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."
The problem with Kent State was that instead of firing at the leaders of the trouble-making rioters, the national guard fired over their heads striking bystanders in the background. Rioters are generally like packs of wild dogs - take out the leaders and the rest will flee.
I live very close to Kent State. It’s not a popular opinion with some around here, but I think the lesson learned at KSU was don’t throw rocks at people with guns!
The people who were killed weren’t throwing rocks.
Because we understand the issue better than you do, bonehead.
The students who were killed on May 4 gave the nation the gift of their lives, he said.
No, they didn't. They were useful idiots who bought an anti-American ideology and tried to implement their wishes like children throwing tantrums. The people giving their lives for our country are the men and women of the armed forces who volunteer for combat in the war against Islmaofascism, and who are killed in battle or war-related incidents. They are heroes, every one of them.
The students who died at Kent State were naive children and merit no commemoration from their nation.
Isn’t Ritter a kiddie diddler.
Did Scott bring his fourteen year old date with him. Probably had to bribe her with an offer for dinner at Burger King afterwards.
I’m not trying to defend the violent, moonbat anti-war (anti-American) protestors, but not everyone shot at Kent State was a protestor.
A male student shot was, ironically, in ROTC. He was in civilian clothes and watching the protest from the sidelines. One of the female students who was shot was walking by the area of the protests with textbooks under her arm....she wasn’t a protestor. Both of these students died.
The media at the time called another young woman....the one in the Putlizer prize winning photo.... a “co-ed.” This was the famous photo of a horror-stricken “co-ed” crouching over the dead body of protestor Jeffrey Miller. In reality, this “co-ed” was a 14 year old runaway, now a 52 year old woman.
Why the hell Scott Ritter is interjecting himself into this 38 year old tragic incident at Kent State, I have no idea. I guess he’s tired of protesting Iraq.
I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the info.
The truth is the lefties staged this whole thing hoping the guard would shoot, this was the ideal situation as far as they were concerned. Communists were running rampant at the time and using idealistic young idiots to help them in their cause of stopping a war against a communist nation. Among the active communist, of course, was John Frikin' Kerry and his ilk. ("You know what an ilk is don't you? Yeah, its a big deer." First prize to anyone who identifies the movie that was taken from).
The 60s were a bad time and the main reason we are in such trouble now is because the majority of the people, me included, didn't take these revolutionists for the communist party seriously. We need to do that now and fight back as hard as we can.
I recall my oldest boy when he was five years old making this statement (vis-a-vis the inadvisability of throwing rocks at people who have guns) when he was watching Palestinians throw rocks at Israeli soldiers standing atop tanks aiming their guns.
Being of the Kent State Generation, I can tell you that most of the people I knew at university at the time thought this (and Altamount) went a long way toward stopping the “Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof” madness that emboldened these tantrum-throwing brats. And personally I think the sooner this non-event is forgotten, the better.
Was Mr. Ritter also in town for meetings at a local Burger King?
“Isn’t Ritter a kiddie diddler.”
Correction...
online sexual preditor
I was a freshman in college at a similar sized midwestern school when this happened. The anti war crowd that started all this foolishness had been on our campus a couple of days before, but found our student body to be too pacifist for their liking. The tried to hold a rally on the commons area in the center of the old campus, but most people just stopped for a couple of minutes and went on to class. I guess they found a more receptive crowd and KSU. It was Spring and the weather was absolutely beautiful that weekend so I imagine a lot of the students were just in the mood to be rowdy. There was some rioting and burning in town the night before, hence the calling in of the NG. Your description of the students as a bunch of hippies is really not very accurate. They were mostly small town college kids who allowed themselves to get riled up by some antiwar professionals and then found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun manned by a kid probably their age. To my knowledge there was very little if any rocks and bottles being throw on May 4 though there was a confrontation on campus. Some reports said a shot was fired at the NG, but nobody can confirm that.
Anyway the antiwar people got what they wanted in one sense, but not in another. They got “Nixon and his tin soldiers” as the song says to fire on and kill American college kids in the heartland, but instead of campuses going up in flames for the most part it was the death knell of the antiwar protest on most campuses. Protesting was a fun way to let off steam in the Spring time when know one was getting hurt, it was viewed very differently after May 4.
What did come out of the KS shootings was a change in the attitude of many parents and adults. All of a sudden the war and the protests over it were being brought home to them in stark terms. They started to ask more questions about the war and about America’s leadership. The Left picked up on that and with the help of the Media slowly, but surely turned the people against the war.
As I said I was a freshman in college at the time. I was not a member of the antiwar crowd, though I did believe we needed to change our tactics and start doing what was necessary to win the thing and get it over with. I lost 4 friends in Vietnam and went to all their funerals. What I remember most about that day was the stunned silence of those on campus as they heard the news. My girlfriend later wife and I were coming back from a walk. When we got back to the dorm everyone was just standing around whispering. She asked one of the grad students what was going on. He told her the NG had shot and killed students at Kent State that afternoon. We knew little about KS other than it was a school similar to ours and was in our athletic conference. My reaction, like I am sure many others, was “what do you mean they shot and killed kids at Kent State?” We then joined in that same wondering, questioning, soul-searching silence that was creeping across our small midwestern campus.
My mom and dad’s generation had Pearl Harbor, those between my parents and me had JFK’s assassination and for people my age, at least college kids my age, we will always remember where we were when we heard about Kent State.
Some people may have deserved to get arrested but when the shooting started the nearest person shot was about 60 feet away, the nearest student killed was 100 feet away and the rest were 100 yards or more away. At least 2 people killed had nothing at all to do with the demonstrations, they were just walking to or from class. The CO of the unit was brave to the point of insanity, he walked right in front of the soldiers as they were firing screaming for them to stop. The incidents that led up to the shootings may have been the catalyst but it's hard to explain how the actual shooting was justified.
Ritter & Murtha, “Dumb & Dumber”.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
The above statement jarred my memory: A while back I read a book re: the Paris communard of 1871, before,during, and after. It seems the revolutionaries felt that in order to give a rallying point to their followers, and garnish sympathy from the general population, they needed a martyr to/for their cause.
So with every encounter the communards became more and more "Kent state" with the till finally it works. The guards fired, killing one of the useful idiots. The revolutionaries had their martyr and played it for all it was worth, i.e. elaborate, almost theatrical, funeral; huge memorial, protests, pamphlets, rallies, etc. etc..
I guess it's like Mark Twain said, "Only Adam ever saw something for the first time."
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