The Marines versus Berkeley, California

Grow Some Balls in Berkeley

Hey, here's a good one. The city of Berkeley, California wants to kick the Marine recruiting station out of the city. So it recently designated a parking space directly in front of the Marine's recruiting station in the city to an antiwar group. The hope is to run the Marines out of town.

Good luck with that. Marines are men and women whose experiences are like those of Frank M. Beyea's as he described in Monk's War, Volume 2: Crossfire--A Marine Grunt in Vietnam (ISBN: 978-0-913337-66-0; 2007):

“I was having a hard time getting my breath back and all
hell had broken loose since the explosion. Three NVA
were coming at us down the trail with guns blazing, and
as I tried to get off my back and into a firing position, I
discovered that the entire stock of my M-14 had been
blown off at the narrow part of the grip just behind
the trigger. Nevertheless, I did manage to fire off a
short burst that got one of the NVA and that’s
when a round grazed my shoulder and knocked
me down once more.

“By this time the rest of the squad had caught up to the
fire fight and gave us some blistering cover fire that put
the other two NVA down in a hail of bullets.”

The city's mayor said the vote by the city council represented his constituents longstanding, vocal distaste for current military activity. Well, many of us (not enough in my mind) are upset about our lying leaders getting us into Iraq illegally, but that is not the fault of individual Marines or soldiers. It is the fault of the American public for not forcing the House of Representatives to impeach Bush and Cheney for their crimes. It is the fault of the American people for not forcing our government to pull out of Iraq...now. We have had plenty of opportunities to initiate the impeachments, the last being Representative Dennis Kucinich's bill in November 2007 to impeach the vice president. It was thrown into the House judiciary committee to rot.

Meanwhile, the city of Berkeley blames the Marines for current military activity! Come on! Grow some balls in Berkeley. Lead all Americans to put the blame where it belongs: on Bush and Cheney. Not on our fighting men and women.

I'll bet if Berkeley were under attack by a foreign invader, the people of Berkeley would be singing a different tune: The Marine Hymn.

I find this whole episode in Berkeley upsetting. It reminds me of my experience in December 1966 when, upon my discharge from the military, I was boarding a train at Grand Central Station in New York City and looking for a seat when a suit challenged me by asking how many babies I had killed. ---Copyright 2008 by Walter Haan, www.war-books.com