What are your thoughts on the Weather Underground/Weathermen (especially those of you who remember firsthand)?

Anyone who uses terror or violence to achieve a goal is my enemy, no matter what their background or aim is.

What would be an appropriate response to an enemy, then? (I’m just interested in discussion, not justifying one position or another.)

@kevbo, are you referencing my personal response to an enemy? In that case, I’d say anything from careful diplomacy to retaliation, depending on the nature of the enemy.

Regarding the Weathermen, If they wanted to change the United States to suit their views, they should have run for public office or voted accordingly, not bomb people.

How would you define retaliation? My sense is that this is what these people believed they were doing (retaliating) in response to the terror and violence of Vietnam and to institutionalized racial violence.

These people were criminals then and should have been prosecuted, the ones walking free now should be prosecuted still. Terrorism is terrorism. They had the option of civil discourse or using the Democrat Party to establish and run a candidate of their own. There had to be much more appropriate ways to respond to what SDS saw as a problem in the U.S. than bombing buildings, breaking convicted criminals out of prison and destroying private property.
The same standards should be applied for terrorists today, especially domestic, or homegrown, terrorists.

@kevbo, I believe in avoiding violence, if at all possible, but if you must resort to it, then you should follow rules of engagement. The Weathermen bumbled around with bombs that could very easily have killed innocent people (I am aware that they would warn many of their bombing targets ahead of time, but that is not an excuse and still put innocent people at risk).

Also, I know that someone is probably eventually going to ask me in this thread if I would use “terror” to fight against the Nazis, or something like that. My answer to that is that I would, because it is a target that is much more clearly identified than the tenuous concept of an “oppressive capitalist system” that the Weathermen attacked.

I’m a total hypocrite. If bush / cheney had been assassinated I would have had BBQ. I don’t think Obama has done anything assassination worthy.

I admire these guys for having the balls to do what I think is right. But I think blowing up an abortion clinic should get you shot in the face.

So I don’t know.. I guess I am down with terrorism if I agree with the cause.

I knew some in college—the “radicals” hung out with the artists to some extent — the common denominator being dope and being fringy “intellectuals” [it was only much later that I learned some frat guys smoked as well as drank]. The most radical thing I ever saw was some guys silkscreening Vietcong flags in their dumpy house under the railroad tracks. I went to one meeting and it was boring. Some young couple’s big ambition was to abandon university and got to Cuba for some reason . . . that’s all I remember.

Different times, different strategies seemed appropriate. I can’t justify all they did, but I will say in some ways the battle lines seemed clearer then.

Weather Underground: a group of spoiled, overly-indulged, rich kids who were horrified that the world didn’t conform to their idea of what it should be like, so they started breaking others’ toys.

@CaptainHarley Or maybe the battle lines are still clear?

“We’re against everything that’s ‘good and decent’ in honky America,” This quote pretty much says it all, they were a bunch of thugs pretending to use the anti-Vietnam war sentiment to wreak havoc, while the leaders benefited financially from the chaos their followers created. They tried to create a weapon of mass destruction home made bomb, but it exploded prematurely and killed it’s makers. Most of the members were/are self admitted terrorists.

Their antics led to a gross over reaction on the part of the FBI, which used them as an excuse to maintain files on a huge number of American citizens with little or no evidence, much as the current Homeland Security excesses.

Their behavior also led to the tragedy at Kent State, because of the atmosphere of fear. I was within sight of the Bank of America in Isla Vista California (Santa Barbara suburb) when the police gunned down 22-year-old UCSB student Kevin Moran by mistake. There were protesters all around. The panicked police fired into the crowd.

@YARNLADY and @CaptainHarley said it much better than I possibly could.

@YARNLADY Great answer!

@janbb No, there are no more “battle lines” dealing with the angst of spoiled rich-brats, thank God. A willingness to become a homicidal maniac for some ill-defined, ephemeral “cause” is almost a classic definition for insanity.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard

Thank you! : ))

@CaptainHarley Glad you see it all with such a clear lens: I see more ambiguity and more altruism than you do on both sides of the fence, but I’m not going to argue about it.

@janbb

Indeed I do see it with a clear eye! Back in the 50s there was a movie, Rebel Without A Cause, starring James Dean. The movie made the point that some people seem to have an innate proclivity to rebel, whether they have adequate justification or not. That pretty well defines for me what The Weather Underground and other terrorist-wannabe organizations of their ilk are all about.

I react to the name the same way I did in college: nothing justifies the use of violence.

@marinelife

I disagree, but at least you’re thinking. : )

@CaptainHarley What doe you disagree about? That nothing justifies the use of violence?

@marinelife

Yes.

@CaptainHarley Well, we’ll have to agree to differ on that. I certainly don’t think that what the Weathermen were against justified the use of violence.