Is it really hard to believe this scenario? Ask the unfortunate African-American citizens of New Orleans who, in trying to cross a bridge to the safety of an exclusive all-white neighborhood on higher ground, were driven back at gunpoint into Hurricane Katrina’s dangerous flood conditions by—you guessed it—U.S. Army and National Guard soldiers, some of whom could have been their own neighbors, yours, or mine.
When Neighbors are Soldiers, Who Works for Whom?
I recall leading anti-Viet Nam war demonstrators at Ohio State University (OSU) in the 1960s. My fellow students were understandably bitter that Lyndon Johnson, and later Richard Nixon, perpetuated a pointless intervention in south-east Asia, then lied about it, and stubbornly resisted the unmistakable popular mandate to withdraw our troops from Viet Nam.
Given broad national consensus at the time that troops should be withdrawn without delay, Johnson’s refusal to act amounted to insubordination and led directly to his “termination of employment” by the American people. Nixon resorted to trickery and deceit to delay his termination for insubordination, only to be hoisted by his own petard and forced to resign in yet another disgraceful scandal in his dubious career. (BTW, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, an accomplished liar even then, consults today on Iraq with George Bush, despite Kissinger’s record of being 100% wrong about Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia!)
In response to massive nationwide popular demonstrations in the late 1960s against U.S. support of Vietnamese military dictators, the OSU campus was invaded and occupied by the Ohio National Guard. For a week, as I walked about the Oval observing my fellow protesters and moving groups of them around to maintain our defensive perimeter, I would see among the citizen-soldiers facing us several young men from my home town of Minerva, Ohio. Most of the Guardsmen were about the same age as the students and faculty demonstrating against the war—but they had delayed college or taken local jobs soon after high school and joined the Guard for extra income and job training.
Once, in a shadowy haze of pepper gas, I saw a National Guardsman I knew fairly well. I was tempted to call out, “Hey, Denny [Price], why are you doing this? John [Helms] & Hutch [Al Hutchinson] are here on the Oval with me. Would you really shoot us if we moved toward the Student Union?” (Denny Price, unfortunately, was later killed in action in Viet Nam.) That day I refrained from calling out to Denny, but only because of the difficulty it would have caused him had his Commanding Officer heard me.
Though I did not know her at the time, my wife was formerly a student at Kent State University, and was present on May 4, 1970, when members of another Ohio National Guard unit fired their rifles at her fellow Kent State students after Nixon’s announcement of the invasion of Cambodia. These young National Guardsmen who failed to ask themselves “Whom do I really work for?” were drawn into the needless tragedy of four innocent student fatalities and nine other gunshot injuries—one resulting in permanent paralysis—because they mistakenly placed the legitimacy of their commanding officers’ orders above those of their true “bosses,” the citizens of Kent, Ohio who sponsored and paid them through their votes and taxes.
At the time when Los Angeles (Watts), Detroit, and many other U.S. cities experienced severe racial tensions, Cleveland, Ohio, was also occupied militarily. Army tanks and jeeps with mounted machine guns blocked me from driving down Carnegie Avenue to pick up my girlfriend after her night shift at the Cleveland Clinic. That morning I looked closely at the soldiers who faced me, but saw no one I knew. Would they have seen me as a neighbor or as an enemy if I had insisted on driving past their tanks on my innocent errand at the Clinic?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
