Code Pink for Peace, the left-wing anti-war/anti-American group co-founded by Medea Benjamin, has been not-so-silently protesting the United States Marine Corp's recruiting station in the city of Berkeley, California.

       On the group's website is a statement by Berkeley Community Peace Activists which reads: “Our goal is to have clear zoning regulations for military recruiting and to put citizen pressure to shut down on the existing recruiting station that is just block away from Berkeley City College, UC Berkeley, and Berkeley High School.”

      The anti-war/anti-American group has gone as far as to have after-hours protests at the recruiting station, and to write graffiti across the doorway to the office that says “Recruiters are traitors.”

     United States Marine Corp Captain Richard Lund is the officer in charge of the recruiting station and he would like for Code Pink to answer this simple question: How is it that he and those who work there are traitors?

      He goes on to ask if he was a traitor when he joined the Marine Corps all those years ago, and if every Marine, therefore, is a traitor?

      As a result of the stance of the city council of Berkeley on Marine Corp recruiting, six Republican U. S. senators have suggested a plan to withdraw over two million dollars worth of federal funding for Berkeley programs.  So the mayor of this liberal city apologized recently for the hard line against the recruiting station.

     Two Berkeley City Council members vowed to soften their opinions as well.

      A letter that the City Counsel wrote said that the recruiting center was not welcome on Shattuck Avenue and that the Marines are “uninvited and unwelcomed intruders.”

      In part, the text of the communication stated: “Whereas, the United States military invaded and is occupying the sovereign nation of Iraq, whereas the United States military recruits a disproportionately large number of people of color and low incomes, whereas recruits report being misled by recruiters about benefits, duties, and placements promised by the United States military.”

      Tom Bates, the mayor of Berkeley, said: “I think that letter will probably be pulled back and maybe more moderate language will be put in place which is appropriate.”

      In his very civil letter to the council members, Captain Lund also asks, “Who would respond if a future terrorist attack targets the Golden Gate Bridge, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system, or the UC Berkeley clock tower?''  He asks where the peace-keeping force would come from that Code Pink advocates on its website for sending to the country of Darfur.

     He also states that this is a very hypocritical stance for Code Pink to take.  One cannot have it both ways: telling the local military recruiting station to go away, and then advocating a peace-keeping mission to Darfur.  This peace-keeping mission would most definitely be made up entirely of United States military personnel.

     As a soon-to-be former soldier in the United States Army, I can tell everyone reading this that although we do train for war in times of peace, we also are a humanitarian force as well.  Even in Iraq, the United States military does indeed take care of the local Iraqis who are injured in the local wartime operations going on there.

     I can also tell you that no recruit ever signs any document, or raises his or her right hand to say the oath of enlistment until everything in that person’s contract has been explained, and every question answered to the best of that recruiter’s ability.

     If the recruiter can’t answer the question, there are persons available who can, does, and will answer it. Also, that recruit does not walk into any recruiting station--Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine--without the knowledge that there is a war going on, and the recruit knows that there is the possibility that he will be sent to the war zone.

     I don’t think any civilian who is thinking about a few years, or a career wearing the uniform of the United States military, is stupid.

     Medea Benjamin and Code Pink do.

     But then again, they also think they can have it both ways: protesting the Marines and calling upon a peace-keeping mission to Darfur.

    But they can’t have one without the other.

Sgt. Steve Boggess
Tacoma, Washington