Anti-military bigotry by the Bay

[Stephanie]

I know this has already been discussed...but I just liked this article....


By Jeff Jacoby

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "In the first place God made idiots," observed Mark Twain. "This was for practice. Then he made school boards." The San Francisco Board of Education's 4-2 vote last week to abolish the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, which has been active in the city's high schools for 90 years, tends to support his view.


Why is JROTC being done away with? It isn't for lack of interest. More than 1,600 San Francisco students currently take part in its voluntary activities. "Kids love this program as if it's family," notes the San Francisco Chronicle. It is "a program that students and their parents wholeheartedly support."


Finances aren't the problem either. Operating JROTC costs the city less than $1 million out of an annual school budget of $356 million.


Nor is the problem bad management. The Chronicle reports that "no one has offered an alternative as coherent and well-run as JROTC."


Safety? Also not a problem. Though cadets have uniforms, they carry no weapons; the nonviolent programs emphasize leadership, self-discipline, citizenship, and teamwork. "This is where the kids feel safe," says one JROTC instructor, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Powell.


And the problem certainly isn't an absence of diversity. In a story on JROTC cadets at Galileo High School, Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker writes: "These students are 4-foot-10 to 6-foot-4. Athletic and disabled. College-bound and barely graduating. Gay and straight. White, black, and brown. Some leave school for large homes with ocean views. Others board buses for Bayview-Hunters Point." Several of the students come from immigrant families. At least one is autistic.


So what is the problem with JROTC? There isn't one. The problem is with the anti military bigotry of the school board majority and the "peace" activists who lobbied against the program on the grounds that San Francisco's schools should not be sullied by an association with the US armed forces.

"We don't want the military ruining our civilian institutions," said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, a far-left pacifist organization that routinely condemns American foreign policy and opposes JROTC nationwide. "In a healthy democracy . . . you contain the military."
Board member Dan Kelly, who voted with the majority, called JROTC "basically a branding program or a recruiting program for the military." In fact, it is nothing of the kind: The great majority of cadets do not end up serving in the military.


But then, facts tend not to matter to smug ideologues like Schwartz and Kelly, who are free to parade their contempt for the military because they live in a nation that affords such freedom even to idiots and ingrates. It never seems to occur to them that the liberties and security they take for granted would vanish in a heartbeat if it weren't for the young men and women who do choose to wear the uniform, willingly risking life and limb in service to their country.


According to The Chronicle, scores of JROTC students were on hand when the school board met last week; many of them burst into tears after the vote. Sad to say, they should probably have seen this coming. For in its trendy anti military animus, the school board was hardly breaking new ground.


In 1995, San Francisco's board of supervisors wiped the city's famous Army Street from the map, renaming it Cesar Chavez Street. Last year, city supervisors refused to allow the retired USS Iowa, a historic World War II battleship, to be docked in the Port of San Francisco. Like the school board vote, the spurning of the Iowa was intended as a slap at the US military and the foreign policy it supports. Supervisor Chris Daly explained his vote against accepting the battleship by announcing: "I am not proud of the history of the United States of America since the 1940s."


In 2005, San Francisco voters handily approved Measure I, a nonbinding ballot question dubbed "College Not Combat," which called for the exclusion of military recruiters from public high schools and colleges. The prevailing political attitude was summed up in a Weekly Standard headline: "San Francisco to Army: Drop Dead."

Not everyone feels that way. To his credit, Mayor Gavin Newsom excoriated the school board last week for "disrespecting the sacrifice of men and women in uniform" and warned that killing JROTC would only accelerate the flight of city residents from the public schools. "You think this is going to help keep families in San Francisco?" he asked. "No. It's going to hurt."


Going to? For 1,600 kids now faced with the death of a program that infused their lives with purpose, camaraderie, and self-respect, the hurt has already begun.

