I might not have made the comparison, but I certainly won’t repudiate it – and wish that the McCain team had not done so.

The chairman of the Virginia Republican Party has compared Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden because of the Illinois senator's past association with Bill Ayers, who has confessed to domestic bombings as a member of the Vietnam War-era Weather Underground.

Virginia Democrats, and some Republicans, are outraged, saying these are the latest in a series of inflammatory statements that the GOP has made against Obama in Virginia, a state that has emerged as a crucial battleground in the election.

According to a report in this week's Time magazine, the Virginia party chairman, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), told Virginia volunteers working for GOP nominee John McCain that Obama and bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon."

"That is scary," Frederick said while providing talking points to GOP volunteers in western Prince William County as they prepared for a door-to-door canvass.

Now let’s be honest here – Frederick was wrong on one point. Bill Ayers did not have friends who bombed the Pentagon; he actually participated in the bombing personally as one of the leaders of Weathermen. That would make him more akin to Mohammad Atta than to Osama bin Laden, though both less competent than the hijacker in the carrying off his attack and less willing to give his life for his anti-American cause. For that reason, I’d argue that Bill Ayers is more akin to Eric Rudolf, Ted Kaczinski, or Tim McVeigh than he is to Osama bin Laden. Not that this makes him any more savory than the murderous Islamists with whom our nation is today at war.

But somehow, that should not make the association between Obama and Ayers any more acceptable. Indeed, those who have absolved the former domestic terrorist of his sins against America do a grave disservice to the country in doing so. And that Ayers today makes his living off the same government that he attempted to overthrow – something for which he remains unrepentant to this day – is another offense against this country.

Does this make Obama guilty of Ayers’ crimes? No, of course not – but his willingness (and the willingness of so many in the Chicago/Illinois political machine and the national Democrat establishment) to embrace him and work to make him a mainstream political figure is disturbing. Would McVeigh’s co-conspirator Terry Nichols ever be allowed a similar rehabilitation? Would any politician who associated with him after his involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing ever be considered acceptable by the American people? I don’t think either of those questions requires much consideration to answer.

And make no mistake – Ayers certainly had not repented of his treason and terrorism at the time Barack Obama worked with and for him. After all, this was a man who wrote in glowing terms of his acts of violence against the government of the United States in 2001.

In his 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, Ayers brags that he helped blast NYPD headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Defense Department in 1972. “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,” Ayers writes. “The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.” Ayers also appreciates “a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance.” He called dynamite “That most romantic of nineteenth-century radical tools.”

Obama continued his association and affiliation with Ayers even after those words were widely publicized at the time of their publication. There could be no mistaking him for someone who had repented and been rehabilitated. It is pretty clear that he still adhered to the same violent platform of three decades before, even if he no longer actively engaged in acts of terrorism.

And therein lies the disingenuousness of those who want to defend Obama’s association with William Ayers. Their willingness to forgive Ayers is predicated upon their support for the cause in which he committed terrorism acts of treason and terrorism against his own country – or their willingness to ignore them in the interest of furthering their own political careers. Consideration of that fact ought to be of serious importance in this race, and those who would silence or minimize that issue (as well as Obama’s other unsavory associations) do America a grave disservice.

Posted by: Greg at 11:06 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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