Anti-War Then (Fixed Bayonet)

Thank you for the highest of all ratings. John

John, a while back you mentioned the possibility that we might have both been in the Berkeley area at the same time. Well indeed this photograph proves you were there and I have a hazy recollection of the People's Park episode (if you clearly remember the 60s you were probably not there). Actually, the events are pretty clear even today because of what happened to me personally and the fact that I was not stoned on anything. It was finals week in May, 1969 (I attended UCB that spring to pick up few classes that weren't available at UC Davis). I was studying for a biochemistry final when my roommate came crashing through the door screaming something about a cyclone fence, Power to the People Park and a noon-time rally at Sproul Plaza. Looking for any excuse to take a break I said we ought to go check out the rally since it was only a few blocks away.

 

The crowd at Sproul was pretty agitated and several of the speakers seemed intent on really stirring things up. As it turned out, it was the "perfect storm" for conjuring up a riot. One of the speakers suggested moving over to the park to continue the protest at the site of the blasphemy. Apparently, our current Chancellor had gone back on the "no intervention" promise he had made to the organizers of the park refurbishing effort and had the Highway Patrol (how the hell did they get involved?) throw the interlopers out and erect a fence around the park. That act had obviously pissed off more than a few people. That day ended with me going back to the old biochemistry books and my roommate and about 2000 other people getting their butts kicked by "law enforcement" personnel. Thank God for my commitment to biochemistry.

 

The story ends on Memorial Day that same year. After, Bloody Thursday, the National Guard was posted around the park (in a similar fashion to the guardsmen pictured in your classic photograph) and the People Park Liberation Committee (a communist front, no doubt about it) was planning a protest at the park for Memorial Day. My roommate, who was pretty put out about his treatment on May 15th talked me into going to the protest. I agreed, but only if we kept a safe distance away on the hill near, I think, Haste street. Besides, maybe Ronald (Reagan) would show up and make some sort of patriotic, nostalgic speech (fat chance). Anyway, when we got to our observation spot, what did we see? Daisies. Millions of Daisies. Everybody had daisies, the protestors, the police, the onlookers, everybody. And then a small plane flying a banner passed overhead and about 30,000 eyes looked upward and read: Let a Thousand Parks Bloom.

 

And, I said to nobody in particular, "maybe I am stoned."

 

 

I forgot to add that I was not part of the crowd in your photograph, but my brother most likely was.

I had little idea of the 'power' of this photograph, Doug, and have simply been overwhelmed by the response to it -- I long ago took the same attitude as my editors who dismissed it as being 'trite' and unworthy as 'staged' although it was not exactly -- the students are closer to the rifleman than they appear to be because it's taken with a 28 mm lens.

 

Why not take this photo in Photoshop, use navigator to blow it up, and find your brother and circle him, and make an arrow and send it back to me -- I'd like to see if he's so handsome as you and bears resemblance to your son -- who looks just like you ; -))

 

[i didn't overlook your previous, very long and thoughtful comment -- probably more on that later -- jc]

Great capture! Regards!

John, when I see pictures of yours like this it does make me wonder, as you often mention, what would have happened if you had taken the route as photojournalist. You have the talent and you write well. That's why I'd love you to comment on the work of Philip Jones Griffiths whom I met recently and is in my opinion the man who took the most poignant images of the Viet Nam war.

The sixties were late getting to the South:

 

I have been in this situation, having been gassed for for the first time in May, 1971 at the University of Florida. It was actually a demonstration by African-American students against the low number of African-American students at that university. They "took over" the administration building (a very peaceful march-in, I think) and were expelled from the university as a result, leaving the place with even fewer of them. The president, Stephen C. O'Connell, had no toleration for protestors. The coliseum there is named for him now.

 

The day of the demonstration, a few in the crowd got too close, and a policeman (not a guardsman, but dressed in similar fashion) panicked and fired a cannister into the crowd. The gas wafted back toward the police, who did not have their masks on, and the police scattered, after which the arrested students escaped temporarily from the school buses that the police had put them on. I am told that the gas was sucked into the air intake for several buildings and that secretaries, etc. went flooding into the streets. I was too busy outrunning two cops through an adjacent building to see.

 

This reminds me more of Kent State, which I saw on television on May 4, 1970, after which I went out and marched in my first ever demonstration at Furman University, then a Baptist school in South Carolina.

