2/8/2008
Marine Reservists forced out of Toledo by Mayor Finkbeiner
Staff Sgt. Andre Davis talks to his commanding officer as he leaves the Madison Building after Mayor Carty Finkbeiner requested that the Marines leave the downtown location.
(THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH)
Grand Rapids Marines were forced to cut short their training exercise in Toledo Friday by the Mayor’s office.
Pam at Right Voices asks: Why Were 200 Michigan Marine Reservists Kicked Out Of Toledo?
She has more links, although links are sparse on this one.
I think the answer to Pam’s question - is the same reason they’re trying to force the Recruiters out of Berkeley; the Mayor is anti-military, and because it’s popular to be a self-loathing America-hating military-bashing leftist.
The Company A 1st Battalion 24th Marines were conducting an urban warfare exercise at the Madison Building and Promenade Park. Then someone from the mayor’s office told the 200 Marines that the training area was no longer available and to leave the city.
The group was supposed to continue the training on Saturday as well.
So Alpha Company packed up its gear and headed back to Michigan without a reason for the departure.
24 Hour News 8 was at their base in Grand Rapids when five busloads of reservists returned around 9 p.m.
Such training sessions have been held in Toledo before. But this latest issue could be addressed in Washington, D.C.
Alpha Company will resume the training sessions in West Michigan but plans have not been finalized yet.
The Toledo Blade:
Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown
He says urban exercises scare people
A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.
The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.
Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.
“The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman.
“He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area.”
National disasters scare people, too.
The mission of 1/24 4th Marine Division is to provide trained combat and combat support personnel and units to augment and reinforce the active component in time of war, national emergency, and at other times as national security requires; and have the capability to reconstitute the Division, if required.
And what’s interesting is - they’ve been training in Toledo like this since 2004, and the city was preparing for their arrival.
The Reservists’ visit was no surprise to Toledo police, who Tuesday issued a news release to media outlets on behalf of the Marines that asked Toledoans not to be startled by the sight of camouflaged soldiers toting M16 rifles.
Police officers were awaiting the Marines’ arrival yesterday afternoon and had set up a roadblock at Madison Avenue and Huron Street.
“There was apparently a break in communication somewhere between the mayor and the police department,” Mr. Schwartz said.
“Where that break was, we don’t know yet.”
Maj. Jeffrey O’Neill, the company’s commanding officer, said he was disappointed by how events played out yesterday, especially because Toledo had been a gracious host for Marine exercises in the past.
“You can go to military ranges for live fire [exercises], but there’s no way to duplicate the urban jungle unless you actually train inside a city,” Major O’Neill said.
Mr. Schwartz said the Marines declined Mayor Finkbeiner’s alternative offer for them to practice their urban patrol tactics inside the former Jones Junior High School, 550 Walbridge Ave.
Major O’Neill said he was not aware of such an offer.
If such an offer ever really was made, I’m sure the Major would have known about it. Something really stinks about this.
I think all cities like Berkeley and Toledo should be put on notice.
Does Toledo get federal earmarks?
Southern Sass on Crime has it, too.
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Right Voices linked with Mayor Is A Democrat..Of Course..UPDATED:Mayor Has Some Explaining To Do…Why Were 200 Michigan Marine Reservists Kicked Out Of Toledo?...
February 9th, 2008 at 1:52 am
The military should remember this the next time there is a disaster. They can force you to go help but they can’t make you do a good job, and you get paid for piddling as well as you do for working. Wipe out everything in you path with any heavy equipment. Leave the city in worse shape than it was before the disaster and paint ‘compliments of the mayor, on each item or structure destroyed.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:40 am
As much as I could understand a response like that, I don’t think it’s appropriate. What’s more appropriate is for this guy to get a lot of bad press for his stupid decision; and any federal funds stripped from the community.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am
When Katrina hit there were people all over this country asking where the military was (many were already there but this **** makes great stories). Whenever there is some terrible event they scream for the military. The forest fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, and yet they disrespect those troops.
The Mayor of Toledo would be begging the Marines to be there if a natural disaster overwhelmed his city.
I wonder if these moonbats ever wonder about the day they cry for help and the warriors refuse to respond….
February 9th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
It was a good decision. The mayor is correct, the Marine Major is full of ****.
“You can go to military ranges for live fire [exercises], but there’s no way to duplicate the urban jungle unless you actually train inside a city,” Major O’Neill said.
This is hogwash, the Marines, and all services have extensive MOUT sites (Military Operations in Urban Terrain). The Marines have complete cities built in places like Pendelton (which is one of the largest MOUT sites in the world). We have cities in Fort Bragg, Ft Benning, Ft Dix, Ft Drum, and all throughout the country. Right now these cities have all been changed from Soviet style cities to Arab stylized cities. The allow for the use of smoke, stun grenades, training ordnance and a host of other options, including live fire shooting streets and houses.
