Fwd: [DemocraticNewsGroup] How Kent State Could Happen Again

[Guest guest]

Let's see if let's this go thru.

They are censoring free speech. /ATT is in direct conflict witht the BILL

OF RIGHTS

--

Garry S. Shay

Member, Democratic National Committee (CA) and

Lead Chair Rules Committee, California Democratic Party

Representing 7.1 million registered Democrats

=============================================

If you would like to join my list serve, send an email to:

DemocraticNewsGroup-

=============================================

If opportunity knocks, are we prepared to open the door?

=============================================

 

 

 

http://www.democrats.com/node/8815

How Kent State Could Happen Again Submitted by Bob Geiger on May 4, 2006 -

8:14am.Protests

Tin soldiers and Nixon comin',

We're finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drummin',

Four dead in Ohio.

~ Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Had he not been gunned down by National Guard troops on the Kent State

University campus on May 4, 1970, Jeffrey Miller would be 56 years old this

year. Instead, Miller's life ended at age 19 and the thing for which he will

forever be remembered is being the body over which young Mary Ann Vecchio cried

in despair in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo that quickly came to symbolize a

deeply-divided nation.

 

It was 36 years ago today that Miller, Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and

William Schroeder, were massacred by Army National Guardsmen at a Vietnam war

protest on the Kent State campus. It was a watershed event that touched off a

nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to

close and signaled the zenith of American opposition to that war.

 

Miller and Krause had been involved in the demonstration while Scheuer and

Schroeder were simply walking across campus between classes when the shooting

started. Nine other students were wounded in the shooting, in which the soldiers

fired 67 shots at the unarmed youths in a strong-arm effort to disperse the

crowd before yet another day of protests could begin on the unsettled campus.

 

While the National Guard made a claim -- that has never been substantiated --

that a sniper had fired on the Guardsmen and some later testified that they were

in fear for their lives, the closest of the four students killed (Miller) was

almost 100 yards away and most of the wounded were not much closer.

 

The shootings chilled the nation, galvanized a generation and left millions

asking how something like that could have happened in America.

Could the same thing happen in our country today? Without a shadow of a doubt.

Indeed, I would argue that only one thing keeps the same kind of event from

happening many times over in George W. Bush's America -- the absence of a

military draft.

 

The shootings at Kent State were the culmination of four days of loud and

large demonstrations by students, who were protesting the American invasion of

Cambodia which President Richard Nixon had launched on April 25. The invasion

further inflamed students as they had already seen educational deferments become

more difficult to achieve and believed that the expansion of the war into

another country increased their risk of being drafted.

 

I believe this sad occasion is a fitting day to think about the similarities

between the Iraq war and Vietnam and the comparable effects it may soon have on

a new generation. With Vietnam, our government misled the nation into war, gave

an unrealistic estimate of how long and difficult the conflict would be and

promised to liberate a struggling people from oppressors. And, with television

truly coming into its own, the bloody fighting was beamed into living rooms on a

nightly basis.

 

Sound like what's happening right now?

 

For even scarier similarity, read the words of former Kent State student Dean

Kahler, now 57, who was shot in the lower back and left paralyzed on May 4,

1970. Kahler talked in 2000 about his thoughts immediately after Nixon's

announcement of the Cambodia invasion.

" When he made the announcement, a very defiant announcement that we were

invading Cambodia, he didn’t care what people thought about it -- that's the

impression I got and that many of my fellow students got at the same time too.

To me, it didn’t make sense. Why were we expanding the war when he was talking

about ending the war and bringing our troops home and getting out of there?

