Monday Memories--Berkeley, whose side are you on?
I'm a California ex-pat, according to the Bear Flag League bloggers (see my links). Sometimes they invite me for blogging lunch, but I have to say no, living in central Ohio. My dad was stationed in California during WWII before being shipped out. He was a Marine. Mom and my aunt Muriel packed us all into the car and away we went, driving from northern Illinois to Alameda, California in 1944. Things didn't look good for the war effort towards the end. The war easily could have gone the other way; our losses were huge. We probably lost more men in training accidents than we've lost since 2003 in Iraq. But Baby boomlets don't read history--probably isn't required in public schools of California. Now the city of Berkeley wants to
chase out the Marines. A librarian (surprise!) has called it a knee jerk reaction. No, lady, it isn't. Your state is huge and your economy larger than that of many countries. Your entertainment industry has virtually ruined our culture, and now you want to sabotage more of it. We are the UNITED STATES, and you're undercutting our government and military. Shame, shame, shame. How did California accumulate so many kooks? We've got a lot of family living in Southern Cal, and not a one of them or their friends are weird. But then, none lived or went to school in Berkeley. I've written to the mayor, mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us. They need some guidance and help out there.
I'm a California ex-pat, according to the Bear Flag League bloggers (see my links). Sometimes they invite me for blogging lunch, but I have to say no, living in central Ohio. My dad was stationed in California during WWII before being shipped out. He was a Marine. Mom and my aunt Muriel packed us all into the car and away we went, driving from northern Illinois to Alameda, California in 1944. Things didn't look good for the war effort towards the end. The war easily could have gone the other way; our losses were huge. We probably lost more men in training accidents than we've lost since 2003 in Iraq. But Baby boomlets don't read history--probably isn't required in public schools of California. Now the city of Berkeley wants to chase out the Marines. A librarian (surprise!) has called it a knee jerk reaction. No, lady, it isn't. Your state is huge and your economy larger than that of many countries. Your entertainment industry has virtually ruined our culture, and now you want to sabotage more of it. We are the UNITED STATES, and you're undercutting our government and military. Shame, shame, shame. How did California accumulate so many kooks? We've got a lot of family living in Southern Cal, and not a one of them or their friends are weird. But then, none lived or went to school in Berkeley. I've written to the mayor, mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us. They need some guidance and help out there.
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6 comments:
Thank you for posting that! California's economy gains so much from the military presence there, and yet.... Military families all over the country are all up in arms over this.
They might protest but there are some politicians willing to hurt them badly in a financial way if they try to make the Marines leave Berkeley.
On Thursday, Republican Assemblyman Guy Houston of San Ramon said he planned to introduce legislation to withhold more than $3 million in state transportation money until Berkeley rescinds its "war on the U.S. Marine Corps."
Houston's action followed a threat from Congressional Republicans to introduce legislation that could eliminate millions of dollars for UC Berkeley, public safety programs, a new ferry service, and the Alice Waters foundation, an organization that provides lunches to public schools.
I hope their punishment is swift and severe if they do somehow make the Marines leave.
These protesters and the Berkeley citizens who agree with them are unpatriotic scumbags. They are living proof that the whole "support the troops" talk was just a pack of lies in their cases.
Don't you think that taking out their Congressional bile on the commuters, college students (all of them, not just the ones you disagree with) and hungry schoolchildren of Berkley is a little, pardon me, Old Testament?
What is more American than acting your conscience? They don't want any more teenagers to die for, what they perceive, to be a pointless war in Iraq. Maybe you agree with that and maybe you don't. But who doesn't agree with the right of citizens to protest the actions of their government? Isn't that part of the reason we are still in Iraq? To give the Iraqis that very freedom?
Plus, and how depressing that it needs to be said, my grandfathers, father, cousin and both uncles served and I am proud of their service and of them.
Lastly, according to the Census, since the beginning of the war deaths and injuries due to hostile action have outstripped training accidents and fatalities.
I was referring to the accidents in WWII. Not all of these were training, but accidental fatalities from just airplanes was over 13,000. One was my uncle. One of his letters home described a terrible training accident that killed men he knew. I think 2,000 lives were lost just training for D-Day. You can say all you want about citizen rights, but this crowd, like Boulder's best, has a bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Or as I prefer to call it "This War Is a Tragic, Unnecessary, Humiliating, Sink Hole For Our Blood And Treasure And Would Still Be So If A Jimmy Carter / Hubert Humphrey Man-Clone Had Started It Derangement Syndrome."
Though it is easy to confuse the two.
Question, if I may: Is it possible to conceive of an objection to a Bush policy or action based on it's philosophy or outcome and have little or nothing to do with him?
More than half of America thinks that the war was a mistake and we should leave as soon as possible. That includes a lot of Bush supporters.
Are they all deranged?
Of course not. A few thousand are actual pacifists. Anabaptists, Quakers, etc. They believe war is wrong no matter what the circumstances. But most would hate Bush for the 2000 election no matter what policy he had on Iraq. The same irate citizens will support murdering the unborn in the name of political rights and experimenting on embryos in the name of medical advancements.
I think the war was poorly conceived and planned, and brought on by faulty intelligence gathered throughout the 1990s and the next century. But history will prove him right to stay the course and not run out on the Iraqis after we've deposed their dictator and disturbed the balance of power with Iran. We negotiated the Korean truce in the 1950s and ran out on Vietnam in the 1970s. That's a shameful record. We can't bring back the millions and millions of Koreans and Vietnamese who have died from the cowardliness and duplicity of our U.S. government, but we don't have to repeat it.
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