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Ayers and his interviewer conveniently forget the savagery that the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong practiced daily on the Vietnamese civilians, and that they violated Cambodian neutrality far before Kissinger ascended to power. And they conveniently forget that they themselves -- in a similar fashion to the NVA and VC -- targeted their own fellow citizens in cold blood, waiting in the shadows of civil society with nail-laden bombs to maim people at a dance.
That's quite different from crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war on the battlefield. Norms of behavior in a theater of combat are far removed from those against your own people, and with good reason.
Thus, Ayer's feeble attempt at rehabilitation doesn't convince this liberal. The man should be locked away with the countless other common murders who didn't have the good fortune to cloak their viciousness in a shroud of political nonsense.
And the interviewer, an avowed Ayers sympathizer, should feel ashamed. There are those who protested the war peacefully, and there are those that turned to criminality. We should not allow the latter to share in the praise we accord the former.
