Speaking at a rally on Saturday, October 4, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin referred to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's alleged connection to "terrorists." According to Palin, Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's
palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
Here are 10 things you should know about Barack Obama's "terrorist" pals.
1. Gov. Palin is used the word "terrorists" plural. But in this case, there is only one alleged "terrorist." Earlier in the year, right-wing swift-boaters claimed Obama was "friends" with a former Sixties Radical named Bill Ayers (pictured right), who was head of a leftist organization called the Weather Underground.
2. The Weather Underground was a small sect that broke off of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society when Obama was eight years old.
3. According to CNN, here is the extent of Obama's connection to Bill Ayers:
Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and [his wife Bernadine] Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.
4. The Weather Underground didn't actually kill any civilians. Three "Weathermen" (the name for members of the Weather Underground) were killed when a bomb they were building exploded in a New York townhouse. True, that particular bomb was allegedly going to be detonated on a military base, but after the townhouse explosion the base bombing was thankfully aborted. The BBC's Website ran a great short history of the Weather Underground (click here for it).
5. Violence is always deplorable. But as violent organizations go, the Weather Underground was decidedly tame compared to others. The Weathermen actually telephoned people who were inside buildings that had been targeted for bombings and gave them advance warnings.
6. Ayers (right) is a 63-year-old education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a respected community activist in Chicago. If Palin and the other right-wing looney tunes swift-boaters are right -- and he truly is a "terrorist" -- he would either be dead, in prison or, even worse than both of those prospects, in Guantanamo. For years, he has been a community activist who has dedicated his life to helping the poor, minorities, women and other people struggling to survive in Chicago. A Chicago Tribune editorial noted:
Ah, we know Ayers too. And his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. If you know people in Chicago academic circles, chances are you know Ayers and Dohrn. They have not been repentant about their days in the radical, anti-war movement in the 1960s and their time fleeing federal authorities. They should be. There is still time for them to be. But they have done good work in Chicago--Ayers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dohrn at Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center.
7. Look at the war the Weather Underground was protesting: 3.5 million Vietnamese dead (according to Robert McNamara in the film Fog of War); more than 58,000 patriotic American men gave their lives; 3.5 million unexploded mines are still buried under Vietnamese soil; 300,000 tons of unexploded bombs still litter the countryside; U.S. planes dropped 8 million tons of bombs and other munitions from aircraft on Vietnam, which is the equivalent of 640 atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima; U.S. planes sprayed 20 million gallons of herbicides, many of them containing cancer-causing agents, over an area about the size of Massachusetts; the CIA organized the Phoenix Program, a massive, well-funded program of assassins who liquidated suspected Viet Cong agents, many of whom were actually non-communists who opposed the Saigon regime; dissidents were also locked up in tiny "tiger cages" by the brutal pro-U.S. government in South Vietnam. The list goes on and on and on, but this Blog entry is already getting long. So you get the point. It's a shame that these Swift-Boaters, who hate violence so badly when it comes to the Weather Underground, are perfectly fine with it when it comes to America's catastrophic interventions overseas.
8. Suppose Bill Ayers and Obama were best buddies -- which they clearly never were. So what? Look at Obama's politics. The man is not a flaming revolutionary. Never has been, never will be. He is not an advocate of bombing buildings to protest the Iraq War. He is not calling for armed resistance against "THE MAN" in the streets of America. He doesn't wear a black beret and give a clenched fist salute to his comrades. I haven't heard him use the word "honky" once in this whole campaign. Obama is a centrist Democrat with some liberal social beliefs. Eldridge Cleaver he ain't.
9. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr. -- no radical either -- described Ayers as "a valued member of the Chicago community" who has "worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program."
10. A Gallup Poll taken yesterday shows Obama leading McCain 50-43 percent. Other polls report an even wider lead for Obama. Clearly, Palin's lousy attempt at swift-boating is a desperation effort to sink Obama. It won't work. Bless the Sweet Lord Almighty that November 4 is less than a month away. After that, the pseudo-mavericks Palin and John McCain will finally be out of our hair.
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