By Greg Maresca ——Bio and Archives--November 8, 2026
Perhaps you missed the news of the attack by an illegal immigrant who took a sledgehammer to the Iwo Jima monument that stands near the entrance at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, not far from the full-sized memorial in Arlington.
I know I did.
I found out about it two days later in Dan Flynn’s Spectator A.M. newsletter he writes daily for The American Spectator. Flynn, who served in the Marine Corps, had it front and center. Ironically, Flynn’s report coincided with the 43rd anniversary of the truck bomb that leveled the Marine barracks at Beirut’s International Airport.
The Iwo Jima sculpture depicts the flag raising on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. That moment did not mark the end of the fighting. The battle continued for another month. Those raised arms represent courage amid unfinished danger, not a victory easily won.
Besides the Marine Memorial at Arlington and the original model sculpture at Quantico, various reproductions of this famous American icon can be found in several venues around the country including one at Knoebels Amusement Park in Elysburg, PA.
As we approach Veteran’s Day, I keep coming back to that scarred Marine monument meant to preserve the memory of courage and sacrifice on that fateful 23rd day of February of 1945.
Disgust is the most appropriate word I can use for a family publication.
On a day when I cannot help but think of those who never came home from either Beirut or Iwo Jima, I was confronted with this senseless attack of a tribute to the courageous service of young men spanning two separate generations.
The connection was not merely symbolic.
Beirut was the Marine Corps’ deadliest day since Iwo Jima.
On a quiet Sunday morning at 0622 hours on another 23rd day of the month with this one in October of 1983, a suicide truck bomb killed 241 American service members, including 220 Marines on a peacekeeping mission.
“Peacekeeping” was a term that quickly devolved into a four-letter word throughout the Corps.
Looking at the Iwo Jima monument, this aged Jarhead remains in disbelief of what could possibly possess someone to take a sledgehammer in order to destroy it. Those Marines stand for lives given on the altar of freedom, families left grieving and an obligation to contemplate their heroic sacrifices.
The phrase “the enemy inside the gate” underscores that what we honor and respect can be attacked and destroyed right here at home. It certainly does not have to be on a distant battlefield.
A monument cannot defend itself.
Neither can the dead whose heroic sacrifice it memorializes.
Troubling is how we have become so accustomed to such outrages and how easily we lose touch with its meaning. The act itself becomes just one big shrug as we continue on with our day. We discuss what it will cost to repair and filing criminal charges, as we must, but something this noble deserves defending and how such remembrance and sacrifice belongs to each and every American.
Protecting America means protecting its people, its freedoms and its memorials.
That is what made the damage difficult to comprehend.
A Marine lifting the American flag was decapitated. Another sustained gouges across his helmet and face, while a third suffered damage to a bayonetted rifle slung across his back. Damages were estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A tribute to men who endured so much had itself become defenseless against destruction.
The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation is campaigning to raise funds to restore the memorial.
Felix de Weldon’s famous sculpture of the flag raising on Iwo Jima is a symbol not only of the strength of Marine Corps but the strength of the United States. Vandals are free to act because Marine courage and blood preserves their freedoms.
Memorials are how we keep faith with people we can no longer thank who carried the burden of freedom that as Ronald Reagan was known to have said is always one generation from extinction.
Surely, we can accept the responsibility of protecting their sacrificial memory.
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