William Ayers Writes About The Past, Present on Blog
William Ayers, former radical, now English professor and 24x7 media bête noir, has a blog. (Who doesn't these days.) Most of the blog is about his writing, his talks, his biography and history. He hasn't blogged about how he was thrown into the middle of the Democratic debate by ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos at the suggestion of Fox News talking head Sean Hannity the other day. But he did blog recently about the furor over his tenuous connection to Sen. Barack Obama.
Here some of that recent entry entitled "Episodic Notoriety - Fact and Fiction":
"Day in and day out I go about my business, I hang out with my kids and my grandchildren, take care of the elders, I go to work, I teach and I write, I organize and I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and social justice; now and then (and unpredictably) I appear in the newspapers or on TV with a reference to my book Fugitive Days, a memoir of the revolutionary action and militant resistance to the Viet Nam War -- the years of miracle and wonder -- and some fantastic assertions about what I did, what I said, and what I believe. The other night, for example, I heard Sean Hannity tell Senator John McCain that I was an unrepentant terrorist who had written an article on September 11, 2001 extolling bombings against the U.S., and even advocating more terrorist bombs. Senator McCain couldn't believe it, and neither could I.'
(Hannity, Stephanopoulos and Clinton had the details, unintentionally or otherwise, wrong. The article appeared early on the morning Sept. 11 before the attacks happened. Ayers was promoting his new book, not writing about terrorism. As Raw Story noted "Ayers interview was published in the Arts section of that morning's newspaper, meaning the interview happened well before the attacks took place." In fact, Ayers later "reprinted a letter he wrote to the Times after the attacks saying their article was misleading. In it he described his book as a 'condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate-- murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official --policy.' ")
Ayers continues
"1. Regrets. I'm often quoted saying that I have 'no regrets' This is not true. For anyone paying attention -- and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways -- life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I'm sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say 'no, I don't regret anything I did to try 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.
"The illegal, murderous, imperial war against Viet Nam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese, a disaster for Americans, and a world tragedy. Many of us understood this, and many tried to stop the war. Those of us who tried recognize that our efforts were inadequate: the war dragged on for a decade, thousands were slaughtered every week, and we couldn't stop it. In the end the U.S. military was defeated and the war ended, but we surely didn't do enough."
You can read more on his blog here.
7:30 PM ET | 04-19-2008 | permalink
