Combat is my profession and fighting was a great way to maintain a combat mindset while preparing to lead Marines in war.
For over 221 years our Corps has done two things for this great Nation. We make Marines, and we win battles.
We have never been big smokers, neither Cheech [Marine] nor I. We were too creative, and we had a lot to do. We are actors and to be honest, I am the type of person that can reference a thought or a smell and get high.
There's documented cases of US marines shooting at ambulances, shooting at aid workers, destroying shopping centers, raising huge issues not only of violations of the Geneva Convention over targeting protected groups, but also of proportionality, because the entire battle was launched to get the people who killed four Blackwater security contractors, and a city of 300,000 people, about the same size as Oakland, California, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was leveled in response, under the command of General [James] Mattis.
In one of his final acts in office, President Obama shortened the sentences of 209 prisoners, pardoned 64 individuals. The list included Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, longtime imprisoned Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera and retired U. S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright. But missing from the list is 71-year-old Native American activist Leonard Peltier.
The war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations. Women who were liberated, women who were doctors and lawyers and poets and writers and - you know, pushed back into this Shia set against Sunnis. The U. S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it's fighting Islam. So we are in a situation that is psychopathic.
I am passionate about making sure that we collectively and proactively preserve all of the world's most iconic coastal and oceanic wild places - those keystone ecosystems that are irreplaceable, breathtakingly beautiful refuges for fish and other marine wildlife.
A Marine should be sworn to the patient endurance of hardships, like the ancient knights; and it is not the least of these necessary hardships to have to serve with sailors.
My acting range is incredibly limited and narrow, but I'm a good heavy. I'm a good authoritarian figure; I don't know why. "Can you be a cop?" Sure. "Can you be a Marine?" Absolutely. Well, at least in a movie.
The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason these days.
Those who served, and those who continue to serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and we can never forget the importance of their commitment to our Nation.
We have Trumpist (ph) tendencies in Europe. Look up Marine Le Pen in France. Look at the Five Star Movement headed by a clown by profession, Beppe Grillo, in Italy.
The highly skilled workers at Lima have enabled the plant to grow far beyond its original mission, now providing a wide variety of cutting-edge military vehicles and equipment to the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.
By their victory, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions and other units of the Fifth Amphibious Corps have made an accounting to their country which only history will be able to value fully. Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.
Look, many of us here are regular marines. . . I will die as a marine because that is my dream.
I got a little bit of the Marine mentality from my dad, I guess. You can't but help absorb the culture you're around.
I can now say without hesitation the Marine Corps was the best foster home I ever had.
My new city [Seattle] and its hinterland felt deceptively homely. Their similar latitude gave them the angular light and lingering evenings I was used to. Their damp marine weather, blowing in from the southwest, came in the right direction. When the mountains are hidden under a low sky, one might almost imagine oneself to be in Britain.
I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in war as a notion and in experiencing it. I was interested in history and how societies form. I was interested in the recent history of what had provoked these wars. So when I finally got out there, I was really seeing the wars through the American perspective, much more than through being embedded with American soldiers and Marines.
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