If it ever escapes you why those of us in the anti-war movement in this country are portrayed as thoughtless turncoats who hate the troops, kindly turn your attention to the nonsense that has consumed Berkeley for the last few weeks.
What started as a futile ““ excuse me, symbolic ““ yet perfectly legal protest on Shattuck Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus back in September has transpired into an ugly national argument that accomplished nothing except making anti-war citizens look like buffoons.
It all started in the fall of 2007, when Bay Area members of Code Pink, a prominent anti-war organization, held protests in front of a recruitment office for the United States Marine Corps. The protest was in response to the USMC moving its Bay Area recruiting site from Alameda to Berkeley, with the hope of attracting more college kids to the corps. Protestors from another anti-war group, The World Can’t Wait, chained themselves to the doorway of the recruitment office.
At the end of January, the Berkeley City Council, by a vote of 8-1, passed a motion to grant the Code Pink protestors a reserved parking space near the USMC office and waived noise permits so the protestors could use a loudspeaker. And then the city council did something that amounted to a teenager flipping the bird to his high school guidance counselor. The council passed a motion with a 6-3 vote to draft a letter to the USMC, letting the Marines know that they were “unwelcome intruders” in Berkeley.
At this point, the Berkeley community was being skewered by the propagandists at Fox News as unpatriotic. The likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity used the inappropriate letter as proof that the anti-war movement is comprised solely of pompous elitists who have contempt for the troops. (Never mind that concern for the safety of the troops is what drives the anti-war movement. On the other hand, nobody has ever explained how putting troops in harm’s way pays homage to their service.)
Republican Senators picked up where the right-wing pundits left off. Senators James Inhofe, R-Okla., (who called global warming “a hoax”) and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., (who called lesbianism one of the country’s biggest problems) led a group of Republicans to introduce the Semper Fi Act of 2008. The bill would strip almost $1 million of federal funding from UC Berkeley, even though the university had played no role in this whole runaround.
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau tried to inject logic into the debate by drafting a letter and sending it to 52 members of Congress, stating that the university should not be penalized and the city council’s letter was “ill-advised, intemperate and hurtful.”
Last week, upon pressure from local citizens who were embarrassed by the whole story, the city council voted, 7-2, not to send the letter ““ that’s right, the letter had not even been sent by the time O’Reilly and Hannity were crying foul. Instead, the council sent another letter, co-written by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, that said that the city did not support the recruitment of its young people but “deeply respect(ed) and support(ed) the men and women in our armed forces.”
And now it is all over. The members of Code Pink can go back to their self-aggrandizing ways, and the Republican Senators can get back to what’s ailing the country, such as the global warming hoax and same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, nobody really cares about the people actually affected by the Iraq War: the millions of Iraqis who have seen their country descend into civil war and the U.S. troops. Granted, the Republicans and Democrats are the ones responsible for this catastrophic war, while protestors like Code Pink are basically powerless.
But it would be nice for some of these protest groups to consider the fact that they represent millions of Americans who are against this war and should do so in an intelligent and respectful manner. Those of us who are against the war should not need to qualify our discontent by saying we have the utmost respect for the soldiers. Yet this has to be repeated because of the obnoxious antics of groups such as Code Pink and The World Can’t Wait.
And all this serves nobody. Instead of discussing the fact that John McCain has shamelessly prostituted his status as a war-hero to drum up support for the war ““ putting those of us against the war as somehow against the Vietnam veterans ““ we get to debate the validity of a protest letter that was never even sent.
E-mail De Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu if you don’t major in math, but you do major in miracles. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.