Americans should not subjected to feeling comfortable with armed soldiers in our streets. After 9/11 the major cities were host to all sorts of troops, and rightly so. But this aint 9/11 anymore. And occupying Toledo is not good training, but it is stupidity. Besides which, any tactics they use will be seen by all, including the enemy who I am sure would have sent observers. Which enemy? Just look around, because no matter what an Arab Muslim tells you about freedom of religion to your face, the reality is that he wants you either converted or dead.
Major O’Neill obviously has never been to any sort of MOUT training or SOF training or he would know all this, and were they playing or training? If they were training then they needed professional soldiers who are capable of MOUT instruction and obviously this is something they didn’t have, based on his idiotic comment above and the fact that he doesn’t even know about the available MOUT sites. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
And I agree with the Mayor that is scares people and they don’t need to be scared. They should be sufficiently scared already just watching the nightly news.
February 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
An urbanizing world means combat in cities, whether we like it or not. Any officer who states categorically that the US Military will never let itself be drawn into urban warfare is indulging in wishful thinking. Urban combat is conceptually and practically different from other modes of warfare. Although mankind has engaged in urban combat from the sack of Troy down to the siege of Sarajevo, Western militaries currently resist the practical, emotional, moral, and ethical challenges of city fighting. Additional contemporary players, such as the media, and international and nongovernmental organizations, further complicate contemporary urban combat. We do not want to touch this problem. But we have no choice. The problem is already touching us, with skeletal, infected fingers. The US military must stop preparing for its dream war and get down to the reality of the fractured and ugly world in which we live–a world that lives in cities. We must begin judicious restructuring for urban combat in order to gain both efficiency and maximum effectiveness–as well as to preserve the lives of our soldiers. We must equip, train, and fight innovatively. We must seize the future before the future seizes us.
That’s where Toledo and other cities come in. The future of warfare lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, industrial parks, and the sprawl of houses, shacks, and shelters that form the broken cities of our world. We will fight elsewhere, but not so often, rarely as reluctantly, and never so brutally. Our recent military history is punctuated with city names–Tuzla, Mogadishu, Los Angeles, Beirut, Panama City, Hue, Saigon, Santo Domingo, Fallujah–but these encounters have been but a prologue, with the real drama still to come.
In many of our own blighted cities, massive housing projects have become uninhabitable and industrial plants unusable. Yet they would be nearly ideal for combat-in-cities training. While we could not engage in live-fire training (even if the locals do), we could experiment and train in virtually every other regard. Development costs would be a fraction of the price of building a “city” from scratch, and city and state governments would likely compete to gain a US Army (and Marine) presence, since it would bring money, jobs, and development–as well as a measure of social discipline. A mutually beneficial relationship could help at least one of our worst-off cities, while offering the military a realistic training environment. The training center could be at least partially administered by the local National Guard to bind it to the community. We genuinely need a National Training Center for Urban Combat, and it cannot be another half-measure. Such a facility would address the most glaring and dangerous gap in our otherwise superb military training program. We need to develop it soon.
From Parameters, Spring 1996, pp. 43-50. © 1996 Ralph Peters
February 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I personally believe that more people need to know and understand the military since they seem to now be removed from it. Along with that goes a complete misunderstand and many misconceptions around who these people are, and what they do. There once was a time when everyone knew someone in the military. Most men at some point in their lives had a stint in some type of military service; but that is no longer the case.
People like this Mayor in particular need more exposure to military personnel and the military culture, IMO. Not less.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Mayor Is A Democrat..Of Course..UPDATED:Mayor Has Some Explaining To Do…Why Were 200 Michigan Marine Reservists Kicked Out Of Toledo?…
UPDATE II: Roger Kimball, Instapundit, and Michelle Malkin are covering this. Tons more blog reacts at Memeorandum.
Cao has more details with a must read here.
UPDATE: Heartfelt appreciation goes out to Cao who provided this link that actually offer…
February 11th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Sometimes, when things like this occur, it is not due to “moonbattery” so much as the need for more open dialog and understanding. I think due to the fact that so many don’t understand the role of the military as Cao states, and with all the benefits available to both sides of the issue like Maj Peters stated, we live in scary times, and when people don’t know what’s going on, they do get scared and call people at City Hall. The Mayor’s duty is to his citizenry, so I also agree with Jack, that he may have had other choices if it had been better communicated to everyone what was going on. I have learned a good deal from reading this post. Thanks all.