 

[shepherdboy]

I live in this God forsaken Bay Area and see all to clearly how the majority of the people hate the U.S. Armed forces and anything connected with it. They enjoy all their freedoms in which our servicemen provide for them, but they think and talk like the enemy we fight on the battlefield today. It drives me crazy when Veteran day comes around and the public school teachers are off enjoying the day off when most Veterans have to work. You know the very same teachers that encouraged its students to cut class and protest the war on terrorism. A Marine once wrote upon leaving for his 2nd tour to Iraq from the Bay Area.
"My enemy is all around me. He dwells in the public schools. He dwells in the news media. He serves in my government. I will close with and destroy him."
Cpl. M.A. Anderson 3/5 U.S. Marines

I am afraid the real battle for the United States will be of its own doing and its changing identity of what really is America.

 

[Eightball]

Whats so ironic, is that my my mother and father lived in San Francisco during the depression and through WW2.

My dad told me how patriotic everyone was in that city. Right where Candle Stick Park is, you won't believe how many military or war time ships were built to fight the WW2 Pacific war. My Dad helped build may of the ships that helped win that Pacific war. When you drive up on Skyline BLVD between the city of San Bruno, and South San Francisco, you see the Golden Gate Memorial cemetery, which seems to go for miles with white burial markers of the gallant, brave men who died in WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. It's a sobering site.

All along the California coast is the remnants of the old shore guns that could fire several miles out into the Pacific. Many of those gun implacements were concentrated around the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, or the Golden Gate. Years later, Nike Missile Batteries were installed during the Cold War years. They are now gone, except for one that I believe is a tourist spot.

My Dad told me that during WW2 you could see formations of military planes fly over, and every one got "goose bumps" watching these displays. All along the California coast, there was constant surveilance for Japanese Subsmarines, by Naval Blimps out of Navy's, Moffet Field at the South end of S.F. Bay in Sunnyvale, California . Numerous Tankers and other kinds of freighters were sunk/harassed by the Japanese submarines along both the California and Oregon Coast.

Dad said times were very scarey. After Pearl Harbor, no one knew if the Japanese Imperial Fleet was going to bombard the West Coast. All homes had to keep their windows shaded at night and all head lamps on the cars were equipped with covers that kept enemy aircraft from seeing the cars headlights from at night.

Overall, San Franciscans were always an independent bunch of folks.....It was a very cosmopolitan city, and it's roots were from the old Barbary Coast days, of Vigilante justice, and the old 49'er Gold Rush days. Never the less, the average San Franciscan of the pre-mid 1950's was a strong patriotic American breed yet very independent minded.

How it all changed...I just don't know... I know that during the Vietnam War, when I was living South of San Francisco, in San Jose(Silicon Valley), there definitely was a cultural change happening. It seemed in my opinion to start with the colleges/universities, and even the community colleges, in the Bay Area; most notable, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State. As the New media of the time picked up on the campus unrest and rebellion, it seemed to trickle across the U.S. to the point that we had the Kent State "happening" at it's peak.

Again, I just don't know. When I was in high school and college during Vietnam, it just seemed that the new drugs, LSD, the resurgence of Marijuanna, and other old stays like Heroine......etc.. ; seemed to link up with this new anti-authoritarian, attitude via the baby boomer generation that was being "tapped" through the National draft to fight in Vietnam. The Media at first started out rather gung ho about getting the Commies out of Southeast Asia, and then as the war resulted in casualties, the media started changing it's mantra gradually to an anti-war message both overtly and covertly in fresh news and editorializing.. It was not unlike how Gulf War # 2 started. Only this time the patience to have a quick clean, bloodless( minimal American casualties) war, as in Gulf War 1 didn't happen, the press gradually asuaged and massaged us sheeple into our present negative mentality. Of course there were always your Old anti-war hippies that had converted to shirt and ties, belly-aching about any and all wars, but now the Universities were and are flooded with faculties that don't even reflect normal American values, but are just utopian, globalized, Europeanized, monks with beards and reading glasses warping the fresh innocent minds of 18 and 19 year old Gen X/Y, and Z kids. War is bad.....War is never necessary, or of necessity, ....."Borders, culture, ethics/morals and language aren't integral or important to sustaining a national identity or co-hesiveness......." The old, "If it feels good, do it.", is taking precedence again.

