Those acquainted with the history of the United States should not be astonished that the policy of the imperialist gangsters directly and sometimes deliberately provokes acts of retaliation. What is most astonishing is that so far there have been so few acts of reciprocal vengeance for their cruelty.
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Shortly before the Weathermen went underground and began a series of bombings of buildings that represented U.S. repression both at home and abroad, John McCain was perpetrating real terror against the Vietnamese people. As a naval aviator, he flew 23 bombing missions over Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were killed by bombing raids perpetrated by the U.S. military.
The capital city of Hanoi was McCain’s target on his 23rd mission. He was shot down and was in prison in Vietnam for his crimes until 1973. In his biography, these events are touted as something the U.S. public should admire. They are supposedly a “red badge of courage” instead of a cowardly, criminal act from thousands of feet above against the innocent men, women and children of Vietnam.
Unlike McCain, Ayers and the Weather Underground killed no one. Three of their members were killed when a bomb exploded accidentally in a townhouse in Greenwich Village while they were in the process of assembling it.
In the documentary film “The Weather Underground,” Ayers said: “We were very careful from the moment of the townhouse on to be sure we weren’t going to hurt anybody, and we never did hurt anybody. Whenever we put a bomb in a public space, we had figured out all kinds of ways to put checks and balances on the thing and also to get people away from it, and we were remarkably successful.”
Before going underground, the members of the Weathermen had been activists for numerous years. They had come out of Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student anti-war organization in the country. Several among their members had been leaders of the strike that shut down Columbia University in the spring of 1968. The first slogan of the Weathermen had been “Bring the War Home.”
Their hopes were to develop a consciousness within the U.S. public of what was being perpetrated in Vietnam. They felt it was time to confront the populace with the reality of the several million Vietnamese people that had been killed, as well as the loss of U.S. soldiers, many of whom had been drafted to fight an immoral war.
But two events in November and December of 1969 were catalysts for turning the Weathermen away from the above-ground approach to the struggle.
The first event was the execution of Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, killed by the Chicago police during the administration of Democratic Party boss Mayor Richard J. Daley. The killing of these men while they slept, just a few blocks from the Weathermen national headquarters, sparked awareness that the stakes had been raised. A more serious and determined response was necessary in light of the willingness of the ruling class to kill and murder, not just thousands of miles away but right in their neighborhood.
The second event was the exposé in November and December 1969 of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The massacre, which had taken place in March 1968, was part of a pattern of brutality in Vietnam perpetrated at the orders of U.S. officials. A 31-year-old Army Major Colin Powell was assigned to investigate a letter from a U.S. soldier describing the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese. Powell concluded, “In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”
News of these two horrific events resulted in an initial communication from the Weather Underground issued May 21, 1970, promising attacks on symbols and institutions of American injustice. On June 9 of that year, their first publicly acknowledged bombing occurred at a New York City police station. Their statement claimed the bombing was “in outraged response to the assassination of the Soledad Brother George Jackson.” Jackson, a member of the Black Panther Party, had recently been killed by prison guards.
In all, there were 25 bombings in retaliation for repression both in the United States and abroad. On May 19, 1972, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, The Weather Underground placed a bomb in the Pentagon in retaliation for the bombing of Hanoi. The latter bombing is the exact crime that Republican nominee John McCain was found guilty of by the Vietnamese.
Ayers is currently a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and he won the Citizen of the Year from the city of Chicago for his work on a project and proposal for education reform.In contrast, b
oth presidential candidates are senators who have voted to continue funding the criminal wars against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a measure of the values of those who rule this country that John McCain and Colin Powell, two war criminals, are held in high esteem while Ayers is falsely “criminalized.”Both the Republican and Democratic parties rub shoulders with terrorists. These are the terrorists in the White House and the Pentagon, who continue to perpetrate daily crimes against the oppressed peoples of the world. In Congress, both parties have actively participated in U.S.-sponsored state terrorism.
Revolutionary Marxists consider the tactics of the Weather Underground inexpedient in the tasks of the liberating struggle of the working class and oppressed nationalities. A small group of dedicated heroes cannot replace the masses, but we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers, even if they were not able to discover the correct road.
