September 15, 2001
To The Editors—
In July of this year Dinitia Smith asked my publisher if she might interview me for the New York Times on my forthcoming book, Fugitive Days. From the start she questioned me sharply about bombings, and each time I referred her to my memoir where I discussed the culture of violence we all live with in America, my growing anger in the 1960’s about the structures of racism and the escalating war, and the complex, sometimes extreme and despairing choices I made in those terrible times.
Smith’s angle is captured in the Times headline: “No regrets for a love of explosives” (September 11, 2001). She and I spoke a lot about regrets, about loss, about attempts to account for one’s life. I never said I had any love for explosives, and anyone who knows me found that headline sensationalistic nonsense. I said I had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength. I told her that in light of the indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese, we showed remarkable restraint, and that while we tried to sound a piercing alarm in those years, in fact we didn’t do enough to stop the war.
Smith writes of me: “Even today, he ‘finds a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,’ he writes.” This fragment seems to support her “love affair with bombs” thesis, but it is the opposite of what I wrote:
We’ll bomb them into the Stone Age, an unhinged American politician had intoned, echoing a gung-ho, shoot-from-the-hip general… each describing an American policy rarely spoken so plainly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Poor Viet Nam. Almost four times the destructive power Florida… How could we understand it? How could we take it in? Most important, what should we do about it? Bombs away. There is a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance. The rhythm of B-52s dropping bombs over Viet Nam, a deceptive calm at 40,000 feet as the doors ease open and millennial eggs are delivered on the green canopy below, the relentless thud of indiscriminate destruction and death without pause on the ground. Nothing subtle or syncopated. Not a happy rhythm. Three million Vietnamese lives were extinguished. Dig up Florida and throw it into the ocean. Annihilate Chicago or London or Bonn. Three million—each with a mother and a father, a distinct name, a mind and a body and a spirit, someone who knew him well or cared for her or counted on her for something or was annoyed or burdened or irritated by him; each knew something of joy or sadness or beauty or pain. Each was ripped out of this world, a little red dampness staining the earth, drying up, fading, and gone. Bodies torn apart, blown away, smudged out, lost forever.
I wrote about Vietnamese lives as a personal American responsibility, then, and the hypocrisy of claiming an American innocence as we constructed and stoked an intricate and hideous chamber of death in Asia. Clearly I wrote and spoke about the export of violence and the government’s love affair with bombs. Just as clearly Dinitia Smith was interested in her journalistic angle and not the truth. This is not a question of being misunderstood or “taken out of context,” but of deliberate distortion.
Some readers apparently responded to her piece, published on the same day as the vicious terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, by associating my book with them. This is absurd. My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy. It begins literally in the shadow of Hiroshima and comes of age in the killing fields of Southeast Asia. My book criticizes the American obsession with a clean and distanced violence, and the culture of thoughtlessness and carelessness that results from it. We are now witnessing crimes against humanity in our own land on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we might soon see innocent people in other parts of the world as well as in the U.S. dying and suffering in response.
All that we witnessed September 11—the awful carnage and pain, the heroism of ordinary people—may drive us mad with grief and anger, or it may open us to hope in new ways. Perhaps precisely because we have suffered we can embrace the suffering of others and gather the necessary wisdom to resist the impulse to lash out randomly. The lessons of the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s may be more urgent now than ever.
Bill Ayers Chicago, IL
Bill Ayers 
Sorry, but it makes no sense. If I hated a country as bad as this man does I would be damned if I would live there. If you detest a country why would you live there? It is a shame that American men & Women have actually died to defend people with this attitude. I believe everyone has a right to their opinion but I also support your right to get the hell out of my country.
And for the record evil has nothing to do with it. I notice that while he has slammed this country & blown it up & acted the general fool-he has damn sure taken advantage of it. If he had done the same acts in any other country in the world he would be in prison or given death penalty instead of rewarded.
I love how people against war make war.. Idiot.
millions died when we pulled out of vietnam.. I just got back from there and they call it the dark ages for the last 30 years. Thanks to idiots like Ayers millions more died and suffered.