 

My last anti-war demonstration was at UF again in the spring of 1972 after Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor. Redneck sheriffs were brought in, Pinkertons were in every window of the administration building, a police helicopter scared us to death with a light from above, and the cops moved in in a pincers movement behind a "tank" that was a riot control vehicle brought up from Lauderdale that spewed out pepper gas cannisters.

 

The police swept the streets clean twice, but on the second pass some of the more radical students had gone to the tops of buildings and threw rocks and bricks down on the phalanx.

 

Ah, the nostalgia. . . .

 

Thanks for the memories, John, and for the truly excellent work. This one says it about as well as any that I have seen. Those students sure look dangerous, yessirree, no doubt about that.

 

--Lannie

I'm glad this photo has touched you and brought back such memories.

 

However, the Guardsman did have some reason to 'be prepared' as students heretofore had been violent and this followed a time when police had swept the U.C. Berkeley campus, chasing protestors all over the place, beating some, arresting others and sending tear gas and pepper gas all over the place -- it was quite a sight; one I was then familiar with. I had been there again 'off duty' from my duties as a reporter for Associated Press. I did cover the official graduation held not long after, for all of AP, but felt incompetent to do so, and got considerable help from a student journalist who later became a very capable reporter.

 

John (Crosley)

Thank you, John. I should likewise qualify my remarks by adding that the protest that I referred to above at the University of Florida in 1972 led to a number of casualties, most of them policemen.

 

Even so, given the display of force manifested by the authorities that May afternoon and evening, I am not surprised that certain excesses did occur in the name of "peace." When one faces an intractable AND CONTINUING abuse of power, it is sometimes difficult to remain true to the maxim of Martin Luther King, Jr., that "The means must be as pure as the ends."

 

--Lannie

I note the quote from Martin Luther King. He didn't feel that way at all times. The 25-year-old pastor at first had his house surrounded by his own gunmen. It was the influence of the charismatic (and quite openly gay) Bayard Rustin who helped convince King to follow the path of nonviolence.

 

(Rustin's effectiveness as a leader was compromised when he was denounced in Congress for an indiscretion, having previously been picked up with two other men in California in the back seat of a car, all homosexuals, on a charge of sex perversion, and that publicity led to a rift with Dr. King, which healed somewhat when it came time for the giant Civil Rights March on Washington, which Rustin organized, all nonviolent and very, very peaceful and which helped the cause of Civil Rights immensely by turning the attention of Congress and the political parties to an issue they both had hoped to ignore.

 

(sorry about this history digest -- it just seemed appropriate in this context -- discussion and issue of nonviolence.)

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I have heard of only One who was reputed to have given up the right of self-defense without qualification. The rest of us are bundles of defensiveness--preparations for aggression in disguise.

 

Giving up the right of self-defense in all forms: aye, there is a radical thought.

 

--Lannie

No more 'radical' than Ghandi, whose ideas were passed on to Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King. It was the whole idea behind the giant Civil Rights March on Washington, which was very effective (Martin Luther King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech there, and it was a transforming event in American history, not just the Civil Rights movement).

 

Regards,

 

John

Thanks, John. I found out rather belatedly while writing _Conscientious Objections_ in the late 80s and early 90s that Ghandi said that he got his ethical ideas from Jesus of Nazareth while studying in Britain--apparently without buying into the whole Christian bag.

 

King claimed to have gotten his method from Gandhi and his inspiration from Christ.

 

I don't know. I am just glad that such people existed, even if they did not live very long. I turned sixty this spring, which proves my own failure as a pacifist. If I had had any real impact, someone would have shot me a long time ago.

 

Having had such insignificant impact with words, I am intrigued by you guys who have done it so much more powerfully with images, although images don't always speak for themselves.

 

I think that this one does.

 

--Lannie

Thanks again for the nice compliment. I am glad this photo evokes such meaning, as well as the commentary, I think. You don't have to die to be a 'success' in your endeavours; martyrdom in and of itself is not a virtue, without more.

 

Not everyone can be a charismatic hero; sometimes it's the little things, voting, being politically active, discouraging rascists and rascist actions, etc., that can be heroic but in small ways, and that have meaning.

 

Just think back, as I have done, to people like my barber who cut my hair when I was a kid. He was on the surface a nice, kind man. But his barbershop was full of girlie magazines as was the norm at that time, and the jokes were always about 'this Nigger says . . . " (horribly rascist) and in relation to women generally centered on accusing Marilyn Monroe of being sexually promiscuous ('What did Marilyn Monroe do to the put a satellite in orbit?', etc.) I cringed even as a young kid but my father forced me to go there, as he had a business relationship with the barber. But as I grew up, I boycotted such people and in every way (especially when I practiced law) I strongly discouraged rascism, sexism, (and would not further rascist and/or sexist clients' goals) and other leftover evils, and I think I have helped make a difference.