 

" We were invading another country. I thoroughly agreed with the history and

political science department at Kent who, the next day, on May 1st, buried a

copy of the Constitution because they felt that he had overstepped his powers as

Commander-in-Chief by sending troops into another country. The mood kind of

changed on campus at that point in time. "

 

 

The draft ended 33 years ago and the ambivalence today's students seem to feel

toward an Iraq war so remarkably similar to Vietnam can undoubtedly be traced to

a lack of personal connection to the war and any risk that it will disrupt -- or

end -- their lives. But what if a draft became their reality today? With our

military perhaps more stretched than it was with Vietnam and with the looming

specter of our fatigued military being overwhelmed with a new war with Iran, you

can bet a new spirit of activism would suddenly emerge on campuses nationwide.

 

 

Nothing would personalize a war to America's youth and their parents like the

prospect of being forced to trade in the frat house for a rifle and an unarmored

Humvee. I bet it would even make some of the Young Republicans on college

campuses take a hard look at the rationale for war if there was even a smidgen

of a chance they would actually have to fight.

 

And it may not be far away.

 

Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) has proposed restoring the draft, but more

as an antiwar tactic to shock Republicans into reality -- that calling us a

" nation at war " would have a huge public-relations cost if it ever went beyond

simply being a White House buzz phrase and they actually had to start taking

young people against their will.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has flat-out said that mandatory

military service is going to have to be considered in light of what he described

as a “generational war against terrorism.†Two years ago, when things were

actually going better in Iraq, Hagel commented that " deteriorating security in

Iraq may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft. "

And, of course, there's Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA), who has said that

“the only way to increase the size of the armed services fairly is with a

draft.â€

Indeed, Murtha expressly addressed the need for conscription in his

controversial House resolution in November, 2005, calling for a phased

withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying " Whereas additional stabilization in

Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of

hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be

achieved without a military draft. "

 

Even people like Representative Jim Turner (D-TX), a member of the House Armed

Services Committee, who realizes what a political firestorm a draft would

create, admits that it could easily happen. “We need to be prepared to have

one,†said Turner, when asked recently about the possibility if there is

another major conflict in the world.

 

And does anyone really doubt that we could end up fighting somewhere else with

Bush and a Republican Congress in charge? In addition, we have troop casualties

reaching levels unseen since Vietnam, tours of duty being extended and many

battle-weary troops returning to Iraq for second and third deployments. How low

does the supply of trained, willing troops need to get before the draft is

brought back and aren't we staring at that nearby horizon right now?

 

With Team Bush, we also have an administration that lied us into a war, outs

covert CIA agents, performs illegal spying on American citizens and is riddled

with corruption. As we deplete the U.S. military in Iraq and posture more

aggressively with Iran -- and possibly North Korea -- a renewed military draft

begins to look almost inevitable. And, when it comes to the notion of pulling

out all the stops to stifle dissent at home, George W. Bush will make Richard

Nixon look like Gandhi.

 

So as we commemorate the 36th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, we

should look at that terrible day when four young college students quit getting

older and a bad war truly came home and ask how far we are from that happening

all over again.

 

Perhaps the fear of being drafted to fight in one of Bush's wars would

actually make today's college students awaken from their collective slumber and

begin protesting the state of their world. If that happens, they will soon see

the tin soldiers coming once again -- except this time, they'll have bigger guns

and, undoubtedly, an even more profound mandate for making the voices of dissent

speak no more.

To learn more about the Kent State Shootings, visit May4Archive.org and

Reese's May 4, 1970 page.

You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob

 

 

 

 

 

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e. cummings-

 

 

is disappearing messages to the group again. Messages

which have a content that isn't politically correct are going missing.

 

This isn't the first time that such practices, as well as other

things, have been used against this group as well as other groups. In

fact, I suspect that the problem is probably quite widespread, and has

been ongoing in one form or another, for quite some time now.

 

Please be aware of the situation and alert others and other groups.

 

Sometimes, I have had to post the same message to the group as many as

5 or 6 times to finally get one copy to slip through. Other simply disappear.

All would have been considered not politically correct. It seems that

is, once again,

politically censoring messages in violation of free speech.

 

Other times the message will get posted to the group's message section but then

it seems that it doesn't go out as group email to the members.

 

Please pass this information on.