Dwight Armstrong died on Sunday.
From the Wisconsin State Journal:
Dwight Armstrong, one of the men who bombed UW-Madison’s Sterling Hall in August 1970, killing a researcher, died Sunday in Madison after a battle with lung cancer. He was 58.
Spurred by anti-war furor, Armstrong was 18 years old when he, his older brother, Karl, and two others bombed the Army Math Research Center, a Defense Department project, in Sterling Hall on August 24, 1970. Robert Fassnacht, a 33-year-old researcher who was working late, was killed.
The incident served to dampen the anti-war movement as people recoiled at the bloodshed. Armstrong’s life following the bombing was troubled at times. He told The Capital Times in 1992: “My life has not been something to write home about.”
Armstrong spent seven years as a fugitive in Canada before he was captured in 1977 and convicted in the bombing. Karl Armstrong and David Fine were also convicted. A fourth man, Leo Burt, was never found.
Armstrong was paroled from prison three years later, but in 1987, he was arrested for his involvement in an Indiana drug operation, according to newspaper clips.
In interviews, Armstrong expressed remorse for killing Fassnacht, but he said at the time it was the right thing to do.
“I mean, something had to be done, something dramatic, something that showed people were willing to escalate this at home as far as they were willing to escalate it in Vietnam,” he told The Capital Times in 1992.
Armstrong died at UW Hospital and is survived by his daughter, Drew; brother, Karl; and sisters, Lorene and Mira.
My sympathies to Armstrong's daughter and brother and sisters on their loss.
They should consider themselves blessed to have had Armstrong in their lives for the many years that they did.
Robert Fassnacht wasn't as fortunate. He did not have the opportunity to see his three children grow up. He didn't have the chance to grow old with his wife and experience all the joys of a long life, because Armstrong ended Fassnacht's life when he was just 33 years old.
Although he eventually expressed some remorse, Armstrong believed that his acts that resulted in Fassnacht's murder were the "right thing to do."
In 1992, Armstrong said the bombing was the right thing. That's 22 years after the murder of Fassnacht. Armstrong had a lot of time to regret his part in the violence. He didn't.
That's sick.
Flashback to Madison 1970 and the Sterling Hall Bombing.
Until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Sterling Hall bombing had been described as the single most destructive act of sabotage in United States history. Researcher Robert Fassnacht, who was working late in the building, was killed in the explosion. As people protest the current war in Iraq, Bellais says we don't see the element of violence like we did during the protests against Vietnam. "I really do feel, though people could argue with me on this, that the Sterling Hall bombing was sort of the pinnacle of that escalation. Like it kept getting more and more intense on both sides -- the police side and the antiwar side -- so that eventually something was going to have to happen that was big and it happened to be Sterling Hall."
The exhibit at the state Historical Museum on the capitol square examines the bombing itself, the capture of three of the four suspects, and the significance of the event to the antiwar movement and US history. The display features "Free Karl" T-shirts and posters, and an engine fragment from the van that contained the explosives. Bellais says they'll have a book on display into which you can write your opinions about that event.
Bellais says when Karl Armstrong and his brother Dwight got out of jail in 1980, they had a very high "coolness factor" among college students because they didn't just talk against the war, they took action. David Fine was the third person arrested in the bombing, but Leo Burt has never been captured.
In the name of peace, 33-year-old graduate student Robert Fassnacht was murdered in the explosion.
I fail to see the "coolness factor" in that.
Let's call Dwight Armstrong, Karl Armstrong, and Obama's friend Bill Ayers, anti-war activists, what they really are: TERRORISTS. Unrepentant TERRORISTS.
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