The Army National Guard. They’re the good guys, right? Competent, disciplined, more than adequately trained and dedicated to protecting the American people both “over there” and back here. That’s the image both the Pentagon and the White House want to paint, but I’ve gotta tell you what… I need a little more convincing.
For starters, let me tell you that I just don’t trust it. Everything about armed soldiers patrolling around inside the United States feels wrong. It’s a worrisome thing, and I don’t for one minute trust President Obama’s judgment in ordering 1200 armed National Guardsmen to begin patrolling our southern border starting on August 1.
It’s a source of no small worry to me that poor, often sick and almost always desperate people, seeking to escape the economic hell that we have helped create in Mexico, will brave the life threatening perils of 100+ degree days in the desert to be met on our border by National Guardsmen with guns. I’ll be blunt: I don’t trust guardsmen to handle those situations responsibly. Fact is, when policing operations are involved, I don’t trust guardsmen at all. Let me tell you why.
Kent State. Remember that? It was a long time ago. Maybe you’re too young to remember, or maybe you’re so old that you just forgot. Me, I’m never going to forget it.
On an unforgettable day in May, forty years ago, National Guardsmen opened fire into a crowd of students assembled on the campus of Kent State University for the purpose of protesting continued American involvement in Vietnam. Every student in that crowd was exercising their right of free speech, their right to assemble and their right to petition the government—the very same precious rights for which we are always told American soldiers fight. For exercising those rights nine students were seriously wounded and four of them were killed—all shot and killed by armed members of the Army National Guard.
Immediately after the Kent State killings, National Guard officials tried to sell the nation on the idea that the guardsmen had acted in self defense. They promoted the lie that the guardsmen had been surrounded on three sides, pelted with rocks and feared for their lives. The guardsmen opened fire, the officials contended, as a last resort. There was nothing else they could do. They were trying to save their own lives from the hostile acts of out-of-control students!
That was the official line, and it was a load of bull. Pure bull. The kind of bull that sells so well to that enormous crowd of Americans who worship every incarnation of our military and police.
Fact is, the National Guardsmen who pulled the triggers and fired 63 rounds into the crowd in 13 seconds of terror killed four students needlessly. That’s what a 100-agent investigative task force of the Hoover FBI (yes, the FBI under the directorship of the inimitable J. Edgar Hoover) concluded just a few months after the killings. The guardsmen had not been surrounded on three sides, had not run out of tear gas as claimed, were never in danger and “could have controlled the situation without shooting,” the FBI’s 7500-page report concluded.
Please understand this and appreciate it for what it was. Try to make it real in your mind. I want you to hear the screams and see the blood as hundreds flee in terror and the bodies of dead and wounded students lie scattered about the grounds. Remember the scene. It all happened on an American university campus within the borders of the United States. Right there in Ohio. The shooters terrorizing the campus were all National Guardsmen firing their military issued weapons. Without exception.
It doesn’t get more real than dead. Four young people, three boys and a girl, were shot dead for no good reason at all by members of the Army National Guard, the same outfit President Obama is now sending to police the southern border.
Yes, it was a long time ago. So what? The students killed that day are still dead. They’ll still be dead next year. Their lives were taken away once and for all time by the Army National Guard. Dead is dead.
I’m told there were around 100 armed National Guardsmen assembled at Kent State on that fateful afternoon. I’m reminded that not all of them fired into the crowd. Not all of them acted irresponsibly. It’s a defense I’ve heard a thousand times. It’s the same defense, the same demurrer, I always hear from those who would turn a blind eye to every atrocity committed by our military or law enforcement officers. I am cautioned not to paint the military and law enforcement communities with a broad brush.
Just as that argument never changes, my response remains the same. Here it is. I can tell you exactly what percentage of guardsmen fired into that Kent State crowd—enough to kill four students and wound nine others. It was more than enough. It was way too damn many.
I don’t want a single National Guardsman firing at unarmed immigrants out on the desert, but I know they will. Some of them will. I know it, and you know it.
