Mike, there are millions of us who knew the Vietnam war was illegal and we hated it. At the very last minute my son was drafted. I suggested he learn shorthand and typing and maybe he would be able to stay at Ft. Benning and not get shipped out. It worked! I did not exhale until he was excused from duty as being the last of the Malcolm males. He made it home finally. My grandfathers were in WW1 and my brother was a naval WW2 pilot but I lost several cousins in Korea. No one has ever been able to explain to me why we were in Korea or Vietnam. We all had signs on our cars and porches 'NEVER AGAIN - ANY WAR'

We lived close to the Vet's hospital in Sawtelle and every Sunday during the WW2, we were there keeping those brave men happy reading their letters and writing others to their spouses. I marched down Wilshire Blvd. demonstrating against the wars and would again if I were younger. My eyesight was so poor I could not serve as I could not see at night. It still is a problem.

The final insult is this mess in Iraq. Does Bush not think that we remember these wars? Has he no concept of who we buried all over the nation? What came home to us is buried in the Santa Monica Woodlawn cemetary, and up in Monterey/San Francisco area. I can understand Ayres actions because I saw what came home from Korea and Vietnam and now again the body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the grandkids of my neighbors and friends and however we can manage it; it must stop!

Bush should have been impeached along with Cheney and Rumsfeld. This must stop! I'm living in Phoenix as our grandson is at school there. I miss my California and my Pacific Ocean where I grew up.

Malcolm, a weepy old man

I heard somewhere that George Washington was a terrorist, at least the British originally thought so.

The colonalists wouldn't fight fair they would hide behind trees and bushes like the savage natives taught them to.

RichardKanePa

I agree Mike,and thanks for taking this up. Get ready for the usual suspects to begin insisting that Ayers was the villain they've been told he was.You can say "people weren't targeted, and no one was killed" a million times, but the McCain huggers don't hear it. They've just gotta have someone to hate. Hal Brown posted last week a piece defending Ayers,at least trying to put him in perspective, and it certainly got outraged responses,mostly from people that weren't around at the time.

AMEN.

An excellent, thought-provoking post. I only wish to add a libertarian's perspective to the discussion--

Who was the greater criminal: William Ayers or John McCain?

Ayers allegedly set off some explosives that killed no one. He was acquitted of all charges.

John McCain, on orders from his mafia don (also called "the government"), flew his aircraft over civilian targets, dropping bombs, killing and maiming thousands.

As a species, we have got to evolve beyond the point where we think, automatically and reflexively, that mass murder is okay if ordered by something called "the government." We've also got to challenge the notion that anyone who follows government orders and takes part in the mass murder is a "hero".

I can't believe the filth John Mc Cain as now lowered himself to with this most recent video about the association between Barack Obama and William Ayers. If you watch it closely, the newspaper clips he shows all have recent dates added to them trying to make the viewer believe these are current events. This is not the truth, these events were from a completely different era. John Mc Cain and Sarah Palin have labeled William Ayers as a "Domestic Terrorist" with whom Barack Obama should never have associated. Actually, the word terrorist carries a completely different meaning today than it did almost 40 years ago when the FBI started applying it to anyone who was against the VietNam war. Although I didn't agree with the use of violence, I did agree with the goals of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) from which the Weatherman eventually came. We were protesting against an unjust war in a tiny little country on the other side of the earth. Unless you were there and lived through it, you cannot really understand what it was like. From my perspective, and many people of my generation, Lieutenant John Mc Cain was a murderer dropping bombs on innocent women and children. Back then people would actually curse you just for the length of your hair or the clothes you wore. The police might even pull you over just to teach you a lesson. Richard Nixon's "silent majority" felt themselves empowered to persecute anyone who didn't support the war. If you didn't agree with the government they labeled you a trator. It wasn't until the war was over and Jimmy Carter was in office that this country began to heal itself from that nightmare. John Mc Cain, for his own political benefit, is now playing to those old hatreds that almost tore this country apart 40 years ago. It is possible that he never healed inside and is still carrying around all that VietNam baggage in his head.

I am in agreement with all written above.

The Vietnam war. To prevent the "domino effect" spread of communism in Asia. And now we owe Communist Red China a trillion borrowed dollars plus interest, also a nation with which we also have an $800 billion dollar a year trade deficit. So much for stopping the spread of communism.

Well, at least we've kept that enormous threat to our existence, Cuba, pretty much isolated.

-- Kent Shaw

Thanks for the wonderful responses. It's really a shame that 40 years ago we really did have it in our hands to change America and we walked away from it.

The mention of SDS: A year or so ago, I read the Port Huron Statement from beginning to end. Try it. You will be shocked at how "unradical" it sounds in 2008.

We helped take down Nixon, but when we sold out, we got Reagan, Poppy and W.

We didn't walk away from it Mike, we were broken. Kent State scared the crap out of ME.And people had kids, and wound up middle class after all, and some died from drugs,and the War on them, and some went to jail. We were intimidated. Lots of ideas and lessons were and are part of our culture today, from organic foods,alternative health care, to at least some recognition of the benefits of marijuana.Change, is slow, and still happening. Barack is another part of it. When I watched John McCain at that hideous Republican hate fest they called their convention, I realized that the Vietnam War was still going on in the old guy, and still going on in the Republican Party. Those that killed and those that begged them not to. We will be fighting this time FOR the guys coming back from whatever nightmares forced upon them by the occupation of Iraq. I was so proud of that Vet up in the rafters in St Paul. You look at the kids today out there registering people to vote for Obama, and you can feel good that the evolution of hope is still ongoing, and we were part of it.

It can be really depressing to consider the level of actual contol the citizenry can effect. Looking around today, just as during that last great war, shows who really is in charge. BIG money and BIG war machine have all the chips, control the political process, even choose which candidates can be voted for, while BIG media serves them to hoodwick the people into thinking it all has individual meaning. Even the media "stars" who do the front line snow job are mostly just caught up in the blizzard.

Except for the "game" of it all, or perhaps even the comfort the game provides those at the top while they're here... my question is WHY?

You really can't take it with you.

Bill Ayers is an idealistic bomber just like Timothy McVeigh. He was just lucky enough not to kill somebody in the process.