 

About one-quarter to one-third of my practice of law was pro bono publico (unpaid for poor people). I represented the disabled who were denied their benefits from Social Security and others . . . often for charity and without expectation of fees.

 

Even in university, I spent time tutoring in Harlem, all at great danger personally. The youths I tutored were so isolated in the ghetto, they often insiste on putting their hands on my face, arms and other uncovered parts to see if 'white skin feels different' because they never even had seen a white person.

 

Lack of an arrest or even public acclaim only relates to the KNOWN legacy you leave behind; your true legacy is something that's in your heart.

 

(I have also tried to spread wealth/health to disabled U.S. citizens/residents as well as citizens/residents of the former Communist Countries whenever I could, that has been substantial at times, and I have further such plans, but I don't trumpet it.

 

John

I have a strange fascination with "war photography" (particularly James Nachtwey's work). This is a fine example of a well composed shot with great point of view and DOF, but most importantly, it's a very effective story teller, especially if you zoom in using the computer and look at the facial expressions in the crowd. Some look worn out and tired, some look eager and concerned. Nice work.

The ultimate irony -- which you didn't mention because probably it's too obvious -- is that none in the crowd looks hostile enough to warrant this soldier's wearing a gas mask and bearing a fixed bayonet, right?

 

That's really what makes this photo -- its irony.

 

The National Guard was reduced here in this photo to a position of absurdity for its 'forced' position of armed authority in opposition to the balloon-carrying celebrants of 'free speech and assembly' who that day were entirely peaceful.

 

They got their message through the device of this photo and others like it, employing that irony which helped belittle the hostile response to their message.

 

John (who didn't take sides, particularly, but who knows an irony when he sees one)

My first job out of college was in a factory in east Ohio in 1985. My employer had me take an evening computer course at Kent State that summer. Many times I walked through the campus.

 

I opened up another Google to see if former Governor James Rhodes was still breathing. He isn't, so it is God's problem now.

 

The photo looks like what I imagined Berkely, Kent, and New Haven to be like. The wide angle worked very well. There is not much separation between the rifle and the people in the background, but I don't think that anyone was in the mood for studio photo ops that day. :)

The protestors, many of them students, others just career leftists, got the better of the National Guard and the Regents of the University of California system by just dressing up nicely, with balloons, and sitting down, Ghandi-style, after weeks of sometimes violent protests.

 

And there the National Guard was left, holding fixed bayonets and donning gas masks against this peaceful crowd, probably not one of whom had a gas mask or a riot helmet, then standard gear when a riot was expected.

 

The 'spin' was 'spun' to perfection by the protestors, leaving in their wake this God-awful example of what happens when a military person such as their Guard commander, misreads a situation and fails to adapt.

 

This photo is as much a study in military failure to read a scene, as anything -- with poor communication in the military, poor processing of information and suspicious view of the data that they viewed.

 

Some National Guardsmen stood there, gas masks donned, tears in their eyes.

 

They felt more at home with the students than their rifles, but stood their ground to a one. If asked to fire, I doubt if one would have fired.

 

John (Crosley)

John

I've been meaning to leave a comment on this photo for a long time. There is only one word that fits for me and it is "fantastic". I was a student at Kent State University in "71" This could be there and as a matter of fact the first time I saw this I thought it was. "Four Dead in Ohio" One of my roommate's brothers was shot but he still around today. This makes me go back and pull out my proof sheets from those days. What I need is a scanner that will do negatives. I was just reading that Neil Young is releasing a protest CD. How come younger folks are so ambivalent and an old fart like him (60 plus) speaks out. Sign of the times I guess.

Jim

That 'old fart' Neil Young has produced a stunning anti-war album, and among the best is a song set to the Beatles' tune with the words 'I am the Walrus' replaced by Bush's words 'I am the decider, koo, koo, ka choo.'

 

Perhaps your lament about the activism of the 60s and early 70s (this was taken in '69) is that there truly was an ideological left then, some of it truly Communist inspired, and in the meantime Communism has taken a fatal plunge in Eastern Europe with Russia's Gorbachev officially abidicating and the Soviet Union disintegrating on Christmas (eve) 1991.

 

It just fell apart.

 

Dead.

