Cindy Sheehan: Four Dead in Ohio (CommonDreams)

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Published on Wednesday, May 2, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Four Dead in Ohio
by Cindy Sheehan

May 4th, 2007 will be the 37th year since the Kent State, Ohio, massacre where four anti-war protesters were killed by Ohio National Guardsmen during a protest against Richard Nixon’s announced escalation in Vietnam.

On that day in 1970, anti-Vietnam war sentiment in the entire nation was high as hundreds of soldiers were coming home in flag-draped coffins every week and we were bombarded daily with images of burning villages and screaming Vietnamese children. The images were harsh, but what was even harsher was the Nixon regime escalating a war in a Johnsonian way when he had promised that he would end the quagmire in Vietnam if elected.

The Kent State protest rose spontaneously against Nixon’s pronouncement. Anti-war sentiment was high on campuses all over America and soldiers during that time were in full-blown mutiny and actively protest the war “in country” and here in the states. By 1970 there were a reported 209 “fragging” (lower rank soldiers killing their superiors in the field) and well over 55,000 deserters. A young Alabama Air National Guardsmen named George H. Bush would soon add his name to the deserter’s when he failed to report for duty in 1972. It seemed like people from all demographics really cared enough to get out from behind their TV sets and out from behind the protection of their comfortable lives to join protests all over the country.

When that young Vietnam deserter cum illegitimate president announced a new Nixonian escalation of the violence in Iraq late in 2006, there was barely a peep from an American public that has been rocked to sleep by knowingly complicit news conglomerates and their high powered advertising agencies that whip our country into a frenzy of un-fettered and borderline immoral orgy of consumerism. In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s we were rightly exposed to the horror of war. War is horrible and the sacrifices should be borne by the entire country not just we unfortunate few. Today we are bombarded with propaganda from a duplicitous government and ads that convince us our lives won’t be complete unless we go into debt to purchase the new and improved doo-dad of the day.

Now in a very weak, baby step, but a step in the right direction, nonetheless, Congress sent King George yet another “non-binding” bill for troop withdrawal that he vetoed, exercising that power for only the 2nd time in his administration. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/02/905/

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1. K & R