Am I the only one who is dumbfounded that Colin Powell can minimize Bill Ayers’ terrorist actions and minimize Obama’s obvious alliance with Ayers?
Powell said he was concerned about what he characterized as a recent negative turn of Republican candidate Sen. John McCain’s campaign, such as the campaign’s attempts to tie Obama to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.
“I think that’s inappropriate. I understand what politics is about — I know how you can go after one another, and that’s good. But I think this goes too far, and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for,” he said.
Powell, OF ALL PEOPLE, surely knows that Ayers and the Weather Underground tried to kill military people by bombing the Pentagon. Ayers is not a “former 1960s radical”, he is an unrepentant lifetime self-confessed terrorist, anarchist and Marxist. He has repeatedly affirmed this, making no secret that he performed terrorist acts, and simply got off on a technicality due to a botched FBI investigation that produced inadmissable evidence.
People in the Pentagon COULD HAVE DIED. It was only incompetence on the part of the Weather creeps that saved the lives of military serving in the Pentagon. Obama has surely known this for years, or he is an utter fool: take your pick. And he has worked closely with Ayers for many of those years, and they’ve helped each other in many ways.
I don’t expect any better from Obama. And I don’t expect any better from the mainstream media in bringing the full nature and depth of the Obama/Ayers relationship to light, or exploring what it tells us about how a President Obama will rule.
But even though I knew Powell was not a conservative, I honestly thought he was an honorable man. Now I know better. He is a sellout. Not to the black activists of the world, but to the WHITE Left-liberal elite who inhabit the Washington/NY axis, to whose cocktail parties the general wants invitations after Obama wins, and who use the black activists to maintain their power.
Uncle Colin has betrayed all those who could have died by Weather creep terrorist action. I hope the taste is bitter in his mouth when he is alone with his thoughts, and memories. What would those who could have died that day think now, of a former Joint Chief who supports the good friend and ally of the terrorists, for PRESIDENT?
Simply unbelievable.
Al Sharpton had it right, he just had the wrong person identified as the slave owner.
Go on home, Uncle Colin, they have a nice cabin waiting for you if you don’t get too uppity or independent.
October 22nd, 2008 6:44 am
Nice… way to play the race card right off the bat. At least you are upfront about it.
Funny, I didn’t see you calling Christopher Buckley “Uncle Chris.” Or Ken Adelman “Uncle Ken.”
You should be embarrassed.
October 22nd, 2008 7:35 am
Simple enough. They are simply foolish, blinded people, who have lost their way. And, they aren’t CLOSE, anywhere close, to Powell’s prominence. Powell is internationally known and respected, and he has sold out to THE MAN, for personal gain, I think.
If I listed every former conservative you jumped ship, that’s all I’d do.
I also haven’t talked about relatively obscure “inside the beltway/media elite” liberals who are voting for McCain. Same reason.
October 22nd, 2008 7:40 am
Now see, this is name calling.
What personal gain?
That is because there are not many of them.
October 22nd, 2008 10:32 am
Dave, that’s just silly. Application of adjectives is not automatically “name-calling”. It is name-calling if the adjective is undeserved, or not based on any conceivable objective standard applied to all, or unrelated to the actual evidence at hand.
People who abandon the principles that have held for a lifetime, for essentially superficial reasons, can safely be described as “foolish and blinded”, don’t you think? As far as I can tell, right-leaning folk who are endorsing Obama are not doing so out any agreement with his policy or positive judgment of his character, but rather out of some kind of symbolic approach to voting. I consider that to be “foolish” and “blinded”. It is not a name, it as a judgment those same people would have applied to someone ELSE who voted for the Left just a few years ago, so I am judging them by their own standards.
Powell wants to resuscitate his image with the NY/Wash beltway and media elite. It’s simple. Obama has already stated Powell will have a role in his administration. In doing this, Powell has abandoned his lifetime of military service and responsibility. He has betrayed his own (and I don’t mean Republicans, I mean military).
October 22nd, 2008 1:41 pm
Really? Because I talked of your racISM, and you called that name calling and said that I called you a racist.
Perhaps, but I do not agree that Powell abandoned said principles. I think that he laid out a very clear set of reasons for why he was endorsing Obama.
Really? So any military person is betraying “his own” if they endorse, or vote for, Obama?
Wow.
October 22nd, 2008 1:59 pm
Dave, good luck trying to peddle the idea that referring to someone’s “racism” is different than calling them a racist. You did it. Now own it.
Powell has for years been a “moderate Republican”, who understood, rightly, that national defense was a higher priority than affirmative action, being pro-choice, etc. He has changed his mind. Or worse, he hasn’t, and is just being selfish. Not good, either way.
