Cif America

Palin's selective terrorism definition

If Bill Ayers is a terrorist, why aren't abortion clinic bombers? Sarah Palin's anti-abortion views won't allow the characterisation
    • Jump to comments ()

For weeks now, Sarah Palin has been telling anyone who will listen that Barack Obama "pal[s] around with terrorists who targeted their own country." As every sentient being in the multiverse is now no doubt painfully aware, the terrorists (plural) in question are one William Ayers, co-founder of the radical group Weather Underground, which bombed government buildings in protest of the Vietnam war, and the supposed abiding friendship between Obama and Ayers has been thoroughly debunked.

It's only worth mentioning insofar as Palin is willing to keep saying it – even as she refuses to call abortion clinic bombers terrorists.

In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams last week, Palin was asked whether the definition by which she has identified Ayers as a terrorist wouldn't also mean that abortion clinic bombers are terrorists. She demurred.

Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition? Governor?

Palin: [sighs] There is no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was, um, one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon - that, that is a domestic terrorist. There's no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or, um, facilities, that, uh - it would be unacceptable - I don't know if you're gonna use the word "terrorist" there, but it's unacceptable and, uh, it would not, um, be condoned, of course, on our watch, but - I don't know if what you're asking is, is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist … ? I don't regret characterising him as that.

Again, Williams tries to get a straight answer from Palin, asking bluntly if she would classify abortion clinic bombers as terrorists.

Williams: I'm just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers, protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails were thrown … . People died.


It would have been splendid if Williams had handed Palin a sheet of paper and a Sharpie after that retort and asked her to draw a Venn diagram showing the overlap of "innocent Americans" and "real Americans" in her paradigm. Although if I had to guess:

But I digress.

Two things happened in Palin's second response. First, she effectively redefined "terrorist" as "Bill Ayers", and then asserted to judge whether anyone else is a terrorist exclusively by how closely they hew to what defines Ayers as a terrorist. Thus, only if one campaigns to destroy public buildings and innocent Americans (we'll come back to that one) are they in the same "category of Bill Ayers". That's a wonderfully convenient way of defining terrorism for Palin, who wants desperately to smear her opponent as a terrorist sympathiser – not so great a method for the rest of us, who don't have any investment in defining terrorists singularly by their resemblance to Ayers.

Second, she makes a careful note about the destruction of "innocent Americans" – a caveat that seems drawn specifically to provide an exception for people ("real Americans", perhaps) who blow up buildings full of not-so-innocent Americans.

Like, say, women getting abortions.

Palin, of course, is anti-choice even in cases of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, and pregnancies causing grave health complications. (She supports abortion only in cases where the woman's life hangs in the balance.) Abortion is, in the "pro-life" parlance, murder - and any woman terminating a pregnancy not putting her in mortal danger is a murderer.

Nothing at all like the "innocent Americans" killed by terrorists.

Palin can't quite bring herself to say that the right-wing extremists who kill doctors and bomb abortion clinics are terrorists because she shares their views, if not their violent impulses.

And because the people whose votes she wants and needs, the people she has most successfully courted with her aw-shucks choice-for-me-but-not-for-theeism (yes, having a child is as much a choice as not having a child), share those views, too. Many of them also share the violent impulses of the non-terrorist bombers of clinics populated with non-innocent Americans. They merely lack the courage of their convictions.

Palin won't risk losing their votes by suggesting they regret their murderous impulses.

That's just not how they roll in real America.

Latest posts

Today's best video

Today in pictures