Posted on 10/04/2008 10:05:25 PM PDT by 2nd amendment mama
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.
This needs to be at the top every day. Thanks for posting. Incredible.
WASHINGTON TIMES.com: "FBI INVESTIGATES OBAMA'S FRIEND" by Andrea Billups (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "(Editor's note: The original version of this article has been corrected. The office of Larry D. Walsh was not raided.) The FBI is investigating a former Illinois state senator who is a poker-playing buddy of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.") (October 3, 2008)
” He’s never apologized for that.”
That’s it? He should simply apologize and everything would be all right? How about a long prison term?
Here is video of the author, John Murtagh, being interviewed on Greta van Susteren some months back...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354181,00.html
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
March 6, 1970: "three members of the Weather Underground accidentally killed themselves in a Manhattan townhouse while attempting to build a powerful bomb they had intended to plant at a social dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey -- an event that was to be attended by U.S. Army soldiers. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plot been successfully executed."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
"The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
The bomb was packed with nails to inflict maximum casualties upon detonation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Chronology_of_events
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"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0
Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
________________________________________________________
From the New York Times, August 24, 2003
"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."
Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
So much to say here. And I don’t think too many would like all my responses.
Company you keep ping.
Bookmarking for your links - Thank you so very much!!!! Great job!
Here’s an intersting aside: the author of this article is a Yonkers City Councilman. If Obama is elected President, he could run for higher office.
As I’ve said before, the Weather Underground are no better than the 1965 Alabama church bombers.
If any Republican had been friendly with some of them, how well do you think the “I was 8 years old when they blew up those girls” excuse would play?
we were not provided police protection, but my dad purchased many guns over the years.
two states away, in tennessee, i met a few guys at a campsite. we started talking and finally exchanged full names. when they found out what my last name was, they went into a frenzy and literally ripped apart a park bench, threatening my life with the boards removed from it.
not that anything in my experience can come close to what's included in this article. i still remain slightly paranoid when it comes to meeting new people. i always question their motives if they want to get to know me a little better.
I read this and I ask myself what has happened to our country. Have we reached the point where we will ignore anything just for the sake of change? How can a man like Obama be leading in the polls? HOW!
Good post. Thanks.
No, on second thought I will say some of the things on my mind.
I’m sorry that you lived through this bombing.
But being the progeny of a judge from New York and stating that you were in favor of Obama up to the point that the Ayres connection was brought up makes me want to puke.
I’m willing to bet that your father was a part of the liberal establishment. I’m willing to bet that if I dug a little, I’d find out that your father was one of the people who (like their counterparts today) are acting as the willing idiots for terrorists today. And in typical left wing fashion, being as this happened to YOU PERSONALLY is the only reason you have a problem with it.
Meanwhile there are people just like you all over the United States who know everything you just said, but because it didn’t happen to THEM PERSONALLY they don’t care.
So - how does it feel to think that you’re very possibly contributing to the deaths of your fellow 9 year old countrymen? Is it reasonable to assume that unless you know said 9 year olds personally, you don’t care?
I’m just curious.
You’re very welcome 2nd amendment mama.
“But being the progeny of a judge from New York and stating that you were in favor of Obama up to the point that the Ayres connection was brought up makes me want to puke.”
Not big on reading comprehension, huh?
“Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time...”
It would be like if Timothy McVeigh were alive today and not locked up and I had a role in politics and were pals with him. I could say, well you know, he did that stuff when I was 11, so its not an issue.
ping
“But being the progeny of a judge from New York and stating that you were in favor of Obama up to the point that the Ayres connection was brought up makes me want to puke.”
And to think, all that effort that you spent typing up that rant could have been saved if you wouldn’t have skipped the part about him never supporting Obama.
“I’m willing to bet that your father was a part of the liberal establishment. I’m willing to bet that if I dug a little, I’d find out that your father was one of the people who (like their counterparts today) are acting as the willing idiots for terrorists today. And in typical left wing fashion, being as this happened to YOU PERSONALLY is the only reason you have a problem with it.”
And I am willing to bet that if you would dig a little you would find that John Murtagh is a Republican Councilman from Yonkers running for a seat in the NY State Senate.
Guess we can say that your rant literally contained not one word of factually accurate or intellectually significant material. Good work.
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