RIPPLE SALVO… #915… AT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ANTI-VIETNAM WAR PROTESTERS WENT TO WAR WITH THE CHICAGO POLICE. AND/OR VICE VERSA… Humble Host takes a brief look at one of the most violent episodes in American civil disobedience and suggests a refresher course on the condition of American society in September 1968 by viewing a few clips of the Anti-war Demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention, August 28, 1968. Operation Rolling Thunder–the bombing of North Vietnam– was a principal target of the demonstrators angst… Google it or try this:
NYT, 31-AUG-68: “BALANCING LIBERTY AND ORDER”… “A few hours after Vice President Humphrey condemned violence that had rocked Chicago’s streets, ‘whatever the source,’ and urged the nation to ‘resolve that never, never again shall we see what we have seen,‘ Chicago policemen swarmed onto the fifteenth floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel and clubbed supporters of Senator McCarthy they suspected of tossing ash trays and bottles from windows. Youngsters were pulled from their rooms–some from their beds–an beaten savagely with nightsticks. The spectacle of continued police brutality in Chicago, a brutality condoned by an insensitive mayor, stands in sharp contrast to the peaceful protests Senator McCarthy’s supporters held in New York and the reason and restraint this city’s police exercised. Protesters stunned the New York police by signing a hastily scratched petition thanking them for their handling of a demonstration that under the approach fostered by Mayor Daley could have become as bloody as those in Chicago.”… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day NINE HUNDRED FIFTEEN daily reflections on the war that divided our beloved country fifty years ago; and remembering the great men who did the fighting in the air over North Vietnam for better or worse… The Strategy of Gradual Defeat was followed to a “T”…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Thursday, 5 Thursday 1968…
THE WAR: Page 15: “FIGHTING RENEWS NEAR SAIGON–ENEMY DEATH TOLL IS 146–3 Helicopters And Jet Fighter Downed By Foe’s Fire–Nhatrang Is Shelled”… “…in two battles near Saigon, American and South Vietnamese riflemen wre reported to have killed 146 enemy troops. elsewhere, enemy gunners brought down three American helicopters and a jet bomber while a United States destroyer sank 34 supply boats along the North Vietnamese coast… Before dawn, the enemy struck twice at the coastal city of Nhatrang with barrages of mortar an recoilless-rifle fire that killed one policeman and wounded 38 other persons, including 21 South Vietnamese civilians… the heaviest fighting took place 58 miles west-northwest of Saigon, where South Vietnamese rangers reported killing 105 enemy troops. American planes supported the South Vietnamese troops… One of the helicopters that crashed had been hovering over a bomb crater–the only clearing in a dense jungle about 70 miles northwest of Saigon–for more than an hour while crew members recovered the pilot and co-pilot of an Air Force F-4 that had been shot down earlier…two of the helo crew were trying to lift the pilot of the jet into the helo when a spray of bullets ripped into the tail rotor and smashed the controls. The helo was badly damaged but the men were not injured. Two light observation helos swooped in to retrieve the jet crewmen–both of whom were injured– and an Air Force helo later picked up the crew of the downed helo.”….
PEACE TALKS: Page 1: “HANOI ASSERTS U.S. REPRESSES CRITICS–Thuy Derides Both Parties–Harriman Criticizes View”… “North Vietnam, citing the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, asserted today that the United States had had to ‘resort to savage repression’ of Americans opposed to the Vietnam war. Xuan Thuy, Hanoi’s chief delegate, concentrated on American politics at the 20th session of the Paris talks. He considered the platforms and the candidates of the two major parties and had nothing good to say about them. W. Averell Harriman, for the United States, warned the North Vietnamese delegation once more against misunderstanding American politics–or the determination of the United States to find an ‘honorable peace’ in Vietnam”…
Page 1: “ELECTION REFORM ASKED IN CONGRESS S IT RECONVENES–Political Convention System Criticized After Violence In Chicago Stirs Debate–Legislation Is Held Up Action On Fortas Is Slated When Senate Committee Fails to Get Quorum”… Page 1: “LIBERAL PLATFORM ASKS BOMBING END–State Party Leaders Adopt Common List Of Electors With Democrats Here”… Page 1: “VIOLENCE PANEL TO STUDY CHICAGO DISORDERS”… Page 1: “DEMOCRATIC LEADERS PESSIMISTIC DESPITE SIGNS OF RETURNING UNITY”… Page 1: “Off-Duty Police Here Join In Beating Black Panthers–Among 1500 attacking Militant Groups At Hearing In Brooklyn Courthouse–Mayor Orders An Investigation”…
Page 18: “FREEING OF PUEBLO REPORTED IMMINENT”… Page 1: “U.S. REASSESSING POLICIES IN WAKE OF PRAGUE PROGRESS —Security Panel Meets With Johnson For 2 1/2 Hours NATO Priority Weighted ( Historical Document Minutes of this meeting with RTR yesterday the 4th)… Page 34: “FORTAS SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE NOMINATION STALL AGAIN–No Quorum In Senate Panel”… Page 40: “POLITICS: AGNEW OPENS HIS CAMPAIGN–GOVERNOR BEGINS TOUR OF MIDWEST–Talks In Iowa And Wisconsin Of Law and Order”… Page 34: “MUSKIE BACK IN SENATE WITH MIXED FEELINGS–Senator Studies Election Plans–Love Senate Chamber But Terms Race A New Adventure”…