This is what happens when idiots have a voice, way to kill more people ayers if you advocate pulling out of vietnam they you are responcible for what happen after.
Hate dumb people.. and now he teaches.
About 40 years ago I got on a plane at JFK and headed for France because I could not participate in an unjust, immoral and illegal war. I had many options but for me exile was the most appropriate. I did not think the goverment should be able to imprison me for refusing to fight in a war I could not support. Six years later, after Nixon resigned, I was able to return to the US as part of the pardon deal arranged by Ford. Now it seems we are knee high in the big muddy again, only this time with a volunteer army. That army however is at its breaking point. Hopefully a new President will be able to end this new American nightmare.
It will be unfortunate if the past is dredged up and used to manipulate public opinion in this election. Hopefully those affected will be mainly akin to the ranters who have commented above with their distortions and hysteria. However, I am frustrated by the politics of expediency I see all too often because it does not let me trust the candidates to follow through on their promises to withdraw the troops.
While in Paris I was invited to a gathering that was organized by Vietnamese patriots supporting their country against aggression. I saw one skit that showed young men and women preparing to go south to fight the Americans. I will never forget the intensity of their patriotism and commitment to a cause. I do regret that I did not and do not appear to have the same moral courage.
Hey SteveIL,
Well said my friend. Well said. Ayers will burn in hell some day. Justice will be done.
SteveIL,
You are full of contempt for everyone who appears to disagree with you, but you are long on hate and spite but short on reasoned argument. Saying that Mr Ayers is a Communist does not make it so. Saying he is an unrepentant terrorist doesn’t make that true either. What is your response to Jessica’s statement that the Weathermen were not trying to kill people with the bombs they set? How does that attempt to minimize collateral damage on their part compare to the US military’s attempts to do so in Iraq (on a moral level, I mean)?
Al Capone’s actions are a straw man in this discussion. Capone’s business was personal enrichment. If he did some incidental good in order to massage his image, then that’s nice, but it has no bearing on Mr Ayers, since Ayers, however foolish/extreme his tactics might have been, was trying to do something good: get America out of what he (and millions of other patriotic Americans, by the way) saw as an evil war. You might not agree with their assessment of the Vietnam war, but you are not the sole bearer of truth and understanding, and a little respect for free people’s right to disagree with their government is in order.
Why don’t you present a coherent explanation of exactly what is false about the notion of “social justice”? Once again, just saying it doesn’t make it so, and the readers here are not the Rush Limbaugh audience, so they expect a little more.
It is a strange view of the world that a man who has spent the bulk of his life working to improve public education in America is a “America-hating” individual. Perhaps you’d like to explain your definition of America which apparently does not include schoolchildren?
If we’re going to get into a discussion of where our tax dollars are going, I might mention that I find it disgraceful that my tax dollars are going to torturing people. I would say that as far as un-american behaviour goes, taking people who are your prisoners, over whom you have complete control, and inflicting pain on them until they tell you what you want to hear is right at the top of the list.
Shall I mention a few other things which I find not to be in keeping with the promise of America? How about an executive which refuses to obey the laws made by congress? How about a President who lies to the people of America to take them into a war of choice? How about the millions of dollars which we are paying Halliburton to do a bad job of providing support to our soldiers in that war? How about the abandonment of the people of New Orleans when disaster struck? How about the fact that now, almost THREE YEARS later, people are still living in FEMA trailers because the government and people of america care so damn little about poor black people that they won’t do anything to help them rebuild? How about the fact that this President said “Not on my watch” about the genocide in Rwanda when he learned about it, but then when the time came for him to do something about Darfur, he’s been all half-measures?
Oh yeah, and I’m sure there are some college professors who get some of their income from my taxes whose opinions I disagree with, too.
Hey Whitelaw,
What the f*ck are you talking about!!! Billy IS an unrepentant terrorist. He friggin’ said so himself!!!!!!!!!! Clean your ears out. So he had plan to kill anyone with the bombs he planted??? There was no guarantee that no one would be hurt or killed when those explosives went off.
Billy Ayers was a dirtbag and still is a dirtbag. He will rot in hell.
