We Don’t Hate CodePink just the war

Gael Murphy, of Washington, D.C. (gael@codepinkalert.org) checked in to Canada Free Press (CFP) yesterday to correct the errors of my ways on one Medea Benjamin. The letter was in response to my Thursday cover story, When in danger, call for the U.S. Marines, That’s what Codepink’s Medea Benjamin did. “Medea Benjamin doesn’t hate the Marines. She doesn’t want them to go to Iraq to risk their lives in an illegal, immoral, corrupt and endless occupation,” Murphy wrote in her email. “Ask the Pentagon Inspector General. The violent and disastrous Iraq policy is not the soldier. The Bush Administration should declare an emd (sic) to the US military occupation immediately, withdraw all the troops and contractors in a safe and orderly manner as swiftly as possible, urge the international community to broker political dialogue among factions, promote and help fund peace-keeping troops, pay reparations for having destroyed Iraq, and killed, injured and displaced millions of Iraqis.”

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Oh, I get it. That’s all Medea really wants. Forget about the fate of Iraq and the free world if politics win the day and American troops are ordered to cut and run. What about the young men and women wanting to explore the possibility of serving their country, who come even now to the CodePink blockaded Shattuck Avenue Marine recruiting offices in Berkeley, California? They are not entitled to the right of making their own decisions? In knowing the danger and still signing up to serve God and country, how many of them make their parents proud? Most likely every one of them, Medea. Not even the heartache of American mothers--whose last prayer every night is: “Please, God, keep him/her safe from all harm”--couldn’t stop a son or daughter from signing up for deployment. Screaming, ranting CodePinkers don’t kill off the ideals of these wonderful young men and women. They only inconvenience them. The shouts and chants are not remembered when soldiers are out on sentry duty. CodePinkers who threaten to desecrate war monuments, spit on soldiers, cuss and scream do nothing but make the pro-troop contingent that much more determined to love and support the troops. It’s an unwritten rule of thumb that no matter how outrageous your behaviour, you can’t shout down love of country from where it entrenches itself in the human heart. That’s somewhat akin and as fruitless as demanding an end to the military occupation immediately just because that’s what you personally want. The world somehow gets by without anyone’s individual opinion and has been doing so for centuries. The screaming and shouting means nothing to Move America Forward’s Melanie Morgan when she has stood in front of the Walter Reed Army Medical center when revelry is called and beside her was a young soldier with no legs and arms looking at the American flag with a kind of pride in his eyes, that made her eyes sting with unshed tears. If the enemy in Iraq could not beat love of the USA out of that wheelchair-bound young soldier, and so many others like him, imagine the possibilities for the screaming meemies in CodePink! From what I can see from Medea Benjamin’s press clippings, no one ever stopped her for long from doing what she sets out to do. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, Benjamin had to be forcefully removed from the convention floor and was tossed out of the Fleet Center by police after unfurling a banner which demanded, “End the Occupation! Bring the Troops Home Now!” She subsequently stood with other activists in the “free speech zone” set up at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, dressed as the Statue of Liberty with duct tape over her mouth to express her disapproval of protests at the convention. I could go on and on about CodePink capers, but with coddling from Berkeley Council and lots of media attention, the last thing Medea Benjamin needs is more attention. Encouraging knowing that Medea Benjamin was given the bum’s rush in Ottawa when anti-American, bring-the-troops-back-home-from-Afghanistan New Democrat Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton tried to get her before a committee of Canadian parliament. In a democracy, we’re stuck with the screaming, ranting, my-way-or-the-highway Code Pinkers. In a democracy, the only time CodePink’s freedom of assembly and freedom of movement is curtailed is when they break the laws of the land. And reversing themselves by insisting that they don’t hate the Marines is Marxism at work. They’d never resort to it but Marxism, as a strategy from the other side would soon shut CodePink activists down. We don’t hate CodePink. Taking a page from the Nancy Pelosi Democrats, we merely want to save them from themselves. So by using the Marxist dialect, I say, Stop CodePink right now. Send them to Iraq as human shields. We don’t hate CodePink. We only hate the war. And P.S., Medea, there’s no free parking in Iraq.