unfair. He is right to state that there is only one president at a time, and he is right to take a holiday before embarking on what is arguably the toughest job in the world. Getting over-involved would have little point; he can have little impact until he is President, and there is no sense in compromising his stature with either party by taking sides.

Many sites are obviously looking at this situation through the lens of how the Obama administration will change U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Fayyad writing in the (mostly) Arab-American blog KABOBfest argues this is a test for the look and feel of the Obama administration towards the Middle East.

Gauging [Obama’s] response to the action from outside the Whitehouse will set the tone for what Israel gets out of him. With his chief of staff being a former IDF volunteer, it’s hard to see how he will see things any different than the IDF perspective. And the American stance of asking the rape victim to quit scratching the rapist will continue to the Washington Modus Operandi.

Window into Palestine contends that Obama is basically nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to the rights of Palestinians.

Obama no longer has to placate pro-Israel voters, including no shortage of Christian Zionists, so his lack of comment on the premeditated slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza should send us a message — an Obama administration will continue the long-standing U.S. policy of allowing Israel to wantonly kill Palestinians and pay the Israeli government handsomely to do so.

…Democrats who thought an Obama administration would bring some balance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably saddened by Obama’s apparent lack of concern for the mass murder now taking place. But then what did they expect? Obama is nothing if not window dressing for the New World Order and obviously the NWO wants the carnage to continue in Palestine. Of course, the global elite have no special love for Israel, either, and its people will be sacrificed when the time is right.

You may have even thought you were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live before reality kicked in and that yes, you had just seen breaking news on TV. And that yes, Bush, at 62, still has catlike reflexes and managed to avoid both shoes. The conference was held in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s office to mark the signing of a security agreement.

Several news reports explained that in Arab culture, throwing shoes is a grave show of disrespect. “This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” Al Zeidi reportedly yelled at Bush in Arabic. In the Twittersphere, that sentiment may be shared by an even greater number – with thousands of ‘tweets’ expressing their desires to throw their very shoes – and other inanimate objects – at the outgoing 43rd US president.

David Hughes, from Glasgow, Scotland, said simply:

“If I had a shoe, I would throw it at Bush too.”

Rami Ismail, from the Netherlands, said:

“An Iraqi decided to throw a shoe at Bush during a conference. I can only imagine how sad fundamentalists are that the shoe wasn't a grenade.”

Several others commented on Bush’s reflexes and his shrugging the incident off, including Australian Kyle Buttress, who said:

“Bush had some good ducking and weaving action there during the Shoe toss… Good to see he didn't turn his back or anything.”

Erik Rasmussen, in Spain, said:

“This video of Bush & the shoe was the lead story on the news in Spain. Very telling, really, of his “accomplishments”. Needed a bloody nose.”

The Blogosphere is sure to come up with more reactions with each passing hour, but Englishman Georgie Hammerton was one of the quick ones to blog about the incident on My Bloggy Wog.

“I know this isn’t funny.. but, well it is isn’t it?

“On a side note; is this what passes for journalism in the US!? *shudder*. BBC, I salute you!”

Malaysian blogger Shamsul Yunos noted how the media covered the incident.

“If you watch CNN or BBC, they have put a fantastic spin on the story. It goes something like this: ‘Sure the image of someone throwing a shoe at Bush is bad but the fact that the man lived to tell the tale shows just how free Iraq is right now.’

“Great.

“The BBC interviewed people on the ground and the few Iraqis they met agreed with the shoe thrower in wanting Bush and the Americans out of their country.

“Apparently the white house doesn't think the image will seriously damage Bush's legacy.

“So what exactly is his legacy? Leaving a lot of mess behind? I'm sure that legacy is only being reinforced by the shoe throwing incident.”

Yunos was one of the few bloggers I came across that noted that Al Zeidi, the now well known shoe-attacker, had covered events in Sadr City extensively.

“(He) had lost several relatives in the conflict. He was also recently kidnapped and tortured in a three-day ordeal.”

Chicago-based Indian blogger Saqib Salman Shafi in his blog SaqibSaab questioned what Al Zeidi was really trying to accomplish.

“Now, based on the fact that he was using shoes, one may ask what exactly was he trying to accomplish? Best case scenario, Bush gets a black eye or a scoffed up nose. But you know what, I feel the disgruntled journalist, along with millions across the globe, could care less at the effectiveness of his weapons of choice. It was the statement that spoke loudest. Upset with the leader of the super powerful nation of the world? Take off your jutha(shoe) and chuck it at him. I can see the internet jokes of “epic shoe maneuver,” already.