 

Then came the Russian 'cowboy' -- the Mafia, and now Putin is cleaning them up, but usurping power.

 

But then the Communists were trying to export their revolution or at least looked charitably on our 'leftists' as did Castro, and there was a sort of studied mutuality and reciprocity of feeling, even if not real actual support.

 

Bush on the other hand is the personification of 'I've got mine' and 'to heck with you' which pervades our society -- especially the Republicrats, and 'to heck with the greater good -- that's for the next guy' (and the next generation to sort out) 'We take care of our friends and to heck with anybody else -- as long as we stay in power'

 

Watch at the end of his presidency -- especially if Rove is indicated through the prosecutor -- as some expect is the reason for his 'stepping down' -- for a wave of pardons of all Bush's staff, including Lewis 'Scooter' Libby and numerous others -- maybe Bush will pardon himself (entirely permissible).

 

And, if the Democrats get enough power in the house, they will vote articles of impeachment and Nancy Pelosi, new speaker, would be third in line for the Presidency, and successful removal of Bush and Cheney from office would place Pelosi third in line of succession (imagine President Pelosi, of San Francisco . . . .).

 

Things work differently these days and the Democrats (and many Republicans) have given Bush enough rope to hang himself and he's been doing a pretty good job with that rope; and now we can see the results in his public opinion polls.

 

Even Diebold voting machines can't be rigged to steal enough votes to swing the next election, I think, (especially if people vote absentee, keeping a record of their votes which are not electronic, particularly in places like Ohio).

 

In California, they're already secretly throwing people off the voting rolls for not having their voting name exactly matching their driver's license name letter for letter and the state's not telling the voters about it.

 

When they get to the polls, they'll be disenfranchised, due to those bureaucratic shenanigans by a Republican secretary of state whose main role is to run (rig) elections -- or so it appears.

 

And I'm a registered Republican. (Go figure).

 

People are disenchanted.

 

I recently mentioned to an older man, in his late '60s, at Bryce Canyon National Park who asked me what kind of photos I took, and I answered 'from news to nudes' and he replied, 'well, if you take them kind of photos (nudes) I couldn't guarantee your safety here, it's not that I'm threatening you or that you're unsafe, no hear me, but people here are kind of conservative. I wouldn't go around telling people that you take nude photographs.'

 

I protested that my nudes were largely 'art' nudes and semi-nudes at that and not pornography but even pornography is legal, but he insisted 'I can't guarantee your safety,' and told me how he was trying to drive gay(ness) out of Southern Idaho (which like Utah is heavily Mormon -- maybe even more Mormon than Utah.

 

I shuddered and resolved never to open my mouth at a truck stop or a cafe in Utah and to reply 'landscapes' if ever asked what kind of photos I took in unfamiliar parts of America again.

 

After all, these people want the freedom to carry arms, and most have guns close at hand.

 

(They still think the Commies are coming, I think, or worse, the breakaway fundamentalist polygamists are fighting the feds, with their leader, Jeffs, on the lam for arranging 'sex' for a polygamist 'spiritual union' between a 50-year-old and an under-age minor -- purported spirutual polygamist bride. (polygamist marriage was outlawed as the price of Utah's joining the union in about 1890.

 

It seems the older men get the young women and drive away the young men the women might be attracted to (Lost Boys, they're called).

 

The fundamentalist, breakaway Mormans refuse to pay property taxes and are fixing to confront the court-appointed trustee who has $110 million set aside for payment of 'trust' property belonging to the 'Fundamentalist' Mormon Church which owns their houses, over who is to pay property taxes.

 

He gets followed everywhere, and so do law enforcement personnel who are chasing Jeffs in polygamist territory (Southern Utah -- not far from Bryce Canyon and parts of Arizona.

 

That's the latest news from the heartland (it's disheartening, isn't it?)

 

The electoral process may really work if the anti-Neocon vote is big enough (and enough Republicans just stay home, as they're bound to do and threaten to do, as they tell Rush Limbaugh, and the Democrats vote for their party members.

 

And it is not impossible that within two years it will be President Pelosi.

 

I don't think she's a serial liar who vets everything she says with someone like Karl Rove. (Aside: I met a woman who was a very close schoolmate with Rove and an apparent object of his affection who told me some personal stuff about him that made my toes curl, but I can't repeat because I can't verify.).

 

Even the guy who invented the idea of NeoCons has renounced it as a huge failure and disavowed it.

