Ohio

[AVB]

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.


On this day May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. More then any other act, not the marches on Washington, not Walter Cronkite declaring the war was a wasted cause and not the families of the then 40,000+ dead, this turned middle America against the Vietnam war.

 

[bimmer635csi]

Neil Young sure had hang-ups about Kent State, huh?

 

[handyman dave]

Too bad it took dead civilian kids when there were already so many dead, drafted kids.

Too often we are able to externalize and dehumanize the deaths of people happening far away, even when we see the body bags coming home. Sadly, in this war, they don't even show us the body bags to remind us viscerally what is happening to kids, ours and theirs.

 

[Devil Doc]

This is the day I, and many others, officially became Baby Killers.

Doc.

 

[Saxjazzman]

This is the day I, and many others, officially became Baby Killers.

Doc.

Ain't that the truth. I was surprized that I was still a baby killer in 1998 when I went to mail a letter at the Post Office in Brooklyn and it came out I served then. The post man behind the counter looked at me ( he was not born then) and asked me how many babies I killed. Needless to say, that pissed me off. I made an official complaint to the Post Office Postmaster and he told me that this was a free country and anyone could say what they wanted. I told him that was true, but the reason it was free was because a bunch of "baby killers" like us who served. And the beat goes on.

 

[Jack Straw]

This is the day I, and many others, officially became Baby Killers.

Doc.

Gotta disagree Doc, I think that dubious distinction goes to Charlie Company and Lt. William Calley on March 16, 1968 in My Lai, not to an undertrained and overzealous bunch of National Guardsmen.

My Lai