Who’s the Terrorist? - Democratic Underground

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Fri Oct-10-08 10:02 PM
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Who’s the Terrorist?

In a desperate bid to save his rapidly sinking presidential campaign, John McCain has taken to trying to associate his opponent with terrorism. This tactic has inflamed crowds at McCain/Palin rallies to the extent that cries of “TREASON!”, “TERRORIST!”, and “KILL HIM!” are often heard from the crowds.

This is beyond irresponsible. Though Barack Obama’s meteoric political rise testifies to the absence of racism in large segments of the U.S. population, racial hatred is far from dead in our country. And it is not at all beyond possibility that the hatred towards Obama stirred up by the McCain campaign will inflame racial tensions to the point where one of his followers decides to take drastic action. Or alternatively, the racial hatred so produced may serve as a convenient back-drop to conceal a highly organized conspiracy designed to facilitate a regime change, similar to what transpired in November 1963.

Therefore, it would behoove the McCain campaign, as well as other Americans, to take a close look at the facts behind these allegations. The best that the McCain campaign could come up with in its attempt to tie Obama to terrorism was William Ayers. So that would be a good place to start.

The relationship between Obama and William Ayers

In response to the McCain campaign’s frequent accusations that Obama is ‘palling around with terrorists’ an article on CNN Politics.com called “Fact Check: Is Obama ‘Palling around with Terrorists’?”, discusses the extent of the relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In 1995, Obama and Ayers both were involved in a Chicago public education improvement project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

From 1999 to 2001, Obama and Ayers were both board members of a charitable foundation called the Woods Fund.

In 1999, Ayers hosted a campaign event for Obama in his bid for the Illinois State Senate.

The two have not spoken on the phone together or communicated by e-mail since 2005. But they did bump into each other on the street a little over a year ago, as they both live in the same neighborhood.

No evidence exists of a relationship between Obama and Ayers beyond what is noted here.

The article concludes:

There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Is/Was William Ayers a Terrorist?

The relationship between Obama and Ayers is so tenuous that when confronted with inflammatory accusations about the relationship, the Obama campaign merely points out the tenuousness of the relationship rather than make any attempt to defend Ayers, whose actions Obama has repudiated.

Nevertheless, I think it is important to consider the history of this man whom the McCain campaign feels is the best vehicle to tie Obama to “terrorism”.

John McCain is not the first person to try to make the connection between Ayers and Obama. His task was made easier for him by virtue of the fact that the subject was brought up during a Democratic debate moderated by ABC News’ lackeys, George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. At that debate, Stephanopoulos said the following about Ayers and the organization he used to work for:

They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He's never apologized for that. And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

The organization that Stephanopoulos referred to with that statement was the Weather Underground, a former anti-Vietnam War organization, which was on the FBI’s ten most-wanted list during the Hoover days. Whether their activities ever killed anyone is not clear to me, but that appears doubtful.

Though Ayers and his wife were members of the Weather Underground, Ayers maintains that he never participated in any terrorist activities. In any event, Ayers and his wife turned themselves in during the 1980s, and all charges against them were dropped. Stephanopoulos’ characterization of Ayers was clearly misleading at best. Here is what Ayers himself had to say about his supposed advocacy of terrorism:

I heard Sean Hannity tell Senator John McCain that I was an unrepentant terrorist… extolling bombings against the U.S. and even advocating more terrorist bombs. Senator McCain couldn’t believe it (that is, before Obama became his principle barrier to the presidency), and neither could I. I’m often quoted as saying “I have no regrets”. That is not true. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Vietnam, and I say “No, I don’t regret anything I did to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough”. This is then elided: “He has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings”…. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause. I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely…

So, lets be absolutely clear about this. The evidence that William Ayers was ever a terrorist is slim at best. If such evidence existed, why were charges dropped against him before even bringing him to trial? Far from being a terrorist, William Ayers is a passionate anti-terrorist. So much so that even when he sees his own country engaging in what he considers to be terrorism, he speaks out against it.

John McCain’s association with George W. Bush

John McCain’s association with George W. Bush is best summarized by a couple of simple statements and a picture. First, he has (truthfully) stated that “Nobody has supported President Bush More than I Have”. Secondly, he has regularly supported Bush’s policies by voting for them 95% of the time.

And then there’s this picture:

Is George W. Bush a terrorist?

In most of my DU political posts I try to aim my message to moderates as well as progressives/liberals, in the hope that I might be able to sway their opinions. This post may be an exception to that general rule, in that I don’t think that there are many moderates who are willing to consider the possibility that their own president is a terrorist. But this has to be said in any honest discussion of the terrorist connections of the presidential candidates.

