See you in Gittmo?
Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 05:39:43 PM PDT
This is a follow-up to a diary I wrote and submited yesterday. The following is from Wikipedia on the protesting during the Vietnam war.
Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war began slowly and in small numbers in 1964 on various college campuses in the U.S. This happened during a time of unprecedented student activism reinforced in numbers by the demographically significant baby boomers, but grew to include a wide and varied cross-section of Americans from all walks of life. The growing opposition to the Vietnam war was also partlt attributed to greater access to uncensored information compared with previous wars and extensive television media coverage of what,
ultimately, became America's longest combat war. Likewise, a system of conscription that provided exemptions and defermants more easily claimed by middle and upper class registrants - thus inducted disproportionate numbers of poor, working-class and minority registrants - drove much of the protest.
Thousands of young American men chose exile in Canada or Sweden rather than risk conscription. In order to gain an exemption or defermant many men obtained student defermants by attending college, though they would have to remain in college until their 26th birthday to be certain of avoiding the draft. Some got married, which remained an exemption troughout the war.
Kent State - 1969-1970
Lead up to the shooting
In November 1969 the My Lai Massacre was exposed, promting widespead outrage around the world and leading to reduced public support for the war. In addition, the following month saw the first draft lottery instituted since WWII. Since the war had appeared to be winding down throughout 1969, a new invasion into Cambodia angered many people who felt it only exacerbated the conflict.
Many young people, including college students, were concerned about the risk of being drafted, and the expansion of the war into another country appeared to increase that risk. Across the country, campuses erupted in protests in what Time magazine called " a nation-wide student strike."
The shootings led to protests on college campuses throughout the U.S., causing hundreds of campuses to close because of both violent and non-violent demonstrations. In particular, the Kent State campus remained closed for six weeks. Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington D.C. against the war. Shortly after the shootings took place, the Urban Institute conducted a national study that concluded the Kent State shooting was the single factor causing the onlynationwide student strike in history - over 4 million students protested and over 900 colleges and universities closed during the strikes.
The followng is from me white is black.
Sure students protested from around 1964 on, but at that time the protests were mostly on moral grounds of the war being unjust. But when Richard Nixon announced expasion of the war to include Cambodia, in 1969, and a lottery draft was instituted and college students knew their defermants were no longer effective, the students at Kent State were going to have a protest against the war, when four students were killed which sparked nationwide protesting by students on a scale never seen before in America. Students then became more violent and angery in their protesting.
Now days there is virtually no protesting of the war in Iraq and the Bush admin.'s policies. There is minimal media coverage of the war, and what there is, is censored. There are no pictures of flag draped coffins comming home. And there is no draft as yet to spark protesting here in America.
Rumsfeld and Cheney aren't stupid, a little crazy and dangerous, but they know the effects of uncensored media coverage on the public, and that instituting a draft would spark protesting and demonstrations. They learned the lessons of Vietnam well, and what not to do this time around with the war in Iraq.
When a draft is instituted, and it will be soon, will the students of America start protesting when the working-class, poor and minorities are drafted into service first, or are they going to wait until they start getting drafted? It will be interesting to see what happens. Either way a draft will start more serious protesting. And that was the point I was trying to make in my diary, " There are only losers now," whether my point was clear or not. And protesting is what the American people, and students, should have been doing long ago.
We have, as of yesterday, lost our Habeas Corpus rights and it seems that people either didn't understand what the implications would be once they were lost to us or maybe they just don't care. Now Bush and Rumsfeld have the power to put in prison, without charges, any U.S. citizen they deem is a danger or threat to the U.S., for as long as they want to, without trial and including the use of torture.
Just as Hitler and the Nazis didn't allow free speech, which created fear and paranoia, and people turning in other people just for their thoughts and opinions, now Bush and Rumsfeld has the power and fear factor going for them and their agenda. Could it be the same agenda both of Bush's grandfathers had in mind when they supported the Nazis? It's too late to protest it now. Are todays students going to wait until it will be considered a traitorist act to protest or do something now?
May God help us, because the American people won't help themselves.
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