Viktorthepirate wrote:Smitty-48 wrote:Viktorthepirate wrote:
I think if people are burning down the city, it needs to be stopped.
But all they did was start throwing rocks at the police, and then LAPD chief Bill Parker called them "the Viet Cong" and then unleashed a Brigade Conbat Team into Watts, who then treated it as a free fire zone and started lighting people up left and right on sight, so who really incited the civil disorder all the way to burning the place down? They lit the buildings on fire to limit the ability of a Brigade Combat Team set upon them to manuever, trying to give them more to deal with so they wouldn't be so freed up to blow people away at will.
Obviously my understanding of the Watts riots is inferior to yours.
OK, but in broad strokes, Los Angeles apartheid state, enforced by the LAPD, people in Watts had had enough, they got pissed off, some of them starting throwing some rocks at the police.
State of California's response; "Viet Cong!"; Brigade Combat Team; free fire zone, restore order at any cost.
Justified?
You're worried about some buildings being burnt down, when people are being lit up on sight without any discrimination?
If the House of Bourbon had been protected by the firepower of a modern US military, do you think they would have been dragged to the chopping block, or would the Fleur de Lis still be flying over Versailles today?