5 SEPTEMBER 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times: There was no coverage of air operations over the North… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) there were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 5 September 1968…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) FOR THE FOUR 5 SEPTEMBER DATES OF THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM…
1965, 1968… NONE…
1966… CAPITAN WILFRED KEESE ABBOTT, USAF…. (POW)... Captain Abbott was on Air Force exchange duty with the Navy’s VF-111 Sundowners on USS Oriskany and flying an F-8E when jumped and downed by MIG-17s near Ninh Binh…Refer to RTR post for 5-Sept-66 and Ripple Salvo #188 for more info… While you are at it, read Brown Bear Schaffert’s tale “MiGs Have An Extra Set of Eyes” and the flight of Randy “Iceman” Rime… It’s all in the RTR Archives…
1967… CAPTAIN DONALD WILLIAM DOWNING, USAF… (KIA)… and… 1LT PAUL DARWIN RAYMOND, USAF… (KIA)… See RTR for 5-Sept-67 (RS#548)…Both of these intrepid aviators remain where they fell in North Vietnam…Their status remains “presumed killed in action, body not recovered”… Among the many remembrances left for the fallen warriors at The Wall of Faces (Leave a Remembrance) is this from the grand daughter of COLONEL DOWNING…
“Grandfather… this is your grand daughter. I’m now a United States Seabee in the world’s greatest Navy. I’m deployed right now. And I know your watching over me. My angel keeps me and my brothers and sisters safe. At home or over seas. I love you though we never got to meet. Thank you so much for your sacrifice. You are not forgotten.”…
Colonel, you are remembered…
RIPPLE SALVO… #915… NYT, OpEd, 4-Sept-68, Page 46: I quote…
UNDERREACTING TO CHICAGO…
“Vice President Humphrey, after going far toward endorsing the brutal clubbing by police of young people demonstrating in the streets opf Chicago, has now come around to suggesting that perhaps some of the policemen ‘overreacted’ after all. He suggests that a school of law or journalism empanel a group of experts to study the violence, the demonstrators, the police and the role of the media. An impartial review is needed. It should not be associated with any candidate or conducted in the heat of a political campaign, and the quality of its members and thoroughness of its inquiry will determine the weight of its findings. A proper inquiry, however, could help assure that the Chicago-style violence millions witnessed on television will not occur again.
“So far there’s been a widespread underreaction to this police brutality. Public opinion polls taken immediately after the earliest street battles tended to support many Americans, frightened by the widespread unrest in the nation, to condone high-handed suppression of fundamental freedoms. The Vice President and others in his party who have spoken out on the issue have been quite right in insisting that laws must be obeyed, that mobs must be controlled, that potential assassins must be thwarted; but in the context of Chicago what’s also needed–and what’s been badly lacking–is firm support for the right of petition, protest and assembly and some restatement of a basic tenet of law enforcement that those charged with upholding the law must also observe the law.
“Rights need special protections in times of emotional excesses. If it is easy to defend freedom of speech, it is less easy to defend freedom of dissent, especially when dissent is flagrantly abused by some whip hurl obscenities–and even offal (and bags of urine at cops). The young people who flocked to Chicago undoubtedly included professional agitators determined to provoke a violent confrontation, but they also included many students and others genuinely concerned about the course their nation has been taking. Distinctions need to be made among them, and their over-all activities should recall what Whitman said about participatory government in “Democratic Vistas,’ that it supplies a training school for making first-class men and that it ‘is life’s gymnasium, not of good only, but of all.’
“There is a need now for the leaders of both parties to reach out and make contact with a considerable group of young people, some of them Yippies, most of them not, who feel alienated from the political process. Without any way compromising the maintenance of law and order in the purest meaning of that phrase, one way to do this would be to defend the right of peaceable assembly and protest and to condemn unequivocally all lawlessness, including that committed in the name of law. There must not be any underreaction to the ‘overreaction’ of Chicago’s club-happy police force, for it poses grave dangers to those values all Americans have long cherished.” End quote…
RTR quote for 5 Sept: MAYOR RICHARD J. DALEY, at Democratic National Convention: “The confrontation was not created by the police; the confrontation was created by the people who charged the police. Gentlemen, let’s get the thing straight, once and for all. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve order.”…
Lest we forget… Bear