apr 30, 1970 - Nixon announces an invasion of Cambodia

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"Nixon – The President put it bluntly. “We live in an age of anarchy" on April 30, 1970
“We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Ever here in the US, great universities are being systematically destroyed… if, when the chips are down, the United States of America acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world”.

Nixon used that speech to announce an American and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, one of several measured he had undertaken to try to break the Vietnam military stalemate. But this expansion of the war set off new waves of domestic protest and, for the first time as a result, the loss of life: on May 4th, Ohio National Guardsmen shot four students dead at Kent State University. The nation itself, along with its universities, seemed about to come apart." (Gaddis 2006, p. 145-146)

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