This Saturday afternoon I walked over to the beach by Oceanside Pier to join the Vets for Peace in their Arlington West Memorial. It took the volunteers hours to set up the 2,200 crosses in the sand, each honored with a candle set in a red plastic cup. There were many more Marines at this event than I've seen at previous memorials. You know them immediately, their posture is so straight, their heads shaved, their bodies in perfect shape. And they are all so damn young!
Something dramatic has changed in the year since I first came to Oceanside to write about Arlington West. There was no bravado in these Marines. There was no heckling from the passerbys. And there were twice as many crosses in the sand.
One Marine said he'd come down to see one last sunset on the beach - he was shipping out on Sunday. He told me that he'd joined the Marines because he needed a job. He had a baby daughter to support. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "I want you to know, while you are over there, that there are many of us here who are showing our support for you by trying to end this war, so you can get back home to your daughter." I looked at this handsome young father and prayed I would never see his name on a cross in the sand.
A nineteen-year-old, who had already served in Fallujah, told me that just about everyone in Camp Pendleton would be in the Middle East by February. I watched respectfully as he looked over the field of crosses and wondered what horrors his sad eyes had seen. When he spoke, I had to read his lips, his voice was so low, "Some of those crosses have my buddies' names on them. Thank you for doing this Ma'am."
In response to my question about the stories I'd heard about our troops not having the best body armor, a Marine scoffed, "We're supposed to be the finest fighting team in the world and we are getting the leftovers from the Army! They tell us they don't have the budget!" He looked at me and I saw the eyes of someone realizing he'd been betrayed.
As the setting sun painted the horizon shades of crimson, and the beach was dressed with the red glow of 2,000 flickering candles, I took my turn reading out the names of those brave men and women who had died in the invasion and occupation of a country that was never a threat to the people of America. As I called out each name, age, rank and date of death, I thought about all that has happened since I came to Oceanside to write about Arlington West last January. It was here, on the beach, that I first met the dedicated activists of North County Coalition for Peace and Justice and Vets for Peace and I knew that I wanted to call this place home and these people my friends. It was here that I put Casey Sheehan's cross in the sand. It was here that I realized that writing about what was going wrong in our country wasn't enough, and I had to start doing something to change things.
My mind wandered to a discussion I had last week with one of my personal heroes and role model - Congressman Bob Filner. We sat on folding chairs in a tiny office and talked about the pending appointment of a Supreme Court judge who supports the idea of a "unitary executive" - code-speak for having a president who can do whatever he wants. With Alito's appointment, all the checks and balances our founders forged into our Constitution will be shattered. Our last remaining hope of rescuing our democracy is to change the balance of power in Congress this November. How do we do that when our media is a propaganda machine, multi-national corporations that exist only for profit covertly finance our campaigns and our voting machines are wide open to manipulation?
As I continued to read out the names, my thoughts snapped back to the moment as the name, "Casey Sheehan" came from my lips. Who could have known, when I decided to run for Congress last May, that Casey's mother would have the courage to stand in an ant-infested ditch in Crawford and galvanize the peace movement? Some of my supporters want me to win so badly that they advise me to tone down my rhetoric against this horrible war. They say Cindy can get away with saying what she says because she lost a son and she isn't running for Congress.
Today I read that Karl Rove is advising Republicans to campaign on national security. I think that's great advice. Here's our chance to truly differentiate ourselves. This administration has decimated our defenses to enrich their war-profiteering cronies. Iraq is a blazing beacon of their gross corruption and incompetence. It's time to call it as it is! Separate the war from the warrior! Bring our troops home! Reclaim our patriotic duty to dissent!
Where are my fellow Democrats? Why aren't you seizing the moment? A hundred years from now, our great-grandchildren will tell a story about us. Will their chests swell with pride or will they shake their heads in disgust?
There was a man yesterday who noted that I seem to be out of sync with my own Party's positions. I replied, "Look at the polls. I am not out of sync with my Party. My Party is out of sync with the people!"