“And check out how quickly he launches the first one and then removes his other shoe (reloads) and fires away. Maybe he had them untied and ready for deployment? Or rather, perhaps he wore slip-ons or loafers that day.”

Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia, was quite sorry Al Zeidi missed Bush’s head.

“This is the news of the day , sorry the news of the week or may be even the month and the end of the year.

“Bush was having a press conference today in his surprise visit to Baghdad with Al Maliki when Muntader Al-Zeidi , a reporter threw his shoes at him. Unfortunately he missed him :(”

She continued to blog about Al Zeidi, being a correspondent for Al Baghdadia Television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt, Zeinobia said she feared for his life.

“He has entered the history, already I wish that someone tells his news now in Baghdad because I fear on his life.

“Idiot Bush of course tried made fun from the incident and said these words : All I can report is a size 10.”

And in the Philippines, someone was up late enough - or way too early - to blog about it almost immediately as it broke. Dreamer4U asked why there was so much hatred in the hearts of Iraqis for Americans and other Westerners.

“It is for sure I thought an embarrassing time for America and Iraq, now I knew how mad is the Iraqi to the American, if you know why let me know here.

“Anyway the shoes of the Iraqi reporter is size 10, Bush should be glad it didn't hit him or else he would be injured before going home in the states. Now I know “W” is good on something, he could have been a good military guy, sadly he was a very ineffective President though.

“Why is it that there are hatred in the heart of the Islam/Iraqi for the American or western people?”

Bush arrived today in Baghdad on a surprise visit — his last to Iraq as commander-in-chief — to celebrate the agreement, thank U.S. troops and meet with Iraqi leaders.

It was Bush’s fourth visit to a nation transformed by the U.S.-led war he started in 2003. It follows three weeks after Iraq’s parliament approved an accord with the U.S. that provides for the withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011.

After mounting pressure from the United States and India, Pakistani authorities raided a camp run by the militant group suspected of carrying out the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani and American officials said Monday. The operation on Sunday appeared to be Pakistan's first concrete response to the demands from India and the United States to take action against the militants suspected in the attacks, which have raised tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors to their highest point in years.

A senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about a dozen people had been arrested in the raid, which took place in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. The raid on Sunday appeared to be the first step by the Pakistanis that at least tacitly recognized the American and Indian claims. Counterterrorism experts familiar with the behavior of the Pakistani security services said there was a need by Pakistan to be seen to be doing something to alleviate the American and Indian pressure, as well as to avert the possibility of an Indian military strike.

Quite a lot of build up just to end by blaming America for the world’s problems.  Same sad song, Nth verse.

Although it would be wrong to say that the U.S. blameless in regard to its current low level of esteem around the globe, the nearly 20 years since the end of the Cold War have caused a lot of people living in countries that should remember the very real danger they passed through thanks to Uncle Sam’s protection to forget the world security dynamics of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Yes, during the Cold War the U.S. supported bad people in Iran, Chile, and Nicaragua, among others, and fought bloody, ambiguous wars in Korea and Vietnam that prematurely ended or shattered many innocent lives.

But an objective observer has to question the degree of injury the U.S. dealt directly to Muslims even during the height of its obsessive Cold War zeal.  Arguably the worst thing the U.S. has done to followers of Islam was to set up the scenario through which the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran in 1979 and set up a totalitarian Islamic state that is still controlling speech and thought in Iran today while ensuring that no economic or social progress can be made there. 

As for America’s recent folly in Iraq, it’s a matter of common knowledge that the vast majority of Iraqi dead were killed by other Iraqis and imported Muslim terrorists and not by American troops.  True, we probably should not have deposed Saddam Hussein; however, that doesn’t change the facts about who did what to whom afterward.

No, Muslims’ anger toward the U.S. is primarily about Israel - the Jews who must be destroyed for Islam to be satisfied.

Understand that while the Palestinians in Israel have been aligned with Muslim nations and terrorists groups for several decades, there was not a great deal of Islamic fervor among residents of Palestine prior to that strategic alignment.  Neither is Jerusalem of any particular consequence to Muslims, historically speaking.  Its value is as a ransom, the prized possession of another faith held hostage.  Fundamentally, it’s America’s support for the Jews makes that us the enemy of Islamic radicals, not our actions in the world, though those often hurt relations as well.

