President Barack Obama should be tried for war crimes because of his policy of assassination-by-drone, former Weather Underground terrorist and Obama associate Bill Ayers (shown with his wife, fellow “Weatherman” Bernardine Dohrn) told RealClearPolitics (RCP).
In a “Morning Commute” interview with RCP’s Tom Bevan and Charlie Stone, Ayers said that he likes Obama because “he’s a curious person” who “asks questions” and “reads.”
“I like him personally,” he added. “I mean, he’s a really good guy.”
Despite his personal feelings toward the president, with whom he was closely associated during Obama’s years in Chicago, Ayers stated that on the whole, “I’d give him a failing grade” for his presidency. “But then,” he continued, “you’d have to compare that to the grades I gave all the other presidents in my lifetime,” all of which were F’s with “some F-minuses in there.”
Ayers, a self-described “small ‘c’ communist,” apparently believes that Obama is a failure as chief executive because he hasn’t been radical enough — not that Ayers is surprised by this.
“I don’t at all feel that Obama’s let anybody down,” he said. “All through the 2008 campaign he said consistently, ‘I am a middle-of-the-road, pragmatic politician.’”
“Obama’s not a radical,” he told the Daily Beast in April. “I wish he were, but he’s not.”
Many Americans would disagree with that assessment of the man of who has given us ObamaCare, trillion-dollar deficits, and the total surveillance state. But considering that those are largely expansions of previous policies promulgated by politicians of both parties — even ObamaCare was based on Republican notions, as witness Mitt Romney’s prototype law in Massachusetts and Newt Gingrich’s longtime defense of similar ideas — Ayers may have a point: Among the political class, Obama is considered more or less mainstream.
Sensing that Ayers was still being a bit lenient on Obama, giving him an F but suggesting that other recent presidents were even worse, RCP’s Stone went for the jugular. Pointing out that Ayers had nothing but “disdain” for Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, Stone asked, “But isn’t Barack Obama, as the sole authority for drone use, engaged in terrorist activity?”
Ayers didn’t flinch. “Absolutely,” he instantly responded. “Absolutely.”
“Do you think Barack Obama should be put on trial for war crimes?” Stone inquired further.
“Absolutely,” Ayers reiterated.
“At the Hague?” said Stone.
Ayers once more replied, “Absolutely.” “Yes, I think that these are war crimes,” he repeated. “I think they’re acts of terror.”
Ayers should know. The Weather Underground, of which Ayers was a cofounder, conducted a “deadly spree of bombings, shootings, jailbreaks, and robberies” in the 1970s, as The New American wrote in 2008.
TNA recounted the Weathermen’s crimes: “Hundreds of bombings (possibly thousands — there were over 5,000 bombings that may have been their work, but the perpetrators have not been identified), dozens killed, and millions terrorized by their tens of thousands of bombing threats.” (Emphasis in original.) Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a Weatherman, “refuse to answer questions about their participation in those terror attacks” to this day, he added. They were once charged with some of these crimes but got off on a technicality, and they remain unrepentant about their involvement in the Weather Underground.
Still, when a former terrorist and friend of Obama says Obama is guilty of “acts of terror” that constitute “war crimes” for which he should be tried, there just might be something to it. And while constitutionalists might balk at having their president brought before the globalist International Criminal Court as Stone suggested, few would dispute the notion that Obama’s drone program is unacceptable.
The program, after all, gives the president untrammeled power to decide who lives or dies all around the world. He, and he alone, makes the final determination as to which individuals on his secret “kill list” will be targeted for death by drone, and those individuals — notwithstanding Attorney General Eric Holder’s assertions to the contrary — are deprived of their right to due process of law. American citizens such as Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, the latter of whom was not known to be suspected of any wrongdoing, have been murdered in cold blood by Obama’s drones. Thousands of other innocent people have been killed by them. A study by the law schools of Stanford University and New York University found that for every known terrorist assassinated by drone strikes in Pakistan, 49 civilians were killed. If such a policy does not constitute a war crime, what does?
Obama isn’t the only president Ayers finds guilty of war crimes. He also told RCP that “every president in this century should be put on trial” because “every one of them goes into office, an office dripping with blood, and then adds to it.” Given the body counts racked up by presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Obama, one would be hard-pressed to contest Ayers’ claim, but it is still ironic that Ayers seems not the least bit conflicted about calling for the heads of others who have engaged in activities similar to those for which he escaped punishment.
Nevertheless, if by some chance Obama is brought to trial for his drone program, there is no question as to who the first expert witness for the prosecution should be. After all, who outside of Washington knows more about bombing innocent people than Bill Ayers?