 

But we still now have those giant military bases in Iraq, and itsn't that what the war was about after all -- projecting American influence into the Middle East for when the House of Saud fell?

 

After all, recent records released show that the majority or plurality of those in Guantanamo are Saudis, who have been our 'best friends' who financed our previous Iraqi war and who promote Wahabi Islam teachings in their schools? I concede that I recently met a Middle East-based American whoh says the Saudis are purging Wahabi teachings from their schools now, but is it true?

 

You touched a political nerve (and I'm not radically anything --- except for perhaps the truth, a rare commodity these days).

 

John (Crosley) (rambling a little)

This is (and has been since it was posted) my most-viewed photo. For a long time it also was my most-viewed 'image'.

 

The two terms are separate, as an image is a depiction and one depiction can have both a color and a black and white 'image' A 'image' can be split into a 'color photo' and a 'B&W photo'.

 

Another photo, 'Billboard and Man' elsewhere in this folder, and in my 'single photo, color folder, taken recently, in Bangkok, Thailand, as a black and white photo has significantly smaller 'views' than this photo either as a color photo or a B&W photo, but together the two --color and B&W 'images' comprise my most-viewed 'image' by just a hair, though it is not an 'icon' as is this photo and that photo requires more 'intelligence', I think, to understand and less knowledge of history or nostalgia (or perhaps curiosity about history) to understand, than this particular photo, which has turned out to have lasting historical significance.

 

Kind of like those photos one sees on a restaurant depicting 'old times' -- some of which are simply 'great' at capturing a moment and freezing it in history.

 

Paris was famous for its May, 1968 student uprisings in which students tore up the paving stones from the streets in general protest, more particularly against the 'establishment' and against the Vietnamese war, but the real protesting that had significance was on U.S. campuses at places like Columbia where i went to school (the first student riots which robbed me of my diploma - first time around), at Berkeley, here, a year later, and previous to this, across the San Francisco Bay, at San Francisco State Collge -- now University), where S.I. Hayakawa, famously 'stood off' the protestors, and where I once came across a homemade pipe bomb (with some others -- and it was 'live' and big enough to do significant damage, including kill me.)

 

Why was this significant and the Paris riots not?

 

Because these riots stopped the war and toward that end the Paris riots were self-flagellation or mere 'wankin' with nothing more as a goal than tearing up the streets and making noise and thunder because no French student or leftist could have any effect on American politics, whether they knew it or not, whereas the American leftists and students actually brought down the government of Lyndon Baines Johnson (with a big thud and to much applause, especially since it later was found and admitted that the 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident which was the reason for the U.S. to enter the Vietnames War never actually happened -- it was a ruse--a complete fabrication.

 

Defense Secretry McNamara at the time, has continually later apologized for the U.S.'s conduct of the war and countless unnecessary deaths.

 

Now people are strongly examining the document called 'The Document for a New American Century' (errata -- this should be Project for a New American Century in PDF format which requires Adobe Reader, a free download, and the contents of which is linked here (pay particular note to page 51):

 

http://www.raytal.com/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

 

This is signed by neocon Republicans, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perl, (Rice subscribes to it= and numerous others in the Bush Administration, present and-or former members) and is the basic policy document which has driven the Bush Administration, almost word for word.ç

This document was put together by neoconservative Republicans before running the White House -- Cheney, Rumsfield, Condaleeza Rice, and a whole bunch of them, which says that in order for America to claim its new 'world dominance' in the "New American Century" must have a 'second Pearl Harbor' -- never denied, and undeniably published before Bush won the presidency; í´¿s still available on the Internet - just now being discovered by the mainstream press, though I first read it 6 years ago, but not buried with other garbage so it?s harder to find. (exact words 'second Pearl Harbor -- Google it yourself and read it, if you don?t like my link. Enter the search term ?PNAC?

 

And, Bush, a cabinet member has written, on first being sworn into office, made it one of his first priorities, to figure out a way to 'invade Iraq' well before 9-11, and even bragged to his biographer -- a friend, before he was sworn into the Presidency or even elected, that if elected, he wanted to be a 'war president' because those presidents were remembered by history (and got their way).

 

Humnh. . . .

 

In 1968 and 1969, people took to the streets.

 

Now they complain about high gas prices for their SUVs.

 

They get what they deserve.

 

John (Crosley)

Sometime in the last few days, this photo went over 100,000 views to become the highest-viewed single photo in my portfolio and the first to exceed 100,000 views.

