World Is Watching the Protesters of 1968

Historically, God grants liberty and freedom to those of us who love it and are prepared to guard and defend it. Our success or failure will be measured by our courage, our judgment, our integrity and our dedication.

In the 1960s, the cream of America’s youth, the so-called best and brightest, lived by a self-proclaimed principle that ultimately brought about what they called a reawakening of America. Those protesting the Vietnam War failed to understand the difference between those making policy in the White House, those in the Pentagon executing presidential orders and those in uniform who were ordered into battle. Unfortunately, many of those same protesters are leaders in today’s Democratic Party.

For the first time since 1968, the Democrats will return to Chicago where they will nominate a president who himself was an active leader in overseas demonstrations against an American victory in Vietnam.

Eleven years ago, California state Sen. Tom Hayden, a delegate at this year’s convention, proposed honoring the protesters of the anti-Vietnam War movement with a memorial in Grant Park, the site of bloody confrontations with Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. According to Hayden, this memorial would “resurrect the idealism that brought people here in 1968.”

During that convention, a week of tension and sporadic violence erupted in full-scale rioting on Aug. 28 when police and National Guardsmen battled pro-Hanoi and anti-American demonstrators in downtown Chicago. Protesters threw rocks, bottles and bags filled with human excrement at the police and many carried the flags of the Viet Cong and communist North Vietnam. The prevailing message was in the chant, “The whole world is watching.”

Hayden, who was arrested and prosecuted as one of the Chicago Seven instigators, urged protesters to return home and create “one, two or 300 Chicagos” from one end of this country to the other, and said, “It may be that the era of organized, peaceful and orderly demonstrations is coming to an end and that other methods will be needed.”

In the end, police arrested 589 rioters during the week’s disturbances. More than 100 demonstrators and 119 police officers were injured, some seriously.

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley called the protesters “terrorists who had come to assault, harass and taunt the police into reacting before television cameras.”

Instead of honoring the police or the military men and women who served in uniform during that time, Chicago artist Virginio Ferrari is scheduled to unveil a sculpture honoring the memory of the war protesters the day before the opening of this year’s Democratic National Convention.

During the four days of the 1968 convention, 202 young Americans died in the jungles of Vietnam. Who will commemorate their lives, who will call out the names of those brave patriots who fought and died for freedom in a far-off land? Men like Army Sgt. Allen Edward Guy of Rock Island, Ill., one of 54 killed on Aug. 26, 1968. Who will remember Marine Lance Cpl. Peter Frank Comacho Jr., from Santa Ana, Calif.--my home district--one of 50 killed on Aug. 27? Who will recall the life of Air Force Tech. Sgt. Elbert Austin Phillips of Huntsville, Ala., one of 44 killed on Aug. 28? And finally, who will commemorate the life of Navy hospitalman John Byron Smith of Butler, Ind., one of 54 men killed 28 years to the day that William Jefferson Clinton will accept his party’s renomination for the presidency?

For more than 220 years, Americans have been called upon by their nation to serve in uniform and defend and protect the sacred traditions of liberty and freedom. To this day, most Vietnam veterans don’t describe themselves as heroes, but idealists, feeling that it was their role as defenders of freedom that helped bring about the demise of communism and our ultimate victory in the Cold War.

Bob Dole said it best: “In Vietnam, the long gray line did not fail us, we failed it. The American soldier was not made for the casual and arrogant treatment he suffered there, where he was committed without clear purpose or resolve, bound by the rules that prevented victory and kept waiting in the valley of the shadow of death for 10 years while the nation debated the undebatable question of his honor.”

Bill Clinton and his radical left-leaning cronies demonstrated their loathing for our military, our veterans and the principles of freedom in Chicago 28 years ago. That these same radicals hope to unveil a monument to commemorate their actions that week clearly reveals their contempt for the ideals and sacrifices made by American men and women who served their country during the Vietnam War.

Now, as then, the whole world will be watching.