Posted by Eric Posner:
Was Bill Ayers a Terrorist?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_30-2008_12_06.shtml#1228580698
He says [1]no:
I never killed or injured anyone.... In 1970, I co-founded the
Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an
accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our
comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to
take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty
offices � the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol
were the most notorious � as an illegal and unpopular war consumed
the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and
perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be � and still
is being � debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme
vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks
on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and
convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a
screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged
in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading
fear and suffering for political ends.
There is no doubt, however, that at least under current law, he would
be considered a terrorist. Here is a definition of terrorism in U.S.
law (22 USC 2656f(d)f(2)) (there are others as well but similar):
the term �terrorism� means premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents
The Weather Underground was a subnational group; exploding bombs is an
act of violence; government offices are non-combatant targets (the
Weather Underground also bombed banks); and the use of violence had
the political goal of ending the Vietnam War. "Screaming response" or
no, this was terrorism.
Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not
idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign
countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought
to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is
the excuse that terrorists always offer�that their political goals
justify their use of violence�and naturally the legal definition could
not permit such a defense without subverting itself, or turning every
terrorism trial into a debate about whether the political ends of the
defendants are "good" or "bad" from a moral or political perspective.
Though Ayers is right that the he was a sideshow to the campaign, the
term �unrepentant terrorist� seems accurate. Worse terms would be even
more accurate.
The op-ed is written carefully; one detects the touch of a lawyer or
perhaps an author with lawyerly instincts. Ayers says that he never
killed or injured anyone and that he co-founded the Weather
Underground in 1970, which �went on to take responsibility for placing
several small bombs in empty offices.� The natural question that
arises is whether the Weather Underground actually did more than what
it took responsibility for, and whether Ayers, as its co-founder, is
responsible for those unnamed acts, or other acts that occurred prior
to the founding of the Weather Underground in 1970. Anyone with even
casual knowledge of the days of rage and the other antics of the
Weathermen (the term used prior to the founding of the Weather
Underground in 1970), and the various disputes involving what the
Weather Underground did and did not actually do (as opposed to what it
�took responsibility for�), might wonder what Ayers is not telling us,
and whether Ayers considers himself responsible for the many injuries
and deaths (of his own �comrades� who accidently blew themselves up in
a Greenwich Village townhouse prior to the founding of the Weather
Underground) even if he did not inflict them with his own hands. Ayres
did not first enter the scene when he co-founded the Weather
Underground in 1970, as uncareful readers might surmise.
The op-ed is a stupid piece of work; what it says about Ayers I leave
to the reader.
References
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html?_r=1
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