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• Tuesday, November 18, 2008 10:01 AM

  So much useless vitriol spent here, and I was there too, sort of.

  Re all the back and forth. Why don't you all just take it outside? You're fighting old battles. It's destructive and unenlightening.

  I appreciated the reminder by danielet that Rev. Wright was a Marine, thereby earning his anger at the many sins and failures of our great democracy, while Ayers, Shapiro, and others like us managed to avoid military service, even if our avoidance was based on deeply felt principle and strenuous objection to the war.

  It turns out that I may have passed both Ayers and Shapiro on the Diag or South U in Ann Arbor. I watched the Johnson resignation speech with a group of fellow graduate students in an apt. on N State, though we didn't pour onto the streets. My daughter took her first steps in Fort Bragg CA the day we heard the news of Robert Kennedy's assassination, and we watched the riotous demonstration in Chicago back in Ann Arbor. All that turmoil ushered in many bleak years.

  Just as many of us knew from day 1 that the Bush administration was bad news and the invasion of Iraq dangerous and unjustified, many of us in the early 60's were opposed to the murder and destruction the U.S. was raining down on Vietnam. Ayers, Dohrn and others were just more reckless, energetic, and irresponsible in their anti-war activities than most of us. Others now in public life served in the military in Vietnam but later expressed more regret or objection to the use of American military power than has Sen. McCain, who is still fighting that war. I'm thinking of Sen. Jim Webb who wrote some searing war novels (I read "Fields of Fire") and Andrew Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, who has written frequently and at length against the Bush administration's military adventurism (see "Limits of Power:The End of American Exceptionalism").

  Others have never expressed public regret, despite much blood on their hands. I think especially of Henry Kissinger, the architect of the bombing of Cambodia that ultimately resulted in the deaths of millions. Ayers and Dohrn have devoted their lives to doing quiet good whereas Kissinger has made millions from his continued involvement in the national security state.

  Here's wishing our new president all the best.

  —CJGClark Read CJGClark's other letters
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