Janski, you’re here tooting your bazoo because your rightie friends don’t pay any attention toyou at their websites. We’re getting tired of changing your diapers, boy.
John Whitelaw said, “Saying that Mr Ayers is a Communist does not make it so. Saying he is an unrepentant terrorist doesn’t make that true either.”
But both statements are true, aren’t they? Ayers is a Communist, and an unrepentant terrorist.
“What is your response to Jessica’s statement that the Weathermen were not trying to kill people with the bombs they set? How does that attempt to minimize collateral damage on their part compare to the US military’s attempts to do so in Iraq (on a moral level, I mean)?”
I say bull. I don’t buy it for a minute. When in the sick history of Communism have Communists cared about who they killed, or the number of people they killed? By comparison, the actions of the U.S. military have been exemplary in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. But guess what, we’re in a war with a rotten enemy, Islamist terrorists, with members who embrace the same violent bent as the Communist terrorists in the Weathermen. Besides, Ayers idea of terrorism was Sherman’s March. Either he’s trying to divert attention from his own terrorism and created this falsehood, or he’s a complete idiot. Arguments can be made for both.
“Al Capone’s actions are a straw man in this discussion. Capone’s business was personal enrichment.
No, Capone’s actions are precisely to the point. Liberal apologists for Islamist terrorists in Hezbollah and Hamas talk about the false idea that these groups, despite being made up of terrorists, provide beneficial “services” for “the people”. It’s a crock of crap. Yet, it is just an extension of what the liberal apologists said about Communist terrorists 40 years ago. What do members of these groups join for? Personal enrichment. Communists, and those members of the Islamist terrorist groups, join because they seize an opportunity to better their position by screwing their own people. Considering how many of their own they murder in order to accomplish this, what does that really make them? They are no better than Capone. Ayers sought the same as any other Communist, and he had less of an excuse than Capone, with Ayers having grown up in privilege.
“…since Ayers, however foolish/extreme his tactics might have been, was trying to do something good: get America out of what he (and millions of other patriotic Americans, by the way) saw as an evil war.”
Yeah, the famous excuse of liberals and the mothers of criminals. You know what really got the U.S. out of Vietnam? Nixon bombing the crap out of North Vietnam, enough to get the Communists to decide to call for a truce. As it turns out, the Communists were in the process of double-crossing everybody and did so in 1975. Tell me now how democratic Vietnam is today.
“It is a strange view of the world that a man who has spent the bulk of his life working to improve public education in America is a “America-hating” individual.”
Both my parents were public school teachers (Mom passed away, Dad retired). Mom got out of it because she couldn’t stand the coddling of the bad behavior of children (she didn’t coddle my bad behavior) that is the hallmark of today’s “progressive” educational standard; Dad had more patience and stuck with it, but was of the same opinion about public education. Public education has gotten worse, with the expansion of phony progressive thought turning our children into being less able to be competitive as adults. How is what Ayers teaches an improvement? Have you actually seen what is going on in Chicago lately? Liberal politics in action; a disaster.
If Ayers were all that concerned about public education, how come he doesn’t mention the detrimental effects unions have on public school systems? How come he doesn’t talk about how tax dollars are being used to teach cock-eyed theories instead of the basics? How come he doesn’t mention the positive aspects of being ethically competitive in order to get ahead in the world? And how come he doesn’t talk about the history of this country, warts and all (yes, I’m of the opinion that even the U.S. wasn’t perfect), without resorting to twisting that history from a Marxist point of view?
By the way, what the hell are you talking about? “How about the fact that this President said “Not on my watch” about the genocide in Rwanda when he learned about it, but then when the time came for him to do something about Darfur, he’s been all half-measures?”
If I remember correctly, the genocide in Rwanda happened during Clinton’s watch. As far as Darfur, what would you do? I know what I would do if I were President, and it would be constructive, but it probably wouldn’t measure up to your false standards, which would allow the genocide to continue.
Jack, you are a real asshat. Either one of two things is true about you: 1, you served in Vietnam in the mess hall and are spending the rest of your life talking tough about being a vet, or 2, you never served at all and your total experience with mortal violence comes from watching television.