The Iraq War and occupation as terrorism
In assessing the use of terror by the U.S. military in Iraq, two of the most basic facts to consider are: 1) Given that George Bush’s excuses for perpetrating the war all turned out to be lies, it is evident that the real reasons for the war were a combination of baser motives, including control of Iraqi oil supplies, the expansion of American military power, and war profiteering; and 2) Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of our invasion. Nor are those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths mere accidents. As noted by Michael Schwartz:

The architects of American policy in the Middle East tend to keep escalating the level of brutality in search of a way to convince the Iraqis (and now the Iranians) that the only path that avoids indiscriminate slaughter is submission to a Pax Americana. Put another way, American policy in the Middle East has devolved into unadorned state terrorism.

The brutality described by Schwartz is evidenced in numerous different ways: The U.S. military does not hesitate to attack heavily populated Iraqi cities, with predictable results:

The US Coalition has used overwhelming military force to attack Iraqi cities on grounds that they were “insurgent strongholds.” The offensives, involving air and ground bombardment and armored assaults, have resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people (actually millions), large civilian casualties and colossal destruction of the urban physical infrastructure, making affected cities at least partly uninhabitable.

Frequent aerial bombing of Iraq has resulted in numerous civilian deaths. The use of chemical weapons by the U.S. military has undoubtedly resulted in especially gruesome deaths and injuries of many civilians. And as frustration mounts on the ground, “Day after day, scores of Iraqi civilians are being massacred in concerted offensives aimed at terrorizing the population and stamping American control over the country…”, while the U.S. government implausibly maintains that the atrocities are merely the work of “a few bad apples”.

George Bush’s Iraq War as an act of terrorism is summarized well in this article:

The invasion launched by George W. Bush was heralded by the most frightening and powerful use of force and military violence in recent history. His Shock and Awe bombardment of Baghdad was designed to intimidate and coerce the government as well as the civilian population of that nation to change its existing leadership.

George Bush’s “War on Terror” as terrorism
George Bush conducts his “War on Terror” using a variety of illegal, brutal, and cowardly means: We capture thousands of “terrorist suspects” through a variety of means, most commonly by paying bounties for them; we render a great many of them into the custody of tyrannical regimes to be tortured; thousands of others we hold indefinitely in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, or various secret CIA prisons, without even charging them with a crime; we allow them no access to legal counsel or their own families, who aren’t even notified of their disappearances; we torture them repeatedly; and for those who are tried for crimes, we don’t allow them to see the evidence against them or to contest that evidence. According to Stephen Grey, award winning journalist for Excellence in Human Rights Reporting for Amnesty International, in “Ghost Plane – The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”, we have done such things to about 11,000 human beings since September 11, 2001.

Why do I call this terrorism? Terrorism has been defined as “ideologically or politically motivated violence directed against civilian targets.” Substituting the word “innocent” for “civilian” also provides a good definition. Well, many or most of these people are civilians, or if not, they were merely fighting in defense of their country against George Bush’s invasion, when they were picked up by the U.S. military and branded “terrorists”. Just as important, it is highly likely that the good majority of them are innocent of any crime. Such were the conclusions of Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated our torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And such were the conclusions of the International Red Cross.

Who’s the bigger terrorist?

So who’s the bigger terrorist – William Ayers or George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? On the one hand we have a man who belonged to an organization that plotted or threatened to bomb some buildings, but who as far as we know never participated in or condoned a single act of terrorism. And on the other hand we have a man who is responsible for numerous acts of state terror, resulting in the deaths of probably over a million people.

No wonder that even our allies consider George Bush to be a threat to world peace, as demonstrated by a November 2006 international poll which showed that 83% of Mexicans, 78% of British citizens and 74% of Canadians consider George Bush to be a severe or moderate threat to world peace.

But following the 9/11 attacks on our country, the word “terrorism”, as used by the Bush administration, has come to have the most perverted of meanings. Instead of the meaning it was previously known to have, “terrorism” has come to be defined as any activity directed against the government of the United States. If you’re a citizen of a nation that is invaded by the United States, and you take up arms to defend your country against the invaders, you’re a terrorist. Or, if you’re a citizen of the United States and you protest your government’s use of terror against other peoples, you may also be considered a terrorist by your nation’s rulers.

It is in this type of a situation, where too many Americans buy into the Alice-in-Wonderland, up is down and down is up type of logic perpetrated by our government, where irresponsible rhetoric could lead to some tragic consequences from which we may never recover. John McCain and Sarah Palin should take this very seriously and work hard to get their campaign out of the gutter.

PS

As I was nearing the completion of this article I saw the news that John McCain did something that quite frankly surprised me. In response to some typically heated rhetoric by one of his supporters, he announced something to the effect that Barack Obama is not a terrorist, and in fact is “a good family man”. I saw him say that, and he sounded sincere to me.

Some will argue that he did that out of political calculation, as the irresponsible rhetoric of his campaign has been driving his reputation and his poll numbers to new lows. That may be, and I won’t argue the point. But either way, he did the right thing by handling that episode the way he did. This may have come too late to prevent a tragedy, but nevertheless he deserves credit for doing it. Thank you, John McCain. Let’s all hope that this represents the beginning of a new tone for the rest of this campaign.