If you are against the war, and want to make that point clear, please don’t do it by demonstrating in front of a recruiting office. By doing so you are playing right into the hands of the Wing Nuts who have tried in vain for 5 years to paint you as "against the troops".
It is VERY difficult to propose that you support the troops, but not the war, when you are standing in front of a Marine recruiting office bad mouthing Marines. And, if you in fact DO believe that those Marines are evil, nasty people, then I have some pointed questions for you to answer.
Let me first make my specific situation clear.
I am a veteran of the Vietnam Era. I never saw combat. However, I know what it feels like to be "branded" by the actions of others.
I have attended the funerals of numerous veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and salute their efforts on our behalf.
I have been, and am still, 100% against our involvement in Iraq since 9-12-2001 when I knew damn well "W" was going to take us there.
I love America and the ideas and beliefs upon which it is founded. INCLUDING the fact that our military is answerable to "civilian" leadership.
This is why I believe that focusing your anger on recruiting stations is counter-productive. It isn’t the Marines, or the Sailors, or Soldiers or Airmen that are to blame for the situation in Iraq. They did not send themselves there. Most certainly don’t want to be there and I’ll bet none of them ever really wants to go back.
If you have never had the opportunity to serve your country in the military, then there is something you don’t know about those who do. These citizens that sign a blank check that is payable by sacrifices you could never imagine, up to and including our very lives, don’t do so because they love war. Almost none are romantics with dreams of dying gloriously in battle. But they do have an unusual respect for our form of government and that government would not exist without a military that is capable of carrying out, or threatening to carry out, its foreign polices.
There are dozens of other reason for joining the military. Mine included wanting to "pay my dues" before becoming a citizen and desperately wanting a college education in a family with zero resources. And mine is a story more common than you might think.
So when you protest the war in front of a couple of military recruiters who are simply serving their government the best way they know how, you are telling them, and me, and all the veterans before and after me, and all the wing nuts out there, that you blame the troops for this mess. That somehow if they would stop convincing others, whose only sin is they want to serve YOU, that this would all go away.
And that is bad because the Iraq war is NOT their fault. They answer to their commanders, and their commanders answer to the civilian leadership, a leadership that you elected (even if it wasn’t the one you voted for).
So if you are looking for someone to blame where you can take your signs and your songs and your anti-war rhetoric, then take a good long look in the mirror and start there. Because this war is not THEIR fault, it is OURS. We LET it happen by not making enough noise about it 5 years ago.
So either protest in front of the mirror, or in front of the White House, or Congress. But stay the hell away from the troops if you want my support.