Left vs. military recruiters.

[thedrifter]

March 12, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

The Bad War
Left vs. military recruiters.

By Michelle Malkin

Ideas have consequences. Inaction has consequences. For the past several years, I’ve chronicled the left’s escalating war on military recruiters — and the apathetic, weak-kneed response to it. The anti-recruiter thugs on college campuses and in liberal enclaves have thrived thanks to a combination of public indifference, law enforcement fecklessness and left-wing ideological apologism.

It has now been a week since the Times Square military-recruitment center bombing. The investigation continues — and so does the left’s denial of the ongoing campaign against military recruiters. At a national conference of anarchists in Washington, D.C., last weekend, a “solidarity sticker” glorifying the biker bomber made the rounds. On the Internet, “peace” activists threatened the Gathering of Eagles, a national military support group that organized a rally at Times Square last weekend. From Pittsburgh to Berkeley, anti-war extremists have smeared recruiters as “death pimps” and “child predators.” The militant Code Pink group continues to organize in-your-face protests to drive recruiters from major metropolitan areas.

The Times Square bombing was not an isolated incident, but an all-too-predictable symptom of reckless tolerance for dangerous “peace” peddlers skating on the edge of sedition. Lone nuts? Here is a brief history of the anti-military recruitment movement’s mounting acts of vandalism and violence. I’ll list, you decide:

March 2003: Antiwar zealots in Ithaca, N.Y., target a recruitment center that had been hit before with Molotov cocktails. On St. Patrick’s Day, wielding cups of their own blood, they entered a Lansing military recruitment office and splashed their blood over recruiter posters, military cutouts and the American flag. Daniel Burns, Peter De Mott, Clare Grady, and Teresa Grady were convicted in 2005 on two misdemeanor counts of trespassing and damaging federal property. All but Burns have been released from prison.

January 20, 2005: At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were hounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters’ table was destroyed; their handouts, torn apart. Protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers. The far-left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the radicals.

Jan. 31, 2005: Recruiters in Manhattan reported that a door to their office had been beaten in. Anarchist symbols were scrawled in red paint on the building. On the same day, New York police collared a young Manhattan College junior and charged him with throwing a burning rag into an Army recruiting station and ruining the door locks with super glue.

Feb. 1, 2005: At a South Toledo, Ohio, recruitment center, unhinged protesters hurled manure all over the building. They broke windows and sprayed vulgar graffiti — “War is Sh*t” — on office property.

Mid-Feb. 2005: Twenty-year-old anti-war goon Brendan Walsh is sentenced to five years in federal prison for hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Vestal, N.Y., military recruitment office in 2003.

March 2005: In East Orange, N.J., young anti-military protesters shattered the windows of an Army recruitment station and a neighboring Navy office. At City College in New York, a campus secretary protesting recruiters was charged with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration. Police also arrested students Justin Rodriguez and Nicholas Bergreen for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer.

March/April 2005: Anti-war extremists at New York’s Bronx Community College shut down several military recruitment sessions. At UC Santa Cruz, “peace” thugs drove recruiters off campus after an hour-long demonstration of shouting and window banging.

May 2005: Anti-military students swarmed the booths of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the USAF at a San Francisco State University career fair. In Wisconsin, an Air Force ROTC information day was canceled due to threats by the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of Stop the War.

April 2006: UC Santa Cruz students ambushed military recruiters. Vandals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tossed cans of red paint in front of an ROTC office and spray-painted vulgarities all over its doors. University of Minnesota students splattered red paint all over an Army recruiting station.

December 2006: Anarchists in Lawrence, Kan., crippled business at an Army/Navy recruitment center, where workers’ car tires were slashed and bomb-proof glass had to be installed.

Jan. 2007: Anti-war radicals laid siege to the U.S. Capitol and smashed windows at a downtown Washington recruitment center. Pittsburgh radicals shut down a recruitment station for a day, wielding signs calling recruiters “child predators.”

March 2007: Vandals broke into a Milwaukee recruitment station wielding crowbars.

July 2007: A teenager in Bremerton, Wash., was charged with a felony for slashing 42 government tires of Army recruiting vehicles to protest the Iraq war and because he “hated the military.” In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force career center. In Lufkin, Texas, Navy recruiters were the targets of vandals who keyed their cars, smashed their windows and shot at their vehicles with “with what appeared to be a high-powered pellet gun.”

August 2007: In Stamford, Conn., Francis Monaghan is arrested on charges that he twice left a fake bomb package at a military recruitment office.

September 2007: The far-left group Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on followers to commit fraud to interfere with military recruiters. Anti-war punks shut down the Times Square recruitment station.

October 2007: Code Pink defaces the Berkeley recruitment office, branding our troops as assassins.

Jan. 2008: The Code Pink/city council siege at the Berkeley recruiting center reaches a boiling point. Protesters chain themselves to the station to shut it down, and vandalize the windows with bloody handprints and signs branding recruiters “death pimps.”

Feb. 2008: Anarchists trash the recruiting station at 14th and L Streets in Washington, D.C., which has been subjected to multiple attacks.

March 2008: The bomb goes off at the Times Square recruitment station.

When will this escalating war end? There will be no end in sight until lawmakers, law enforcement, the media, and the public open their eyes to the hate, connect the dots, and stop coddling the increasingly crazed and emboldened anti-military militants before more bombs go off — and innocents get harmed — in the name of “peace.”

Ellie

[Braden]

I didn't see this posted elsewhere, so I apoligize if it's already been discussed. But it appears that Pittsburgh is at it again, and is planning on harassing their local recruiters, too.

On Wednesday, March 19, POG will be holding a torch-lit march to a modern day castle of abominations—our local military recruiting station. If the station remains open, we intend to evict it and everything inside of it, occupy the location, and transform it into something useful for the community. We'll also be bringing a movable cage in which to confine military recruiters until they no longer pose a danger to our friends and neighbors. Of course, the station may be closed and recruiters may flee or hide behind the police apparatus that enables the war to continue.[/quote]

http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/

[OB MSG]

Might not be a bad idea for the Marine Corps League, VFW, American Legion and any other groups to put together a welcoming commitee at the station to say "hi' to this group of idiots.

I love how these people hide behind the First Amendment and protest the Recuiters rather than go to the source. They go for the easy target rather than take their arguement to D.C. and speak their piece there.

[E5NAMKROW]

That would be interesting to see the pinko's show up and there is a human shield made of Marines. Very interesting indeed...!

[Demosc]

As they say, never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers. Although I do give much credit to the recruiters for showing restraint in all of those situations (or whatever degree of restraint they did show). All in all though, you almost can't help but become angry when reading about how the american public is treating their own soldiers, Marines, sailors and all other branches in relation to their recruiters. Apparently quite a bit of the american public likes the idea of a dissipated military so that we as a country can be taken over by anyone who wants to say "me me me me" fastest. Sadly enough, you can't argue with a fool, or reason with an idiot. And all of these left wing liberals trying to get rid of recruiters , and essentially starving the military of its most essential resource,,,Marines, soldiers, airman and seamen,,,,, and for that, they most definitely qualify as fools and idiots. I'll just have to hope that America wakes up soon and starts properly protecting its own troops here, most definitely inlcluding recruiters and the recruiting centers.

[OB MSG]

As has been said before: "You can't cure stupidity." (But a smack upside the head does make you feel better.)