Any military person who understands clearly exactly what Ayers did, and understands exactly what Obama’s relationship to Ayers is, and then votes for Obama, is definitely betraying their own.
But the media has done a sufficiently good job of obfuscating this that many people don’t know just what Ayers did (or think it’s just an accusation, not a certainty, because they don’t know Ayers confessed and continues to be proud of it). And many people, including some in the military, may literally not even have heard of Ayers… they aren’t all political junkies. And, again due to media connivance, people may buy the Demo talking points that there really wasn’t THAT much of a relationship.
None of this applies to Powell, who knows clearly and exactly what was done by Ayers, what Ayers’ status is now, and what Obama’s relationship is to Ayers. No place to hide on this. He thinks it’s just fine for him to endorse a friend and ally of a man who tried to murder military people, and is still proud of it, and the candidate knows it, and knew it during the period of relationship. These are facts, even agreed to by people on the Left, who acknowledge that Obama had SOME kind of relationship with Ayers, and acknowledge exactly what Ayers did, and has recently said about it. The Left just doesn’t think it matters if the president is a friend and ally with a terrorist. It’s really that simple.
October 22nd, 2008 8:51 pm
How so? I think he gave a pretty clear and strong statement on why he thought that Obama would be better on national defense.
Of course… even Obama acknowledges there was some kind of relationship there. The question is what was the relationship? And that is where you and I disagree.
October 22nd, 2008 9:05 pm
How would you feel about John McCain having a similar relationship (whatever amount your in-denial status about it allows you to accept) with an unrepentant KKK grand master who’d attempted to hang black Americans, failed only out of sheer incompetence, confessed publicly but got off on a technicality, now said, “I only wish I’d succeeded. We didn’t do enough.”, and continued to teach racism to this day as the solution for America’s ills?
Would you support McCain if he agreed with you on policy issues, and just ignore that incredible evidence of his values and judgment?
Maybe you would….
But I’ll bet Powell wouldn’t. This is a sign that he simply doesn’t value the lives of those who were nearly killed as much as he values his own political skin.
And there would be no need to “disagree about the amount of relationship” if Obama had been fully forthcoming from the beginning, instead of lying and painting himself into a corner, and if he’d instructed his aides and supporters to be equally forthcoming, and wasn’t trying to hide the evidence of what he did with Ayers (go read Stanley Kurtz for more).
Simply, Obama ACTS guilty about this, because he knows it can’t stand serious scrutiny. But even a small relationship is utterly unacceptable.
If Ronald Reagan had been knowingly allied, however tangentially, with a KKK wanna-be-killer of blacks, the Right would have thrown him over in a heartbeat. The Left has no such scruples.
Do you?
October 23rd, 2008 6:07 am
I have already answered this question – it would depend on the situation.
You can say that I am just in-denial while you continue to show an inability to actually support what you claim I am denying.
First of all, I do not think that the two situations (bombing things to protest the American Empire and an unrepentant racist) are necessarily the same thing.
Second of all, I still think that both acts are/were morally repugnant.
I am pretty sure that I have read every Kurtz article about the situation, but go ahead and make assumptions if you would like.
This is absurd. The extent of the relationship absolutely matters.
By the way… since you continue to want to make comparisons to things that don’t exist, lets make a comparison to something that does exist. Do you condemn McCain’s relationship with Gordon Liddy? And it is pretty clear that McCain has MUCH more of a relationship than Obama has with Bill Ayers.
October 23rd, 2008 10:43 am
(politely and calmly)
Do you wish to rephrase any of your thoughts in the last comment? Is there anything you overstated there?
October 23rd, 2008 10:57 am
BTW… all that’s clear is that McCain is HONEST about his relationship to Liddy, and that nothing Liddy did comes REMOTELY close to what Ayers did (although Liddy seems to have had some bizarre fantasies about various illegal acts, nothing he actually did compares to Ayers), and that Ayers still supports (your very forgiving interpretation of “We didn’t do enough” notwithstanding), and Liddy served time (commuted by Carter… you figure out why), but Ayers didn’t.
What’s clear is that Obama’s first instinct was to minimize and hide and dissemble, and McCain’s was to just lay it out as it is.
You can try: but if you think there is any real comparison here, you must think the Obama campaign is abysmally stupid not to have been emphasizing it. They haven’t, because it won’t fly, and they know it.
October 23rd, 2008 11:00 am
Not that I am aware of.
October 23rd, 2008 1:13 pm
Dave, you said:
“First of all, I do not think that the two situations (bombing things to protest the American Empire and an unrepentant racist) are necessarily the same thing.”
That’s almost funny. They are both called attempted murder. It’s pretty simple.
Apparently Obama doesn’t find it as repugnant as you do.