 

Another photo, however, is my highest-viewed 'image' and it's entirely idiosyncratic and perhaps better 'art' because that photo does not 'stand for' anything and stands (or falls) on the moment -- its photographic merit, rather than being an 'icon' for an era, as this photo.

 

That other photo, my highest viewed 'IMAGE', is also found in this folder as well as my premier color folder -- a color and B&W image of a Thai and/or Chinese man in a Bangkok alleyway next to a poster -- the photo shows two men's faces in analogous positions, similar lighting and an exuberant/laughing look on each man's face but one is on a poster, the other on a real man beneath - a real find/ one image is in color and one is in black and white for two quite different takes on the same scene.

 

This photo, on the other hand, was not only taken by me, but by a number of others (or at least similar photos). I may be the only one to have taken a photo showing the seated protesting students through his eyepiece.

 

Enormous thanks to all viewers of this photo, that image, and all my other photos.

 

You're always welcome to mark this or any other photo for your highest-rated gallery by rating it highly, so others can view it, and the same applies for any other photo that is rateable (not every photo now is rateable -- only those now for which critique has been requested).

 

John (Crosley)

Ok... I live this life. All my life I have. So up close the gas mask the helmet the silly gun etc... All of it! Then "FLASH BACK" take me back to 1969 and I was in Yakota Japan having guys knocking on my door telling me that my Dad was fallen (I was three). Hmmm shocking... no he walked out. Ok he was an F4 fighter pilot. He kept on flying (surprising... no). So... all my life I have lived this. My husband is in the Navy. We just left a base in Japan where they wore these silly suits (ok silly no... but the same YES!). ARMY/AIRFORCE Gas/Mask Military Readiness Secured and all that jazz! arghh So I don't mind telling you that I had a bit of post tramatic stress going back to Japan and seeing a culture that I tried to leave behind (leaving in 1971 hoping to never go back even if I was only 4 1/2). WHY? because exactly what you see here, what you captured I was seeing the JAPANESE do! Protesting against US being in Japan. Telling US to get out of Japan because we were there to fight agains Veitnam. I don't get into politics (I can't, I could but so many other people are so much more smarter than me and my live experiences are different and filled with emotion and no common sense).

 

 

What I DO know is that this picture is INRCREDIBLE for several so many reasons. First off is that you have got the line of that GUN in perfect line to the crowed and do you notice there is a VERY VERY sharp point to that gun. That is something that could KILL someone. (wow my tummy just dropped) This is an old gun and you sayed it BAYONET) did anyone else notice it? HELLO!! This is the kind of guy you shoot only a few times. Instead you push it into people like the CIVIL WAR. The next major thing is they plan on using the GAS or else he would not be wearing the GAS MASK. Now my husband could tell you that those GAS MASKS are not fun to wear and HOT. Now I do have a question... why is everyone holding up there arm? oh... it's the PEACE sign! AHA! so this is a peace thing... no big mess! But there are alot of people I know! I tried to magnify to really look at some people but the funny thing is everyone really looks the same... same blank face and they just seem the same. Jane Smith... John Doe! Weird! EXCEPT FOR... hmmm they are all WASPish... is that weird? hmmmm!!

ANYWAY... just wanted to bring this back up on my 7/7 list as people are looking at my profile right now ~ maybe they will see this! Maybe they will look again! Get you more hits! Who knows! Maybe more people will care! No matter what we think about ANY war we should car PERIOD! Regardless what we think about it we should care about the people who were and are there... politics are politcs VOTE ~ be educated/care there! PERIOD! Then complain ;) ~ thanks for sharing your OLD PHOTOS! ~ micki

This photo is evocative for so many reasons, and you have pointed out some significant ones.

 

In addition you have analyzed important aspects of this photo that may have seemed self-evident, but probably were not, and at least once put into words, they have great 'impact' if you'll pardon the expression.

 

In one way, re-looking at this photo, it's as though this guy is skewering the crowd -- if one just 'compresses' it in one's mind, and ignores the 'scale' of the various people -- kind of like a primitivist like painter Grandma Moses might have ignored scale -- miniature people being skewered like Sunday shashlik (b-b-cue with spicy sauce which is a mainstay where I'm staying now -- in the summer at least -- everyone swears by it).

 

You'd think this giant soldier were skewering the little people -- the 'peacenik' students (notice how I worked the Eastern European reference into that?

