Once a Marine ...

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Jeremiah Wright Jr. had quite a month for himself in April. He singlehandedly left the campaign of his long-time friend and parishioner Barack Obama with damage-control problems that the captain of the Titanic might have recognized. But his bridge burning did not stop there.

Mr. Wright also alienated the United States Marine Corps. He hides behind the fact that he once wore the uniform of the Corps when people impugn his very questionable patriotism, while he compares the Marines who have served, and are serving, in Iraq to the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus. This has caused many among even his former supporters to wonder what he was thinking.

To say his statements incensed current and former Marines would be a monumental understatement. The Marines like to say, "Once a Marine, always a Marine." One is well advised never to call someone an ex-Marine. Marines call people who have been honorably discharged from the ranks, "former Marines." People who received less than a fully honorable discharge are called ex-Marines. Lee Harvey Oswald was an "ex-Marine."

There is an unwritten code among former Marines that they will do nothing to dishonor the Corps. Most Marines believe that they belong to a special fraternity that precedes the birth of the nation itself. The vast majority of us credit much of whatever success we may have gained to what we learned in its ranks. Former Marines as diverse as both of Virginia's senators and comedians Drew Carey and Jonathan Winters credit the Corps with giving them the self confidence to take on daunting challenges.

Most of us former and serving Marines are legitimately outraged when someone uses his service in the Corps to hide behind his misbehavior. To use one's service to justify something ill-advised that he has done is one thing, but to go on to insult the Corps is incomprehensible.

Marines are not only dying in Iraq, but they are simultaneously conducting humanitarian and nation-building operations under conditions unprecedented in American history. Better still, they are showing results to the point where they are bored and looking for new challenges in Afghanistan. This makes Mr. Wright's remarks particularly odious.

I recently offered a panhandler (or, to be politically correct, "homeless person") who hangs out near my place of employment $100 to remove his Marine Corps baseball cap and not put it back on while engaging in whatever passes as a job for him. His response was at least honest, "No way, buddy: This thing is worth fifty bucks a day." Unlike Mr. Wright, he at least seems to have a rational reason for his behavior.

I have no idea what kind of Marine Mr. Wright was. I assume that he received an honorable discharge, as he was subsequently allowed to enlist as a Navy corpsman (medic). I understand that he passed up a student deferment to serve in Vietnam. That is to his credit, but it is not an excuse.

I am a Republican and do not like most of Mr. Obama's policy opinions; however I am fairly certain that he did nothing to deserve what Mr. Wright has done to his campaign. The same goes for the Marine Corps. One has to ask how Mr. Wright would have felt in Vietnam to be compared to a servant of Roman tyranny.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Obama's campaign will be fatally hurt by the reverend's rants. The Marine Corps certainly will not.

However, this modern-day rainmaker has almost certainly further damaged the reputation of the charismatic branches of Protestantism that have been rocked in recent years by the likes of Jim Bakker and other faux men of the cloth who preach salvation for the poor while bilking them of their money in order to retire to mansions in gated subdivisions.

It is easy to make too big a deal of an individual willing to make a spectacle of himself merely to sell a book. But Mr. Wright has a following. Some of them are young and impressionable African Americans, as Mr. Obama was when he first fell under Mr. Wright's influence. He is a questionable role model to say the least.

There is an irony here. No matter what kind of backstabbing narcissist Mr. Wright may be, if he indeed did receive an honorable discharge, Marines will show up if his family requests it to help put him in the ground when he checks off the net for the last time. What God does with him is God's business. Semper Fi, Reverend Wright.

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Officer.