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thedrifter
10-17-06, 06:54 AM
Sick of protesting

By Roger Reitmaier | Winona

Is anyone else sick of public protesting? I’ve never publicly protested a thing in my 62 years of living. But I have been on the other side trying to maintain law and order. As a young Marine lieutenant, just having returned from a combat tour in Vietnam, our main work at Camp LeJeune, N.C., was to learn the techniques necessary to deal with out-of-control (violent) protesters.

On the night of Nov. 15, 1969, we were called on to deal with a protest in Washington, D.C. We go from one war zone (Vietnam) to another (Washington, D.C., that night). The protesters had torn down the American flag perched atop the Iwo Jima Memorial, the No. 1 American freedom icon that pays tribute to Marines lost in World War II. (5,000 Marines died in three weeks on that tiny atoll in the Pacific, its taking necessary to take the war to mainland Japan.) Marines of the 10th Marine regiment restored the peace that night in our nation’s capital, non-violently I might add.

I find it personally repugnant that the local Catholic Worker group would find it necessary to have its anti-war protest be in the face of our brave young men and women of our National Guard, an entity we should all respect for these are the people who respond to state and national emergencies, who protect our spoiled little butts.

The rebuttal will be, “Oh, we support the troops, we’re just against the war.”

I say “bull!”

You won’t find a single National Guard person who welcomes protesters coming to their local military home, the National Guard Armory. It’s a slap in the face.

So if you enjoy slapping the face of these brave men and women, many of whom have served at least one (sometimes two) tours of duty in fighting the war on terrorism, just keep it up. But I say shame on you!

Of course, I’m not sure these people have shame. Three of them were arrested and seemed proud of it.

Ellie