 

The anti-Communists succeeded in putting a 'nik' on the end of 'peace' to make a 'Communist' association with 'peace' and 'protest', kind of like sput 'nik' is a Communist word just as Yuri Gagarin not only was a Russian but a hero of the Soviet Union and a Communist (he also cracked up his plane and killed himself in a drunken spree when his Hero of the Soviet Union status allowed a guard to be cowed when, drunk, Gagarin commandeered a jet and 'took it for his last fatal spin.' (My Russian Assistant, Anya K. vehemently disputes, this, as she was brought up to admire Gagarin as a hero, though she was brought up mostly in post-Communist times. 'it's revisionist history,' she appears to seem be saying, but those who looked up the official records after the fall of Communism in 1991 really didn't have an axe to grind and were largely historians looking to unwrap the secrets of the Kremlin, famously called 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.? referring not only to the Kremlin and its secrets but to the entire Soviet Union which comprised nearly as much land mass as the US, Canada and China.

 

Ask any good Russian who their favorite hero is, and inevitably it will be Yuri Gagarin, just like if you ask any crowd to name a color, 94 per cent will name 'red' -- without even thinking. (Go try it; it's true, unless they know what you're up to).

 

Yuri Gagarin was the ultimate Communist hero, Sputnik was the ultimate Communist invention, and 'Peace-Nik' was the ultimate spin triumph of the American right wing war mongers (Cold Warriors) to brand the peace demonstrators with a Communist affiliation. (and there was was some real honest to gosh effort by Comintern and other Communist organizations to influence US opinion against the Viet Nam war, but it was relatively small and marginal, and hardly worth mentioning, even if they send some financing and leadership training for some US 'student' leaders/organizers.

 

The upwelling among the US residents was overwhelming largely because there was a DRAFT, a lesson the present Administration learned very well, and the reason one Democratic Congressman keeps asking for a draft, knowing full well if there were one, the Iraq war would end more than swiftly.

 

No draft, the budget for the war being 'off the books', the standard of living for the present unimpaired ('guns and butter', the old LBJ maxim) and nobody now really minds overmuch. Oh, they mind, but it's the NIMBY principle: Not in My Backyard: Until it hits home, nobody really cares. Until the body bag comes home with their son (or daughter) in it and the kid was only in high school yesterday and was a draftee, then EVERYBODY will care before the US projects its 'strategic influence' through another war. War should be declared very sparingly, and it should be declared, not left up to default -- by Congress's letting the president get us into one, then lamely saying 'OK, but be careful' and then funding anything that is asked for it, no matter how unaccountable or how outrageous . . . .

 

The piper of warmaking now must be paid and if not by our generation, by our children and grandchildren; but not until the present Administration manages to push their massive failure onto the next Administration -- saying (excusing themselves by 'explaining away' that) the 'surge' was delayed or not enough or did not come at all, or was not 'supported by the Civilians the government says are needed but are not forthcoming'. (NY Times today -- Saturday 2-10/07 -- I'm some times zones ahead) and so forth.

 

It'll be like the Viet Nam war and they've even brought in that grizzled old canard Kissinger to help them slip slide away -- his solution to Viet Nam was bomb Cambodia (illegally, and increase US troop strength) before finally giving up in the US's first war failure ever.

 

Now, we'll do it again, with Kissinger's guidance, only in Iraq, but only after the Bush Administration has managed to slip away into the night, claiming that 'if only their 'correct' strategies had been followed . . . but sadly their 'correct' strategies they will claim will be screwed up by the following Administration . . . . (mark my words)

 

(Let me know in two years or three if I'm totally wrong; I'm not afraid to face the truth . . . and I hope others will mark this time and prognostication down. I'll admit failure if we 'win' the war in Iraq. Just someone tell me what 'winning' actually is comprised of, please, as no one has defined it, or it has defined to death, first as one thing, then another; it suffers from definition creep.

 

Let me know if I'm totally wrong, or if Bush simply says 'My policies were a failure from start to finish, predicated on a false premise, and were doomed to failure, or even as little as 'we screwed up totally or even marginally and IT WAS ALL MY FAULT -- 'THE BUCK STOPS HERE'

 

I'll be publicly eating my Nikon D2Xs, and Nikkor 70~200 E.D., V.R. lens if the latter 'buck stops here - failure' quote is ever uttered by the present Commander in Chief before or soon after he exits office.

