Posted on 11/12/2007 11:58:16 PM PST by bd476
Tonight I wrote a vanity about the subject of this article here:
Tears on Veterans Day
but I thought that this 2005 article from National Review deserves a thread of its own.
Campus Rads vs. Our Vets
The antiwar unwelcome on campus.
By Wynton C. Hall & Peter Schweizer
29 August 2005
As college students hit campuses across the nation this week, a new generation of young veterans will step off the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and onto the ideological battlefield of our university campuses. For those on the frontline in the war on terror, the antiwar hostility of liberal professors and campus activists will assuredly prove unsettling.
Just ask Marine sergeant Marco Martinez, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a full-time psychology major at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif.
“A woman on campus had apparently learned I might be a Marine. When I told her I was, she said, ‘You’re a disgusting human being, and I hope you rot in hell!’ ”
Indeed, Martinez, who will be the first male in his family to receive a college diploma, says he is receiving more of an education than he bargained for: “There are a lot of people who don’t appreciate military service in college,” Martinez said. “If someone asks me about it, and I think that they’re not too liberal, I might tell them I was in Iraq. But I don’t tell them the full extent of it or anything about the Navy Cross.”
The Navy Cross — as in second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Martinez, formerly of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, is a bona-fide American hero and the first Hispanic American since Vietnam to receive the Navy Cross. During the Battle of At Tarmiya, one of Sergeant Martinez’s fellow marines had been hit in the legs and left for dead by five terrorists holed up in an adobe garden shed. That’s when Martinez used his body to shield the dying marine from the terrorist before mounting a 20-meter frontal charge at the bunker with nothing but a depleted rifle and a grenade. With enemy bullets pinging off his gear, Martinez unpinned the grenade, slammed his body into the adobe building, and lobbed the device into the window of the structure, killing all the terrorists inside.
But as liberal professors and antiwar activists continue to wage a nationwide campaign to rid university campuses of military recruiters — in some cases going so far as to throw water bottles and scream epithets at them — it is easy to see why Sergeant Martinez would remain tight-lipped about being one of the nation’s most decorated heroes.
Indeed, as one campus newspaper reported, the rift between young veteran college students and their civilian classmates has left those who have served feeling isolated from campus life, “shunned” because of their service.
Just ask Armand McCormick, 23, a student at the University of Northern Iowa.
While walking to class one day, McCormick stopped to listen to a speaker during an antiwar student rally. When he challenged the protestor’s arguments, the “peace” activist sneered, “The Iraqis don’t want us there. If you think the war is okay, then why don’t you go and serve!”
There was an obvious problem with the protestor’s retort: He had no clue who he was talking to — -Silver Star recipient Marine corporal Armand McCormick.
“I’ve had a few conversations about [the War on Terror] in the liberal classrooms I go to everyday,” said McCormick. “A lot of the time I just look at them and tell them that they don’t have any clue what they’re talking about, because all they do is listen to liberal news. I always tell them, ‘If you don’t experience something, how in the hell can you say what will happen?’ ”
As Corporal McCormick rightly points out, his classmates’ reliance upon the elite mainstream media all but ensures that they are unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping acts of heroism he performed on March 25, 2003, in Ad Diwuniyah, Iraq. Far removed from the breezy comforts of a college campus, it was there, inside an enemy trench, that McCormick, along with his two fellow Marines, captain Brian Chontosh and corporal Robert “Robbie” Kerman, was swarmed by what officials estimate was a company-sized element of between 150 to 200 Iraqi fighters. When the smoke cleared, the three marines had not only survived, they had eliminated scores of enemy fighters and regained key territory. It’s the sort of incident the campus Left should think about the next time it proclaims how “courageous” it is in protesting the war.
The Left has adopted the mantra that it opposes the war but supports our soldiers. Those veterans visiting campuses tell a different story; the early fault lines forming on our nation’s campuses do not portend hopeful signs.
For those who profess to embrace “diversity” and champion allowing “marginalized voices” to be heard, perhaps liberal professors, administrators, and students might learn something were they open-minded enough to listen to the heroes in their midst. Then, and only then, will they correct the tragic mistakes of the Vietnam era that valued politics more than patriots.
Such men and women as Martinez, and there are thousands of them, (many are heros who have not been cited for awards,)need to know that mainstream America loves them for who they are and what they did.
BTW US higher education is getting a deserved reputation of not being worth the usual 30 Grand a year.
The truth of that comes out with the ignorance of those academics and their jingoistic students who decry our warriors, and their sacrifices.One would think they would have sense enough at least to keep their ignorant yaps shut.
Having been involved in education much of my career, today I am loath to recommend to any sane young person , that attending a liberal socialist post secondary institution of so called "higher learning' is worth the price in either treasure or ignorance foisted upon them as wisdom and knowledge.
Most of our young men and women would do much better if they attended a Polytech institute, or one of the very few true campuses of wisdom and knowledge that remain in the USA today.Those latter can be counted on one hand.
Just what you said, your entire post - I don't know where to begin except to say that I agree with you. However I also believe that our universities have been in deep trouble since at least the early 60s.
Candor7, this has been a rough night for me. When I heard the news report tonight about Sgt. Marco Martinez, it just hit me hard.
I'm not Hispanic, I've never been in a gang, heck I've not even been to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I'm just a Midwesterner who has lived in L.A. for a very long time.
I have no idea why this story got to me. Maybe it's because I see guys who are like Martinez used to be. They live next door, across and down the street, they're in my 'hood' and I hear them just about every single week shooting at each other with their AK47s and Uzis right before the LAPD sends their helicopters circling overhead.
Martinez got up and out out of his gang-banging life. In my book, he's a hero just for that alone. His Marine recruiter is also a hero.
Under terribly adverse circumstances in Iraq Sgt. Marco Martinez put himself in the line of fire to save his fellow Marines.
He said that he didn't understand all the fuss, nor did he consider himself a hero because if he hadn't done it, someone else would have. I had problems with tears earlier tonight and when I read the article above, I felt physically ill. I hesitated on posting it because it is so loathsome that anyone would say that to a Veteran. Yet they did that and far worse to our Viet Nam Veterans.
Please read what I wrote here and let me know what you think.
God Bless Our Nation's Finest and God Bless America!
The left is nothing if they are not just plain stupid.
I recommend going to college for math and hard sciences only. The soft sciences, such as sociology and the like are liberal/socialist indoctrination. The problem is that they make the undergrads take these “diversity” courses to fulfill their degree requirements.
Wonderful post. Thank you, and thank God for our brave troops.
Thank you for your service.
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