Someone Barack Obam should talk to

John Mutagh writes for the NY Daily News, and he lived through the days of rage from the Weather Underground. Today he gives readers a taste of what he lived through during that time: (HT to Hugh Hewitt)

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of Feb. 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car.

I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong have won; Kill the pigs.

For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn't have to rent a limo for the senior prom: The NYPD did the driving.

In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn't fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own 9-year-old John Murtagh into bed.

Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family's life, there was never any doubt who was behind it.Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. ...

Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his "politics of change."

Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends' and supporters' violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country.

It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama's own beliefs, his philosophy and the direction he would take our nation.

At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: "I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire."

Funny thing, Bill: One night, so did I.

Senator Obama had better think long and hard about this because his ties to Jeremiah Wright, to Tony Rezko, and to William Ayers are what will kill his presidential chances. Nevermind the fact that the man espouses a liberal socialist mantra of ideas and programs that will significantly damage the nation's economy, and could very well do damage to the very fabric that created this nation in the Constitution. It is his ties that concern a great number of people, and not just Republicans.

We have spoken with a number of our friends that identify themselves as Democrats. While they are none too thrilled about Hillary, they admit that Barack Obama scares the Hell out of them. If he is willing to play the "forgive and forget" game with people like the ones he associated with, then what does that say about his judgment. Think about it for a second. Imagine that one of your closest friends or mentors was a racist or a terrorist sympathizer, and yet you still continued to meet and associate with them. What would that make you? An apologist? Yes, in the very least.

Now you see where we're coming from on the issue of Barack Obama. He is willing to shoo away the questions, and make excuses for those relations, but the questions remain. WHY did you, knowing that William Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, associate with the man, including holding the launch of your first foray into politics in his home?

Barack has never answered that question. It's a good one that we think demands an answer. We don't want to hear the "I was eight-years old" crapola. We want an answer. Why did he associate with him. Forget about the two of them serving on a board together. We'd like to know why he allowed this man into his life, and why he called him a "friend."

With friends like Bill Ayers, no wonder why Obama has so many enemies, even within his own party.

Publius II