 

LBJ was in ways a great president -- he engineered the Civil Rights movement which split the Democratic party, alienating it from the Dixiecrats which dominated the Southern Wing of the Democratic party but which were primarily responsible for keeping control of the southern political machine which depended in part on maintaining control of the southern wing of the Democratic party which depended strongly on maintaining segregation with its 'Jim Crow' laws and the continuing 'separate but equal' canard, in spite of the US Supreme Court's 'Brown vs. Board of Education' (1954) decision, but which never had been implemented in the South in much of a significant way.

 

LBJ had the courage for a very selfish man to do what was right for his country in spite of his huge allegiance to money, power, greed, his own hubris and his party. His decision, he correctly prognosticated, would tear apart his party and hand it to the Republicans, and he did it anyway for the good of the country.

 

In many ways a courageous act from a most uncourageous man.

 

Does the present President have that courage?

 

LBJ took Kissinger's slow way out of Viet Nam and John Kerry famously asked 'who wants to be the last man to die for an unjust war?'

 

Well, unjust or not, the Vietnamese War end was slow in coming.

 

A former co-worker of mine, Frank Snep III (nicknamed 'Trey' for the III in his name), a later CIA operative who probably was recruited by a former boss of mine to the CIA from his job as an assistant to that Vice President of Columbia University, famously wrote of the US's failure to support our many 'friendly' and 'supportive' Vietnamese allies and friends, and how we essentially cut them loose in the face of the Communists when we retreated.

 

Those who stuck their heads out for our government's interests were sacrificed if they weren't US citizens, and Mr. Snep wrote about it in shame, but Mr. Snep got his own book profits taken from him by the U.S. Supreme Court for failing to clear his manuscript with the CIA in advance -- a matter of contract law only ('Indecent Interval' -- I think his book was named).

 

The Snep book revenues were sizable, too, but the ongoing matter kept the news before the public far longer than if the government had simply backed out or settled the matter -- probably a public relations mistake.

 

Mr. Snep, in fact, for a CIA operative, was for all appearances, a decent man (I remember him as such when I worked with him briefly in the Columbia Univ., vice president's office as a co-assistant to vice president H. Emerson.)

 

The CIA advertises itself as open to those who are open to 'moral ambiguity, and perhaps it bit off more than it could chew with Mr. Snep, exposing him to some bizarre and cowardly acts on the U.S.'s part.

 

In retrospect, a neighbor of mine had a son-in-law who was a high CIA official who never could admit his CIA allegiance, but his son (a friend) and his brother, both recounted it to me as did their aunt (mother-in-law) and I learned of violent encounters within the CIA about policy decisions and many times the moral quagmire that accompanied our nation's most famous spy den (there were others).

 

It seems now, however, the Bush Administration has turned to blaming the CIA for 'failures' though it seems to have manufactured its own 'intelligence' in the basement of the Pentagon using a guy named Douglas Pfyfe (spelling?) to 'interpret' or rewrite dubious 'intelligence' estimates for White House perusal and dissemination, (possibly illegally?) contradicting those of the CIA. Is this true? House and perhaps Senate hearings will reveal the truth or falsity of that.

 

If it is true, then the war in Iraq may have been started for nonsensical reasons, like the 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident which triggered the Viet Nam War finally was admitted by the US government never to have really happened in any significant way.

 

And Defense Secretary during the Viet Nam war, Robert McNam

As one who grew up and came of age in the Bay Area, I feel compelled to comment on such a fabulous and poignantly iconic image. This image demonstrates the ability to quantify a generation of popular opinion and dissension.

This in striking contrast to our current mega-corporate stranglehold on the media and the absolute lack of the modern media's war/anti-war coverage. Today's modern media conglomerates realize that this sort of imagery can be a publicity and marketing nightmare. Especially if the American people were ever really shown the harsh reality of their governments pursuit of control at the expense of the individual. In as much as the current media conglomerates omit coverage, so do the American people lack any involvement in their protest to our current government's policies and course of action. Considering the numbers, Americans currently object to our governments actions in the Middle East war (Iraq) at a rate of about 70/30, yet they couldn't be bothered to demonstrate their dissatisfaction in any tangible way. I'd say we've reached the ultimate apathetic status of comfortably numb...Ethnocentric and unconcerned if it isn't impacting our day to day lives except for perhaps the rising cost of Middle East oil on the price of our gasoline at the pumps! Just what are all those Middle Eastern countries doing with our oil underneath their deserts anyway? I apologize in advance for editorializing. Can't help myself when I'm confronted with an image that takes me back to a painful and troubling time that seemed to hold the promise of a better world and the idealism of positive possibilities! I think I just forgot that no matter how much things change they really stay the same.