No, San Francisco once was not the capital of the "Left" coast. It was always a raucous city from it's beginnings. It sustained probably the most horrific damage/distruction that any American city has sustained as a result of natural causes during the 1906 Earthquake. It picked itself up from the ashes and ruin to become a beautiful gleaming beacon in the West, and a 2nd Ellis Island landing point for the masses from the Far East.

Maybe even this massive liberal spiral into a vast non-indentity as a nation will be cyclical, and even San Francisco will come to it's senses, some day, as a result.

I just know that many a good solid Americans came out of San Francisco. There grave markers attest to this at the Golden Gate Memorial Cemetery.,......and though their kind may be a minute minority there now, don't discount the contributions that have come from this city in the past. Right now, I'm saddened and embarrased. Just don't throw the whole West Coast out with the bath water, yet.

 

[William Joyce]

I just know that many a good solid Americans came out of San Francisco. There grave markers attest to this at the Golden Gate Memorial Cemetery.,......and though their kind may be a minute minority there now, don't discount the contributions that have come from this city in the past. Right now, I'm saddened and embarrased. Just don't throw the whole West Coast out with the bath water, yet.

In what would come to mark my life, I was born in a military hospital in San Francisco. Most people aren't aware there ever WAS a military hospital in San Francisco.

 

[5stringJeff]

We should let China invade San Fran, just for target practice. Then we'll see how much they want the military around.

 

[manu1959]

In what would come to mark my life, I was born in a military hospital in San Francisco. Most people aren't aware there ever WAS a military hospital in San Francisco.

letterman in the presidio....good golf course as well

 

[Eightball]

I have a little piece of memorabilia from the San Francisco Army Presidio. I picked up a sturdy old, solid oak, office chair that some guy was selling at a garage sale a few years ago. The chair had once been a government spec office chair from the Presidio. It's solid as a rock, and underneath it, it has a tag attached that says, "War Department". It may date back to even, WW1!

Remember also that the Army had an air field as part of the Presidio near the South end of the Golden Gate Bridge Anchorage. It was called Crissy Field. I actually attended a Cours De Elegance, Classic Car show at Crissy Field back in the 1970's.

Of course Crissy Field and the S.F. Army Presidio is now a National Park. Sadly, many of the old military building are in such dis-repair. A lot of vandalism has occured as well as thievery. So much history is there of San Francisco's old days of being a military bastion of strength on the West, United State's coast. It was a very patriotic, American city, that sacrificed much for the WW2 effort in lives lost.
*
Speaking of military Hospitals, there is a very large Veteran's hospital about 30 miles to the South of S.F. in Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University. I think this is the main military hospital for the S.F. Bay Area.

My sister was actually born in San Francisco, at St. Mary's Hospital, in 1943. My folks weren't Catholic, but the infant-care at St. Mary's was considered the best at the time. I was born in Burlingame, just South of San Francisco, at Mills Hospital, on El Camino Real.

 

[90K]

yes the Presidio was a nice facility up until it closed. I was stationed at NAS Alameda and it too is in disarray from not being used. i liked living out in the Bay too many fruitcakes but a lot of history and it always had stuff going on.

 

[Eightball]

yes the Presidio was a nice facility up until it closed. I was stationed at NAS Alameda and it too is in disarray from not being used. i liked living out in the Bay too many fruitcakes but a lot of history and it always had stuff going on.

A sports car club I used to belong to was using the NAS Alameda air strip for doing Auto Crossing, after the station had been closed-up.

 

[manu1959]

A sports car club I used to belong to was using the NAS Alameda air strip for doing Auto Crossing, after the station had been closed-up.

they filmed the matrix there as well as most of the mythbusters shows

 

[Eightball]

they filmed the matrix there as well as most of the mythbusters shows

I have watched "Myth Busters" and definitely recognized the Bay Area locations, but I didn't know that "The Matrix" was done at NAS Alameda.