Bomber Bill Is Factually Challenged
That’s PC-speak (aka ‘Newspeak’) for saying William Ayers’ Op-Ed piece in the New York Times is a steaming pile of crap. Or, in plain English, self serving lies.
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.
Many people (and nations) have done horrible things becuse they believed they were serving a greater good.
The US dropped an antomic bomb in the belief that inflicting this horror on innocent civilians would shorten the war and eventually save American lives.
Our departing president expresses no regret for using torture to further his goals or for subscribing to the notion of a unitray executive.
What is judged unforgiveable is often, like in this piece, a reflection of political positioning. And, these judgments are often revised with the passage of historical distance in time.
I have less trouble accepting Ayers for his current contributions in academia than I have accepting the political posturing by those judging the progress of our civilization while wearing the blindes of political group think.
@meitene
Excuse me, but this comment doesn’t really make sense, except in the very basic sense that war is an ugly business. No argument there. But to argue that Ayers is performing acceptable service in academia misses the point: Ayers is a person who believes that bombings and terror are acceptable.
The comparison of Ayers’ bomb-making to the use of atomic weapons is particularly dubious. Ayers was a free agent engaging in what he admits was revolutionary activity – violent activity – against the legitimate government of the USA. Ayers has never been an agent of a recognized government during a declared war with the USA. The Imperial government of Japan was a belligerent power at war against he USA in August of 1945. The Japanese Empire showed no evidence of willingness to surrender unconditionally, which was the only outcome the allies were willing to consider. President Truman (who had been an officer with combat experience in World War I) chose to use a new weapon which he hoped would bring about a speedy end to the war with the fewest allied casualties. This is precisely what the atomic bombs did.
Gar Alperovits and the new left historians who have argued that the bombs were unnecessary militarily, and morally wrong due to the high civilian death toll have been pretty well proven wrong by Richard Frank, who utilized original Japanese documents and other primary sources to an extent not previously possible. While Alperovitz and many other academics could make what seemed to be a plausible argument that perhaps the Japanese civilian casualty toll could have been reduced by another tactic – a naval blockade is one frequently suggested option. But Frank shows that the results of a blockade would almost certainly have starved more people than the bombs killed; allied casualties from continued operations would have been higher; and the possibility of greater civilian deaths from combat, mass suicide (Okinawa is an example) all make a very credible case for the decision to use the bombs as actually being life-savers. Finally, it is absurd to imagine that President Harry Truman – or any other person who might have assumed the office – would have seriously considered increased allied combat deaths to preserve the lives of Japanese, be they civilian or military, during the period of combat operations. Any President would be looking for the quickest way to end the war with the fewest allied (read American) casualties possible.
Frank’s book, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire has been out for about seven years, so it should not be hard to find. I recommend it as a corrective to the dated and politically tendentious work by Alperovitz.
Torture is generally conceded to be a very poor way to obtain useful information. I don’t approve of it, and I prefer that my government not engage in it. However, unlike the arm-chair politicians on most blogs, I am unwilling to absolutely condemn the current administration. I believe that there are sometimes occasions when people make decisions to do absolutely dreadful things because they believe that the greater good requires it. Should that apply to the Bush administration? I have my doubts. But I am not as sure that they crossed the line as many of his critics. Especially critics who support the kind of ‘protest’ engaged in by someone like William Ayers.
All of the above is very entertaining and amusing. Ultimately, however, it is just a waste of time. You can declaim until the cows come home, if you like, but things will remain the same. The only way such questions as the propriety, or lack thereof, of actions undertaken for political ends, will be decided is ” Whose ox is being gored?” The Jews in Israel today condemn the terrorist actions of Gazans. In the late 1940’s, the British, holders of the Palestine protectorate, were saying the same things about the Jews, for the same reasons. The only real difference is that the Jews were much more efficient in their use of terror.
SO, it seems that whoever controls the newspapers will decide who is or is not a terrorist. All the preaching about decency, all the talk about democracy, will be jettisoned as soon as anyone feels (s)he has a serious grievance. In the USA, today, the right wing is trying to foment a feeling of victimization strong enough to support terrorism.
The left wing is, as always, self-righteous and supportive of tolerance and political correctness. What a mess!! The left in the USA should immediately make use of the strongest weapon it possesses, ridicule.
Only if the right wing is exposed as the humorless fascists that they are and thereby deprived of their power, can a peaceful, civil society exist in the USA.
But, in the meanwhile, although I know that the request is useless,
I would like to ask everyone on all sides, to tone down the rhetoric. You prove nothing about the people you describe, only about yourself and your own opinions.