Deoliver47 wrote a very good, recommended, diary on Bill Ayers article in In These Times entitled Bill Ayers speaks out. I may be being presumptiouous believing that I have more to add, but I'd like to try. Ayers article is entitled What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Looking back on a surreal campaign season The reason I think we need to keep on discussing this is that it is hard to believe that we have dealt with it adequately. Many of us who did various levels of protest during that time have, in a sense, had our flank covered by those who chose to be more extreme. My civil disobedience was non-violent and I was and am a strong believer in non-violent protest. Ayers and the others had their reasons for what they did and given the circumstances I will never be able to condemn them for having done what they did. That is not the point. Let me try to explain what is bothering me below the break.
The idea that we simply put certain things "behind us" has me in a quandry. I have a long list of things about our country's history that I believe strongly that we have swept under the rug beginning with the way we conquered this land in the first place. Those of us who lived through the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War protests have some unhealed wounds along with lots of other folk. I recently was at an event where Veteran's Day was anticipated by stating that our Vietnam Vets were "spat on" when they came home. I wanted to scream out that other Americans had their heads clubbed or went to prison or had other things done to them because they saw the War as terribly wrong. In Ayers words:
The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.
If you read Scott Peck's The People of the Lie among other sources, you will see that Ayers is being conservative in his short description of the degree to which we did immoral things there.
The election is over, and we have won. Yet a part of me looks at the nature of the campaign circus and I can't help but wonder what we also lost. Will the history of that period ever be told truthfully? In his book, Peck probes deeply in the soul of our country and he finds some very pathological things there. As far as I can see from this campaign, they are still there and they still poison us every day.
Yes "war is hell" but what our country (and, of course, others) has called "war" is too much the slaughter of innocents. The election has not healed us in every way we need to be healed. The level of discourse in this election was insane. Thank goodness Barack Obama kept on track. He knew what he had to do to win and he did it. No American politician could ever address the things that need to be addressed about our behavior in these "wars" and hope to be elected. We were fortunate that the race issue was put into a new perspective. We need to work hard on the ills that have befallen the country. But we also need to heal the country's soul. Maybe the winning of elections is enough for some. I have to ask for more.