May 06, 2007
Kent State: The context changes everything
Joe Sherlock notes a Class-A Cranky Rant from the Relapsed Catholic (aka Kathy Shaidle), taking aim at the Left's favorite massacre: Kent State.
Shaidle points out what the press consistently fails to give: the context, the events leading up to the moment when the National Guard troops opened fire.
What happened was: a bunch of stupid hippies got themselves (not to mention some innocent bystanders) killed during an anti-war protest. We're supposed to feel sorry for them to this day -- like everything hippies did, however pathetic, the rest of us never hear the end of it.
[...]
There are Kent State movies and books and even operas. We hear more about this handful of red diaper babies and their dupe friends than we do about the millions who were slaughtered after the hippies got their way and the US left Vietnam.
[...]
Here's what the peaceful protesters got up to days before the shooting:
"On the evening of May 1, 1970, a day after Richard Nixon announced an American counter-attack into Cambodia, students rioted in the main street of town, broke windows, set fires, and damaged cars. On May 2, a crowd of about 800 assembled on campus, disrupted a dance in a university hall, smashed the windows of the ROTC building, and threw lighted railroad flares inside. The building burned to the ground. A professor who watched the arson later told the Scranton commission, which investigated the shooting and the events leading up to it, 'I have never in my 17 years of teaching seen a group of students as threatening, or as arrogant, or a bent on destruction.'
"When fireman arrived students threw rocks at them, slashed their hoses with machetes, took away hoses and turned them on the firefighters. The police finally stopped the riot with tear gas. The National Guard was called in by the governor on May 2 and student rioters pelted them with rocks, doused trees with gasoline, and set them afire. Students attempted to march into town on May 3 but were stopped by the National Guard, the Kent city police department, the Ohio highway patrol, and the county sheriff's department. The protesters shouted obscenities and threw rocks.
"From May 1 to May 4 there were, in addition, riots in the town's main street, looting, the intimidation of passing motorists, stoning of police, directions to local merchants to put antiwar posters in their windows or have their stores thrashed, and miscellaneous acts of arson."
Then on May 4:
"Guardsmen arrived and, probably unwisely, ordered the crowd to disperse. The order was predictably ignored. The Guard fired tear gas canisters into the crowd. The Guard, consisting of a hundred men surrounded by rioters shouting obscenities and chanting 'Kill, kill, kill,' were under a constant barrage of rocks, chunks of concrete and cinderblock, and canisters. Fifty-eight Guardsmen were injured by thrown objects. Several of them were knocked to the ground."
Fifty-eight soldiers injured; firefighters attacked; buildings torched. Not quite the peaceful, academic enclave filled with non-violent protestors popularized by the myth-makers.
I'm surprised more weren't killed.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 6, 2007 08:23 PM
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Comments
What a ridiculous commentary. No unarmed student deserved to die by the government's hand at Kent State. No matter what you or other informed pundants think. People have a right to disagree and even throw rocks if they choose to. There are consequences for foolish illegal acts short of death. The should be arrested, as many were, and prosecuted for those acts. Here, they were executed by the government, without due process, without a right to be heard. I know you'll want to turn this comment into some crazy anti american diatribe--its not. The facts are that the National Guard and the Gov seriously screwed up at Kent State and at the end of the day, no one ever was held responsible for those criminal acts against the students. Terrible.
Posted by: Bob at May 7, 2007 12:46 PM
Bob,
If you re-read my post, nowhere did I say that unarmed students "deserved to die"; rather, the actions of the National Guard troops seem less outrageous when viewed against the backdrop of buildings being burned and violent protests.
The fact that the Guard was called out is indicative that events were spiraling out of control, beyond the normal capabilities of the police.
Furthermore, the sheer number of Guardsmen injured warrants a forceful response -- or do you believe that the troops were required to endure the onslaught of bottles and bricks in stoic fashion?
You said, "People have a right to disagree and even throw rocks if they choose to."
Sorry, the First Amendment does not encompass acts of violence, unless you're making the argument that trying to bash someone's brains out is political expression. The escalation from verbal brickbats to bricks takes us from rights to responsibilities, actions to consequences.
Hurling anything at cops -- or anyone with a gun, for that matter -- is likely to increase your chances of assuming room temperature, and the prudent man would realize there's little profit in engaging in such misguided violence.
When you say that the students were "executed by the government," for simply "throw[ing] rocks," you're both minimizing the conduct of the rioters, as well as exaggerating the conduct -- or the motives -- of the state.
Is it regrettable that civilians were killed? Absolutely.
Are the troops to blame? In part.
Are the dead blameless? Only those who took no part in the violence. The rioters who hucked rocks at the troops were betting that there'd be no in-kind response, no escalation of violence.
Unfortunately for them -- and everyone else -- it didn't turn out quite the way they'd planned.
Posted by: Mike Lief at May 7, 2007 01:08 PM