MPACUK’s claim that America has made Islam violent is a fabrication.  Where are the murderous Vietnamese, who by rights should be setting off bombs in New York with all the fervor of a radical Wahabi?  They don’t exist.  Radical Muslims chose the path of violence deliberately, because they believe in it and that it can achieve their aims for them. 

But suppose you are a 16-year-old Muslim male with an opportunity to consider your potential futures and make a logical decision about how to spend the next 6 years of your life.  What makes more sense, becoming a foot soldier in the mullahs’ terrorist army or getting an education and making a place for yourself in civilized society?  The latter option is clearly more advantageous for you and your progeny save for one consideration:  Islam.

This is particularly obvious when one reads articles like this one in which the Houston Chronicle reports that many Egyptians are too poor to afford meat during the Eid al-Adha.

Their lives don’t have to be that way.  There’s nothing inferior about Arabs’ genes, intellect, or abilities.  But they, like the Iranian and Iraqi people, are hobbled by their governments and the prison of their religion.

“What does it say about me, and this country, when I have to ask the butcher to give me bones that he used to throw to the dogs?”  An Egyptian woman asked rhetorically.

What indeed.  One thing is certain: the rhetoric that terrorist apologists like MPACUK push on Muslims everywhere does absolutely nothing to help them ensure better lives for their children.  Quite the opposite.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

You can read his full piece in the New York Times here - but here’s a highlight:

“With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.

Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close…

The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.

President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better”

Ayers would like us all to know that he’s just a nice tweedy academic who was a bit intemperate in his youth.  In the 1960’s he was on the side of angels protesting for free speech and the end of unjust wars being fought by the imperialists in government.  He just HAD to protest that awful war in Vietnam, so he had to bomb government buildings because polite protests didn’t get the government’s attention.  He just can’t understand why some of the crazy folks on the right can’t just let bygones be bygones. It was an interesting, not to mention stomach-turning piece of verbiage.  Ayers wants to reassure us what a decent, moral and concerned citizen of the world he is.

By comparison, I found myself reflecting on Scott Simon’s piece on National Public Radio’s Week End Edition last week.  Simon was commenting about the terrorism in India, and remarking that many self-styled progressives, especially his colleagues in the media, were uncomfortable with words like ‘evil’ and ‘terrorism’ because they seem so morally loaded.  Yet he came to recognize that he could see no way to justify the targeting of people on their way to work, on vacation in a hotel, or just walking down the street.  Simson stated that he could finally see why the concept of evil actually might have validity.  The idea that someone would target civilians engaged in shopping, in a place of worship, commuting to work, or on holiday because they were defenseless people who could not or likely would not resist seemed, in Simon’s view, to cross the threshold and become ‘evil.’

Perhaps someday soon Scott Simon will be willing to accept the idea that terrorism is evil.  Targeting the unarmed and non-violent because they are easy to kill is what terrorism entails.  Terrorism is successful because it is shocking.  Bill Ayers wanted to shock by killing.  But he had another motivation.  Ayers wanted to overthrow the government of the US.  He hoped by killing enough people in and around the government, he could help foment a communist revolution in the USA.  He saw public employees, police, and elected officials as legitimate targets in his revolutionary zeal.  His group, the Weathermen / Weather Underground actually succeeded in killing some people in addition to the three Weather Underground members who failed their final course in creative bomb-making.  Ayers was, in fact guilty, and he admits it in his autobiography.  Ayers wasn’t trying to bring a peaceful end to an unjust war.  He was trying to bring down the US government.

So who should we believe?  The Bill Ayers who wrote the books about the Days of Rage and his autobiography, or the William Ayers who penned this self serving drivel in the latest New York Times?  Well,  I believe the Ayers of his autobiography and the numerous police reports.  The guy writing for the New York Times is either lying or non compos mentis.  Either way, that suggests that the author of the NYT Op-Ed piece isn’t someone who should be teaching at a university, but someone who should be making license plates in prison, or folding origami in a mental ward.  My belief is that he should have gone to prison thirty years ago, and then gone the way of another unrepentant domestic terrorist, Timothy McVeigh.  Ayers, however, doesn’t have the spine to admit killing people and then make a defiant speech at the death chamber door.  As terrorists go, McVeigh was a much classier act.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.