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."
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!
Well put - of course you’d have to be dumber than a rock not to know that without being taught.
People don’t show up on Memorial Day to honor our vets either. Why should they show up for this fiasco?
People don’t show up on Memorial Day to honor our vets either. Why should they show up for this fiasco?
LOL! Except the other guy should be ten years old.
You are exactly right. The Ohio Guardsmen were Guilty of horrible aim (I.e. They missed all the rioting Hippy freaks and hit innocent bystanders walking to class.)
No they weren’t. The students that were killed were walking to classes not protesting.
On the afternoon of the event, I was sitting at a Knights of Columbus bar with a bunch of very Democrat tire workers who had just gotten out of work. IIRC, we were watching a Yankee/Red Sox baseball game. When the bulletin as to four dead at Kent State interrupted the game, the guy next to me said: Too bad it wasn't forty. The next guy: four hundred! The next guy: four thousand! And so forth. These were guys working one of the dirtiest jobs in America. Their hands were always grimy with black rubber that attached to their hands at work. They hoped for their kids to go to college and not have to work at tire factories. They were willing to pay tuition. They were not willing to subsidize ignorant rebellions against legitimate authority. They were, even as Democrats, thoroughly fed up with the New Left antics on campus.
Eventually, courtesy of the Demonrats' penchant for surrender to communist enemies, support for street crime, enthusiasm for killing innocent babies, glorification of lavender hoopla posing as "marriage", bizarre social behavior of all sorts, nutcase theories as to practically everything, passion for farming working folks to support the welfare state to assuage the social guilt of the leaders' wives in the corporations which employed them, and several other issues, those tire factory workers would become "Reagan Democrats."
4 killed and 17 wounded at Kent State got part of what the leaders of that mob action and their enthusiastic followers deserved. Weep no crocodile tears for any of them. Better to improve marksmanship training for the National Guard.
That anti-American trash like Scott Ritter goes to Kent State to blubber over the memory of those shot says it all just in case we are EVER inclined to forget the significance of that day.
Redangus: You are right I will always remember where I was when I learned that some justice was done on that field at Kent State,.
Most of the "students" at that "protest" were not students at Kent State; they were professionally organized thugs brought there by SDA.
Remember that SDS was actually funded by a wing of the American Communist Party.
But still, the blood is on the hands of the rioting hippies.
Of the four who were killed, two did not participate in the protest. One was on her way to class and another was an ROTC member.
I don't know about the Ohio NG but the Mass NG was filled with draft dodgers who shouldn't have been issued weapons, I was just back from VN at the time.
Redangus: You are right I will always remember where I was when I learned that some justice was done on that field at Kent State,".
I'm not sure you would feel the same way if your son or daughter was shot and killed while innocently going to class and not being a part of the demonstrations at all.
That is what happened, you know.
I agree with that. The violence of the protestors started the whole thing.
“They were mostly small town college kids who allowed themselves to get riled up by some antiwar professionals.... 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.”
Thank you for your inside view - and it looks like you know your history as well. I think the National Guard building was torched by the “professional” antiwar folks along with some of the buildings downtown as I recall from my reading of events years ago.
Two of the four killed were students going about their legitimate business a considerable distance away from and not taking part in any demonstrations.
They had no reasonable expectation of survival?
Why not?
Based on your 'reasoning', what reasonable expectation of survival do you have when you sit safely at your computer and post drivel.
They deserved more than being arrested.
Ok, so you think it is ok for people to riot. You had a National Guard unit that was trying to restore order, you had people throwing cement chunks at the guard who were much closer than sixy feet away originally, the guard turned around, at orders from the officer in charge, and was moving off when one of the members(and this was when they were 60+ feet away)turned and fired, the rest fired also because they didn't know what was happening. The officer in charge did good in stopping this, but the ultimate blame lies with the protesters, not the guard. Anyone who thinks they would have stood their ground and not fired at these communist idiots doesn't know what it is like to be in a situation like this. Don't want to get shot? Don't break the law and don't throw cement chunks at armed men. As far as the distances are concerned they were taken after the fact and are open to doubt because the left wing were in charge at that time as they are now on most colleges and Universities.
The students that were killed were not imune from the NG. Were they too stupid to realize that they could not walk across a battlefield without risk of injury??? Even if they were innocent bystanders, anyone NOT part of the demonstrations should have stayed out of the area. Bullets don’t choose sides.
As far as the distances are concerned they were taken after the fact and are open to doubt because the left wing were in charge at that time as they are now on most colleges and Universities.
Are you saying that the investigations of the incident were conducted by students and professors? LOL Stupid statement.
Assume, as I do not, that you were correct and that those shot had nothing to do with the protest (rank baloney!). We live in an age where no one wants to take responsibility for their individual actions. If someone set off a string of salutes in the crowd, the Ohio National Guardsmen would reasonably conclude that they were being fired upon. Those guardsmen were at Kent State after spending a month or more patrolling highway overpasses on Ohio's interstates because of a Teamster strike that included snipers shooting tractor trailer drivers defying the strike. The guardsmen expected to be going back to their jobs, their businesses and their families but were delayed by the Americong punks at Kent State who burned the ROTC building and marched against the drawn weapons of the guard. They should have fired directly into the leading ranks of the leftist punks and anarchists. We ought not castrate the guard in order to protect the curiosity seekers or participants as the case may have been.
I expect to survive when I stay home and mind my own business as I should. I witnessed the Black Panther murder protests by the New Left on the New Haven Green in 1969 or 1970. I sat on the steps of one of the Center Church on the New Haven Green so that I would not have to depend on CBS and other MSM lies as to the the goings on in my hometown. I made a conscious decision to be there. If I had been shot, then I would have had no one to blame but me. I was not at all sympathetic to the demonstrators.
On the same day as Kent State, there was a far worse incident at a black state college in Mississippi called Jackson State. There more students were machine-gunned in their dormitories by a guard unit than were shot at Kent State. At Jackson State, there was no attack on the guard.
Our mush-headed middle class, wanting always to excuse the depredations of improperly raised little "revolutionary" Muffy and Skipper, will not only lie to protect their posthumous reputations and attack guardsmen for doing their job but keep up the drumbeat of lies nearly forty years later. If the story line of the Kent State "martyrs" were not lies, what was Scott the Predator Ritter doing there to mouth the party line of the anti-Americans???
If you hallucinate that at least two of those killed were "going about their legitimate business," what is your source? John Kerry? Bernardine Dohrn? Hussein Obama? Crusty the Pantsuit? The establishmentarian Scranton Report? James Michener (Quaker leftist as well as imaginative novelist)? New York Times editorials? CSNBCABCCNNNYTWaPo?????
When rifles are fired in self-defense by guardsmen, 60 feet is no protection. 6 more inches and it would be the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate. Bullets travel a lot faster than thrown baseballs. If someone was going to die, better the radical punks than the guard.
If you would like to view the dead punks as conservative heroes of some sort, NO SALE!
If your hoof is as soft as your head and your heart, then get physical hoof therapy before risking injury by walking. If you don't like what I posted, then remember that it was not as though I cared.
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.
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