A small victory in the terror war

By: BRANDON CESMAT - For the North County Times | Tuesday, March 23, 2004 10:33 PM PST ∞

Carlsbad was in the fog of war on Saturday. People lined Carlsbad Village Drive holding signs against the war.

A boy with a peace placard strapped to his bike rode by, popping wheelies. A woman old enough to be his great-grandmother held a sign that said, "Honk for

Peace," and many did, flashing the peace sign.

Of course, a few gave the peace sign minus one.

Girls holding signs with a woman who was probably their mother were standing in the long line where the traffic on Carlsbad Village Drive brought a Blazer to a stop, a twenty-something male passenger holding a stiff middle-finger up to the three women's cardboard placards that said things such as, "Bush Lies and Soldiers Die," and "Empires Fall."

Perhaps the passenger hadn't developed the muscles of his right hand. It's possible he'd been using the finger earlier, and it was tired. Anyway, faced with three women who did not return the gesture, the finger went limp in its loneliness.

Unfortunately, that was not the only confrontation. As the activists marched, a woman reporter from the North County Times stopped a marcher by the railroad tracks. The man wore a T-shirt with a peace sign, sunglasses and a hat with a Lakota medicine hoop embroidered on it. His sign asked, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?"

As the other marchers left, a man in a black sweatshirt with "Reconnaissance" and the image of an eagle with open talons embossed on the back approached.

He carried two paper coffee cups. He was clearly a man who bench-pressed more than his own weight. He wore black shorts, revealing powerful calves, perfect

for stomping skulls. His dark crew cut was just turning gray at the temples. When he was about 20 feet from the pair, he said to the activist, "Take your (expletive) and clear out of here now."

The activist said, "What?"

The man in the reconnaissance sweatshirt steeped in and repeated himself.

The man with the "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" sign shook his head once and said,

"No."

The woman journalist watched.

The coffee shook in rage. "You are an (expletive)!"

"Why?" the activist asked.

This was not the answer the man expected. He appeared to believe that after being cussed out, he deserved a reply of "Sir, yessir, I'm an (expletive), sir!"

People accustomed to giving orders don't deal well with questions. Such as: "Isn't that an economic conflict of interest, Vice President Cheney?"

The man in the Reconnaissance sweatshirt would not be undermined. He turned to the woman and said, "Here, hold these," apparently ready to brawl.

Maybe it was the way the activist took off his sunglasses and lowered his head.

Maybe sweatshirt had failed to do reconnaissance on the woman's hands and didn't notice the tape recorder until he tried to hand her his coffee. Maybe he thought performing a scene from "The Passion" on Carlsbad Village Drive, casting himself as a Roman centurion, was not a way to win the war on terror.

As the sweatshirt began walking across Carlsbad Village Drive, the activist said the strangest thing. "Sir, no disrespect. I'm here for you, sir."

Now they both called each other sir: chivalrous anachronisms. A very small battle in the war on terror, but an important one.

Brandon Cesmat lives in Valley Center.

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