David Hoppe

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:: Palin's terrorist

A blast from another past

By David Hoppe

Thank you, Sarah Palin. Just when it seemed the Vietnam era had reached its sell-by date for political mud-slinging, John McCain's pick to stand one heartbeat away from presiding over your future and mine started caw-cawing about Barack Obama's "pallin' around" with a "terrorist" from those bad old days.

Who says history doesn't matter? Thanks to Palin, what was old is new again. It's enough to put the spring back in a Baby Boomer's stride. The only trouble, of course, is that Palin's understanding of history is, shall we say, selective.

Palin was referring to Obama's association with Bill Ayers. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, Ayers was a leading member of a radical group called the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground, or Weathermen as they were called, were violently opposed to the war in Vietnam. These people generally came from privileged backgrounds and the best schools. They were living proof that growing up with the best of everything is no guarantee that a person will be smarter, wiser or kinder. Bill Ayers and his ilk were petulant, arrogant brats who used America 's lack of social justice to cover their personal inability to deal with a world that didn't much care about them, or what they thought about things.

Ayers and Co. turned their chronic tantrums into a twisted doctrine. "Bring the war home," they cried, and they hit out by planting bombs at public buildings, including New York City Police Headquarters, the Pentagon and even the U.S. Capitol. In San Francisco a policeman was killed and another maimed by these actions. Ironically, though, the Weathermen tended to be a greater danger to themselves than to others. Several members blew themselves up while messing with explosives.

Although charges were filed against Ayers, they were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Today Ayers teaches in the College of Education at the University of Illinois' Circle Campus in Chicago. He has worked with Chicago's Mayor Daley on school reform and served on several philanthropic boards. It was through service on one of these boards that he met Barack Obama. Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, then hosted a coffee in support of Obama's candidacy for the Illinois state legislature. They contributed $200 to Obama's campaign for State Senate.

This is the Bill Ayers - academic and civic leader -- that Barack Obama is acquainted with. As others have pointed out, Obama was eight years-old when Ayers was in his outlaw phase. What's more, repeated investigations by assorted media outlets - from The Washington Post to Time -- have failed to find any evidence that Obama and Ayers have ever been, well, pals.

This doesn't matter to Palin. All she wanted was an excuse to put the words "terrorist" and "Obama" in the same sentence. But here's where history comes in. It wasn't that long ago that Palin was seen pallin' around with Henry Kissinger as part of her crash course in foreign affairs.

If terror can be defined as inflicting pain and suffering upon civilian populations, Bill Ayers and his self-absorbed bunch of post-adolescent fellow-travelers had nothing on Henry K. Let's see: the secret bombing of Cambodia, the overthrow and subsequent murder of democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende, support of Operation Condor, a systematic campaign of murder and kidnapping designed to destabilize leftist politicians in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the backing of Indonesian President Suharto's massacres of as many as 200,000 East Timorese. These are just a sampling of Kissinger's greatest hits.

Today, Bill Ayers goes wherever he wants but, in 2001, Henry Kissinger had to flee France to avoid being questioned about Operation Condor. A criminal case has been filed against him in Chile and the Brazilian government cancelled an invitation for Kissinger to speak because it could not guarantee his immunity from prosecution.

When it came to making the world a more terrifying place, Kissinger made Bill Ayers look like the rank amateur that Ayers, in fact, was. But as far as Sarah Palin is concerned, it seems if something is state supported, it can't be called terrorism.

"This is not a man who sees America as you see it and I see America ," said Palin of Obama and his supposed "terrorist" connection. That's because Palin's idea of a real American blast from the past is. Henry Kissinger.