Posted on 05/05/2008 8:17:11 AM PDT by buccaneer81
Speaker: Don't shame Kent State's dead Monday, May 5, 2008 2:58 AM By Jim Mackinnon AKRON BEACON JOURNAL KENT, Ohio -- The shooting deaths 38 years ago of four Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard need to be seen as a lesson for the United States, a former United Nations weapons inspector said yesterday.
But if the May 4 commemoration continues to be poorly attended -- about 400 people showed up yesterday -- and Americans refuse to read and understand their U.S. Constitution, then those lost lives will have been for nothing, keynote speaker Scott Ritter said.
The retired Marine is a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and a critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. At one point in his career in the 1990s, he sounded alarms about the possibility of hidden weapons in Iraq. He later said the U.S. government had failed to make a case for going to war in Iraq.
Ritter, 46, said in his half-hour talk that he wanted to know why more people didn't turn out yesterday afternoon.
"While I applaud those who are here ... I have to ask, why isn't this hillside covered with the citizens of this country? Where are the students of Kent State? Where are the citizens of this community? Where are the citizens of Ohio?"
The program in which Ritter and others spoke started at noon on the campus commons, near the university's memorial and markers that show where four students were killed and nine were wounded on May 4, 1970, as they protested the Vietnam War and the presence of National Guard troops on campus.
While the commemoration is based on the shootings 38 years ago, many of those attending also were protesting the war in Iraq.
Ritter said that whatever their feelings about the Iraq war, people should never denigrate the Americans fighting there because they are willing to die for us.
"These are men and women who have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," he said.
"Have we done everything we can to ensure the sacrifice that they are prepared to make is in a cause worthy of the sacrifice?" Ritter said. "And I will tell you, no, we have not."
The students who were killed on May 4 gave the nation the gift of their lives, he said.
"What are we doing to honor this gift? If we cannot understand that their sacrifice screams out for a responsible citizenry, then we have shamed them, shamed them," Ritter said. "The gift that those who died on May 4, 1970, gave us was the gift of self-introspection."
It's a fact.
I have two kids in college right now and another to follow. They know enough to avoid the vicinity of such crimes as were committed by that crowd. They certainly know enough not to be Red revolutionaries attacking the National Guard or even rubberneckers (revolutionary is a LOT more likely description of the Kent State dead). If they don't have that sense, my emotional reaction would not make me right. See #40. As a basis of public policy, rationality beats self-centered blubbering every time. I put myself in similar circumstances in New Haven (see #40) at about the same time and, if I had been shot, I would blame no one but me.
The Kent State students stupidity or treason is not an excuse for guardsmen not to defend themselves when attacked. If you want to blame someone for the deaths of the Comrade Muffies and the Comrade Skippers, blame the mob for attacking the guard and regard the deaths as felony murders attributable to the mob and not to the guard just as though it were a bank or Brinks robbery in which a bystander was killed by cops stopping the robbery and the robbers would be charged. Not that I concede for a moment that the Kent State dead punks were innocent or had any legitimate complaint against the guardsmen. Also, stupidity is no more of an excuse than Marxism is.
BTW, what makes you think you are a conservative?
William Knox Schroeder was shot with a folder in his hand. He was an ROTC member and Eagle Scout on his way to class. This is established fact not denied by anyone.
See #42 and answer the same questions.
It’s a bunch of crap.
You’re usually on the side of law enforcement. Is what I said above correct?
Nothing more than that.
Brilliant!
That explains everything.
< /sarc >
If Schroeder were a safe distance from the action, he might be alive today. If he was an Eagle Scout and a ROTC member (remember that McGovern was a B-24 bomber pilot in WWII so I am not sure what Schroeder's extra-curriculars have to do with Schroeder's ideology or motives) he knew the risk when the rifles were drawn and the guard was attacked.
Unlike those killed at Jackson State, Schroeder and the rest were flirting near the mob at least and were NOT in their dormitories avoiding the near occasion of.... ummm death. What I deny is that Schroeder or anyone else shot by the guard at Kent State had any complaint coming against the guardsmen.