I’m ready for the reports of “justified killings” that will inevitably hit the airwaves shortly after the coming deployment. I’m going to receive with great skepticism reports of dead immigrants—reports that guardsmen acted in self defense, shooting and killing menacing immigrants who pelted them with rocks and put them in fear for their lives. It’s all gonna sound like a crock. It’s gonna sound like the same old bull, and that’s what it’s going to be.
PHOTO CREDIT: BETH RANKIN/FLICKR
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
As I read the above article, I am saddened at the fact of what happened at Kent State University.
I must ask, however, were these students not told to disperse and move along? Freedom of speech is one thing, but can you yell “Fire!” in a crowded building?
I am an American, born and bred and married to an immigrant, from South Africa.
I am all for people becoming Citizens of this great nation that we call the United States.
BUT! When I see others coming to the US, illegally and not trying anything to make themselves residents/citizens, it makes me sick.
I can only hope the National Guardsmen at Kent University are the same ones at the US border.
Two of the dead at Kent State were Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder. Neither of those students were participating in the protest. Scheuer was simply walking to her class, more than 400 feet away from the shooter who killed her. Bill Schroeder was observing the protest from almost 400 feet away from the nearest guardsman. He was shot in the back with a bullet from an M-1.
Jeffrey Miller was shot in the head from a distance of almost 100 yards. Allison Krause was shot from more than 100 yards away. None of the students were armed. None posed any threat to anyone.
If I understand you, Tapioca, you are hoping that a similar scene will be repeated on the Mexican Border. You feel as though free speech should reasonably be silenced upon the command of a National Guardsman to disperse and move along. Do you feel that failure to disperse is sufficient grounds for shooting a peaceful demonstrator in the head? Do I correctly understand that it is your wish that those judged by guardsmen to be crossing our border illegally be shot and killed?
I am not going to justify what the Guardsmen did over 40 years ago. However, in your original post you did not mention that these students were not part of the demonstration.
And that brings me to the last paragraph of your previous post.
If I am told not to do something because it is illegal, regardless of the consequences, I am not going to do it!
I’m going to call it like I see it…
These Mexicans want to come to OUR country and take work from US citizens.
There are signs posted up and down the border. They know not to come into OUR country illegally, yet they do so, and get welfare, cash aid, etc…
They can drive in OUR country without an American license, get a ticket for not having the proper credentials, (and for speeding too) show that they are not a citizen/resident, yet their fine is reduced and they go on the merry way!
My husband came to OUR country the right way, with a work visa, opened his own business, and has created a magazine, ALL ON HIS OWN! No cash aid, no welfare.
If these mexicans cross OUR border illegally and know the ramifications, then yes, those crossing OUR border illegally should be shot and killed!
There are legal penalties for coming into this country illegally, but the law doesn’t provide the death penalty for that crime! Tapioca makes so much about never wanting to do anything illegal but is okay with national guard soldiers committing murder while acting as judge, jury and executioners on the border!
I’d love to round up all the folks who disapprove of Mexican immigrants coming into the U.S. (legal or otherwise) and live in their situation, work their jobs, live in their homes and see how many of those folks run to the border to get back into the U.S. I bet everyone single one of them would be kicking and screaming within a matters of weeks to cross that border and how outraged they’d be if a National Guardsmen pointed their guns and even fired. Oh but wait……..that would be okay because the Guard would only be protecting OUR country so if a few folks end up dead, no biggie.
Imagine if Americans, went to Mexico, ILLEGALLY.. The Mexicans would have us in jail, in a New York second!
Mexican “officials” would be standing at “their” border and making damn sure an American didn’t cross.
And don’t even deny that! An American can drive in Mexico, why sure, but if they are to commit a traffic violation, they wind up in a jail cell with nothing.
However, here in the good ol’ US, an immigrant gets off with a slap on the wrist.
I would never ever go into a country illegally. NEVER.
I would do it by the proper channels, as did my husband, when he came to the US.
AND! I would learn their language…