Toledo Kicks Marines Out of Toledo

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Toledo Kicks Marines Out of Toledo

Joins Berkeley as "Great Anti-American Cities"

Move over Berkeley: Toledo, Ohio, wants some of those anti-American military headlines.

The mayor of Toledo, Carty Finkbeiner--we'll call him "Fink", for short--ordered some 20 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to get out of Toledo just before the unit was supposed to start a weekend of urban warfare training downtown.

The mayor’s spokesperson, Brian Schwartz said, “The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people. He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area."

We hope if Toledo is attacked by terrorists sometime in the future, Mayor Fink will remember his brave stand against the Marine training.

We hope the mayor will be just as brave if the US Senate cuts funds to Toldedo, as it did Berkeley, and not whine about having to suffer any consequences for his grandstanding--as Berkeley did.

And we hope there are enough citizens of Toledo who remind the mayor next election day that Toledo is still part of the USA.

Toledo police said they knew about the training and had approved the unit’s use of the Madison Building and the Promenade Park area. The training was scheduled to start Friday afternoon and last until Sunday. Police said the unit’s presence would have a minimal impact on the city. Police issued a press release earlier in the week saying the Marines would be wearing green camouflage uniforms, operate military vehicles, carry rifles, perform foot patrols, and fire blank ammunition during the exercise.

Schwartz said there was a breakdown in communication between police and the Finkbeiner administration that led to the mayor’s action.

“The Marines drilled here three times during the Ford administration and once under the Finkbeiner administration. After the last visit, the mayor told then police Chief Jack Smith, that he did not want the marines back. Smith failed to inform the current police administration of the mayor’s feelings,” Schwartz said.

Apparently, politicians may not be very well informed about about Civics 101, but they are up to speed on Buck Passing 101.

Jack Smith recalled that after the Marines last visit, he and the mayor had a heated exchange about the training.

“He told me he did not want them, as he put it, 'playing war in Toledo,'" Smith recalled. "I told him, as a former Marine, that if one young Marine’s life is saved because of training he or she received in Toledo, Ohio, then it was worth the inconvenience.”

Smith said if the mayor objected, then he should have been the one to convey those feelings to police. Smith took his run-in with the mayor as an objection to that last visit and not future training in Toledo. As a result, the Toledo police went ahead, granting approval to the 1-24th Marines to conduct the routine exercise. The police notified members of the Finkbeiner administration who were not aware that the mayor objected to units training in Toledo.

When the mayor found out, he sent a member of his staff to tell Marines they could not conduct urban operations in Toledo. The unit was notified about 3:30 p.m. after an advance team arrived in Toledo. Five buses carrying some 200 Marines traveled four hours from Grand Rapids, only to find out the training had been shot down.

The unit briefly stopped at a 1-24th Marine base in Perrysburg Township, then returned to Grand Rapids where training was expected to be held this weekend. A spokesperson for the Marines said they were disappointed by the mayor’s decision especially after the city had been so helpful in the past.

As RidesAPaleHorse succinctly puts it: I know this has shown up elsewhere but I am so GODDAMNED pissed off about it I can hardly contain myself. I even wrote a letter to that piece of shit mayor in Toledo.

The letter is reproduced below.

Mr. Mayor

In regards to your recent decision regarding the Marines training in your city:

It is my fervent hope that at some point in your life you will need the assistance of the Marines and that they will tell you to have intercourse with yourself. Of course that will never happen because the Marines will protect ANY American citizen as they have sworn to, even slimy, corrupt, anti-miltary garbage (apologies to garbage) such as yourself and that other piece of offal in Berkeley Calipornia, Tom Bates. You and he impress me as the kind of trash that would be the FIRST to start squealing like little baby pigs, begging for the Marines or any other member of the military to bail your posterior out of whatever situation you found yourself in.

You and your peer in Berkeley sir, are beyond contempt as well as any other who would treat the men and women who would gladly lay down their lives for you, as you and Mayor Bates have. You are truly disgusting examples of "Americans".

Jesus died for your sins.

Marines died for your freedom, you ungrateful waste of oxygen.

God bless America.........but not necessarily you sir.