As pointed out elsewhere, John Adams, as a lawyer, successfully defended Brit troops for the Boston Massacre in similar circumstances. As one who identifies with Ireland, I normally sympathize with neither Federalists nor Brits but the Brit troops, John Adams and the Boston jury were right and thoroughly blameless as were the Ohio National Guardsmen. Voluntary proximity to anarchy and treason and felony assault of the guardsmen had consequences at Kent State, hankie twisting and Monday morning quarterbacking notwithstanding. And a good thing too!
The issue at hand is that National Guardsmen claimed that someone sniped at them first before they returned fire.
That was never verified, nor was the total number of rounds fired that day verified.
What is clear is that the command were not prepared for the incident or well-trained - the Guard units quick-timed with fixed bayonets into an area whose topography they did not know well and chose the worst-situated ground available (a fenced-in practice field in a depression between two hills) before beating a sheepish retreat.
I would point out that a Guardsman had been vicioulsy assaulted earlier in the day by protestors and the whole unit was on edge.
The protestors had been trying to gin up a violent confrontation the whole morning.
That sure was an articulate and complete answer to the questions, an answer worthy of the position you take in favor of anti-American punks who got SOME of what they and a lot more deserved. Thanks for playing.
Your questions were a bunch of inarticulate crap.
What else would anyone expect from a barroom full of guys full of beer and empty of facts? After forty years you still have the same attitude. Turn off the game and put down the beer. Your attempts to characterize others as commie sympathizers for stating the facts are slovenly.
All the other media whores had previous engagements.
My research on the Jackson State incident does not agree with your statements...
http://www.may41970.com/Jackson%20State/jackson_state_may_1970.htm
They were not ordered to stay inside, and classes were not canceled.
Schroeder was not on the Commons or near the Commons: he was a Kent State student doing what he was supposed to do, i.e. going to class.
The National Guard units were poorly commanded that day, and the campus radicals were doing their best to prompt a confrontation.
Schroeder did not deserve to die, nor did he take any untoward risks. He was a completely innocent victim of a conflict initiated by leftist radicals and poorly responded to by a miscommanded National Guard unit.
Schroeder's family may have reacted like Cindy Sheehan, but that has nothing to do with the fact that Schroeder did nothing wrong and was actually doing the right thing when he died.
Rule #1 (a) If people you know are picking a fight with soldiers with rifles at the school you go to, take the day off.
Rule #1 (b) If you are within range of any weapon during a conflict, you are in danger and should leave immediately and expediently. Bullets have neither brains, eyes nor conscience, and rocks rarely consider the ramifications of their actions.
Was it "far worse" as you state? Four people died at Kent but two at Jackson. In terms of the number of human lives lost, Kent was worse.
The Jackson dead were not "machine-gunned", they were killed by buckshot from shotguns.
The dead were not killed "in their dormitories" but were two men who were part of a crowd gathered in front of a women's dormitory on campus.
These two were not killed by a "guard unit" but were killed before the National Guard arrived at Jackson State - the only authorities on the scene at the time were the Jackson Police, the Jackson Fire Department and the MS State Police.
Because there was no Guard presence at the time, you are trivially right to say there was no attack on the Guard. But at Jackson State the crowd set fires, turned over vehicles and set vehicles on fire - and then threw rocks and garbage at the firemen who responded.
I would guess he got paid for it.
Watched a show about Kent State in which some of the Guardsmen claimed someone shot at them. I believe that a reporter at the event had a pistol. Putting two and two together I bet the reporter knowing what would happen fired his pistol in the direction of the Guardsmen and bang he had one hell of a story.
What got me was after the Guard shot the students the protesters didn’t run but kept on taunting the Guard. Only after an older faculty member pleaded with the protesters did they back off.
Tell me what would you do after seeing people shot? Would you stay and taunt the shooters or would you get the hell out of there?
At that point I knew that the protesters was a bunch of radicals. Who in the hell wants to get killed unless you have been brainwashed by communist organizers.
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