This is simply silly

I just read an article about something stupid going on in Berkeley, CA. Apparently (summarization, if you don't want to go read the article) their city council is urging the Marine recruiting office there to leave town, and is "[applauding] residents and organizations that 'volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley.'"

What?! Come on now; our military needs our support, not our badgering. I don't care whether you "support" the war in Iraq or not; you still need to support our military - the troops are simply following their orders, doing their jobs - and unfortunately probably not getting paid well enough for it (I definitely felt that way when I was in the Navy). Ok, my previous statement is not exactly true - I do care and think you should support the war for a couple of reasons:

• It is in the interest of our national security. Would you support the war if, instead of terrorists in Iraq, it was, say, Canada attacking our northern border? (Or Russia, China, or Japan attacking Alaska?) I bet you would. Aren't you glad that we defended our country back before it was a country, instead of simply playing along and conceding to Britain's oppressive rule? Aren't you glad that we didn't allow Hitler and his allies to take over all of Europe and Asia and Africa, and aren't you glad we took action when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? How exactly is that different from terrorists attacking within our borders? Don't you think we should defend ourselves from terrorists? This means, of course, that we need to attack the places that are providing support for and harboring the terrorists. Will there be civilian casualties? Sure. But then again, look at what the terrorists are doing... using mentally retarded people to serve as (possibly unwitting) suicide bombers in public markets. They're now attacking the civilians of their own hosting country. US military makes carefully targeted precision strikes, doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties. In fact, the military often puts themselves at higher risk in order to mitigate the possibility of inflicting civilian casualties (I should provide a link for support, but don't have anything other than information I've obtained or overheard in conversations with former marines & soldiers or family and friends of marines & soldiers).
• We need to support our country's leader(s). We elected them, after all (if you didn't vote, you definitely shouldn't be speaking up now!). Regardless of whether you agree with the leader's (leaders') decisions, however, you should still support the military - those who are willing to make sacrifices to ensure that we are safe. On top of that, we should not support disobeying orders; that would lead to a weak, ineffective military, and the world will know and take advantage of it.

On top of that, getting rid of the recruiting stations means that those currently serving won't have timely relief in order to return to the US for a local tour of duty. People want and need a break, but if there aren't replacement troops (not just replacement for the injured or killed, but replacement on a rotational basis), then those in places like Iraq will have their tours of duty extended, leading to greater exhaustion, decreased effectiveness, and increased likelihood of injury or death. It's, in fact, a safety issue to ensure that recruiting efforts are not impeded.

You know, this sort of reminds me of people who burn the (US) flag as a form of protest. I absolutely support freedom of speech... but what is it that guarantees that freedom? Our constitution. What is the (well, one) symbol of that constitution? Our flag. In my humble opinion, people who burn the flag are burning the symbol of their right to freedom of expression... thus, I think they're really saying that they don't agree with our freedom of expression, and should have that right removed, per their own requests. Like I said, that's my opinion. I don't think that "patriots" burn the flag (as per some sites, such as this one) - after all, we've all seen the flag burning in various middle-eastern countries, and I sincerely doubt any of those people are American patriots. (You know, I even found one site that allows you to "burn a flag online" - pretty stupid; I'm not going to post a link to that site.) There is one situation that warrants burning a flag - retirement of a worn out flag, as mentioned on this site, which (if you go deeper into the site) has various info about flag burning, related legislation, history, etc.

Sorry for the lack of humorous, miscellaneous rambling in this post... feel free not to read it if you only read for that kind of stuff. Oh, wait, maybe I should've said that before you read the whole thing... sorry about that. Have a great day (or night, if you're reading this in the evening)!