Mary Ann Vecchio, kneeling by the body of the slain student, Jeffrey Miller.
Photo by John Filo. 1970.
We do not learn. It’s as if the past never happened. As if the millions of lives lost in war after war after war are all forgotten. And when people in the moment rise up and protest more of the same, they get shot down.
Forty years ago today, four innocent students were gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State in Ohio. Nixon had announced an expansion of the war into Cambodia a few days before, and protests ensued across the country. On May 4th, 1970, the war came home to America. Guardsmen on the Kent State campus fired more than 60 shots, wounding thirteen students and killing four. That sparked nation-wide outrage and the largest antiwar protests to date.
We do not learn. We give endless coverage to tax protesters, and next to none for antiwar rallies. We have a population caught up in a furious debate about health care while two wars are raging overseas and America falls deeper and deeper into the highest levels of income and wealth inequality among all industrialized nations.
Today should be a reminder of what this nation has already been through, what it keeps forgetting, and why we should never go to war again unless there is irrefutable evidence that we have no other choice. Unless we can be absolutely sure of the necessity of war, we can not enter into the killing fields again.
We never should have gone into Vietnam. Three million Vietnamese died as a result, along with 58,000 Americans. And we shouldn’t be in Iraq or Afghanistan now. Too many people — hundreds of thousands if not more — have died since America invaded.
There are few things more absurd than war. There are few things on this earth as evil, ugly or senseless. And since virtually no one but the owners of the military industrial complex ever benefits from war, why do we continue to accept them? Why do we continue to support them? Why do we continue to voluntarily die in them?
Ohio, by CSNY
Well written expression of strong thoughts. Good questions and strong statements… Would like to make sure that readers who may be Veterans of Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan (hard to believe that I even know how to spell that country’s name) realize that anti-war does not mean anti-veteran. The mess at Ohio happened during a time when returning soldiers were spit upon… A point I bring up just because.…
We must remember.… the ones who DID go to war, drafted or voluntarily, who did find reasons to do what they needed to do, to stay alive, or to get out of mine fields, .… You are correct.…..We must remember.…
It was never about blaming the troops. It was the evil ideology of leaders who sent them to war. I have respect for those who thought they were doing their duty, just as I respect those who decided they could not, in good conscience, kill people thousands of miles away, for no reason. I respect both decisions. But I despise the decisions of our leaders who sent our young people into harm’s way.
I also despise those who were stridently in favor of the war, but did everything they could to get out of serving. Cheney got five deferments, even though he was vocally in support of the war. I find that despicable, almost beyond imagination. The neocons were made up almost entirely of such chickenhawks, people who are hawkish when it comes to all wars, just as long as they don’t have to fight in them.
With regard to the Iraq War, I can’t stand all of the talk of “support our troops” from people who wanted our young to go overseas and die in the desert for no reason. The best way to “support our troops” is to never send them into harm’s way in the first place, unless it is absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the only possible option. And then, when we realize that the war was a mistake, send them home. Bring them home safely. That’s how you support the troops. Bring them safely home.
Kissinger and others thought for many years we couldn’t leave Vietnam because it would be “dishonorable.” Of all the obscene words to throw out there from the comfort of his mansion!! He had the nerve to say that our young people had to stay and die for no reason, knowing the war was lost, knowing that we would eventually have to leave anyway, but delaying that leave-taking for reasons of his own ideal of “honor”. And Nixon’s. And the owners of the military-industrial complex. If I believed in hell, I’d say they deserve one of Dante’s rings.
I have no doubt that the people stuck in the mud in the jungles of Vietnam, bullets whizzing by their ears, their best friends dying all around them, couldn’t care less about Kissinger’s sense of “honor.” Or Nixon’s, etc.
Again, the insanity of our leaders and the excuses they make, the scapegoats they find, the enemies they manufacture .… in a just world, they would be brought to court in chains for what they did. For the lives lost and destroyed.