Repeating the mistakes of history is something America does very well and it’s happening again. President Donald Trump has sent the National Guard and the US Marines to “defend the city from invasion” from illegal immigrants and anyone else the president does not like.
Putting American military on the streets of America is a very bad thing. It is a clear sign of the breakdown of civil society, law and order. In many cases, it is the last act of a failed nation. Americans would be foolish to believe that is not a real possibility at this time.
In late 1970, I was a young US Marine at my first duty station at MCRD, attending electronics school. This Communications battalion later moved to Twenty Nine Palms, where the Marines currently deployed to the streets of Los Angeles are from. I was only there a short time when our platoon was ordered to report for “riot training”.
After our day of school or training, we were trained in crowd suppression, or riot control techniques. We were issued black helmets, riot shields and a riot ‘baton”, kind of a long billy club. This riot training was hugely unpopular with me and my fellow Marines. People in the military were already unpopular, after this, we might as well not even go off base.
At this time, everybody knew the War in Vietnam was a huge, costly mistake. Everyone wanted the war to end because it was ripping the country apart. President Richard Nixon would coninue the Vietnam war for years until forced to resign in scandal. Anti war protests increased among the civilian population as the hugely unpopular war continued.
I joined the Marines as a seventeen year old high school senior. I would have been drafted, probably into the Army and straight to Vietnam. I figured I’d have a better chance of survival with the Marines. I did not want to go to Vietnam. The war in Vietnam was wrong from start to finish.
Just a few weeks before I left for Marine boot camp, the Ohio National Guard murdered three innocent Kent State University college students. Kent State is close to where I grew up. I know people who went to school there and I had been there several times. Those students were right, the soldiers who killed them were wrong, there’s no two ways about it. And now me, a seventeen year old kid, leaving for boot camp to join the wrong side was a challenging part of my life.
On top of that, I had befriended a bunch of local surfers and I knew there was a very good chance that if there were any anti war protests, they would be there. I could not imagine beating up people that I knew personally. If I was not in the Marine Corps, I would be standing next to them.
I went to my commanding officer and told him that I would not assault any American citizens. I told him about Kent State and the local people I knew. I told him that I joined the Marines to defend the country, not beat up a bunch of unarmed civilians. If it meant being court martialed, which I fully expected, then so be it. The CO told me to get in line with everybody else in the platoon who had been in also requesting court martial over riot control. There was no further riot training.
There are Marines sleeping on the floor of some federal building in Los Angeles today. American troops are once again on American streets, where they absolutely should not be. They are probably having the same thoughts me and my fellow Marines were having more than fifty years ago. We refused to assault American citizens, we’ll see what happens this time around.