ambassador's remarks

General and Mrs. Omar Halleslevens;

Staff Sergeant and Mrs. Dannie Cohen;

Members of the Marine Security Guard detachment;

Colleagues from the embassy and the American community in Nicaragua;

Nicaraguan guests;

Ladies and gentlemen:

Good evening and thank you for your presence here.  I particularly want to thank Staff Sergeant Cohen and his superb security detachment for organizing for the second time this event.  Due to circumstances beyond their control, the Marine Ball had to be cancelled in November.  This is the Marine Dining Out, but we can pretend it’s the Ball and enjoy ourselves as if it were November tenth. 

I am especially grateful to our security detachment for having invited me and my wife, Debbie, as the guests of honor this year.

For 233 years and two months the United States Marines have distinguished themselves as among the most storied fighting forces in the annals of history.

If you don’t believe me, just ask a Marine. 

They are steeped in their glorious history and proud of their contributions to our nation’s defense.  The fact that there are no ex-Marines, just Marines who have temporarily taken off their uniforms, speaks to that noble legacy.

Like all American diplomats, Debbie and I have come to know many Marines through their service in our embassies.  Some may think that this is safe duty, but we know from personal experience that it can be anything but secure. 

On March 17, 1981, as we were serving in San Jose, terrorists hit the Marine van with a bazooka rocket as it was heading toward the embassy, seriously wounding two Marines.

In 1990, when we were assigned to our embassy in La Paz, a group of radical Marxists fired an RPG at the Marine House, killing a locally hired guard, narrowly missing a couple of Marines who were watching television, and damaging extensively the property.

And when I was serving in Baghdad from 2004 to 2005, the embassy’s last line of defense was a Marine rapid reaction company.  Every time they were called out, every time they conducted a drill, we felt safer and more secure.  They were a fit, tough group.

During my tour in Iraq, the Marines won the Battle for Fallujah, which many military historians said would rank among the Corp’s most illustrious victories.  And so it has. 

Fighting house to house and street to street in a hostile urban environment, battling more than 2500 fanatical enemies who would rather have killed themselves than relinquish a foot of ground, dealing with booby traps and improvised explosive devices, the Marines relentlessly retook the city in an intense nine-day battle. 

We would later learn that this victory, in significant measure, marked the turning point in reclaiming Anbar province for the Iraqi government.  Today Fallujah and Anbar are among the most peaceful areas in Iraq, and the terrorists who once made it their bastion are now dead or gone.

Although Marines tend to avoid false modesty when it comes to their triumphs on the battlefield, they don’t like to call attention to their intellectual achievements.  I learned this when I was teaching at the National War College.  When a course ends after about five weeks of study, each professor has to name the two best students in his or her seminar or group.  I planned to name a Marine colonel from Buffalo who went by the name of Ski.  I asked him to stay after class and told him that he had been selected.

Ski looked down and after a few seconds, asked:  “Do I have to accept, sir?”  Well, I said, why wouldn’t you?  It’s an honor and you earned it. 

“Naw, Marines are fighters, not scholars.  Why don’t you give it to one of the Air Force guys?  They like things like that.  Or better yet, to someone from the State Department.”

I am of a generation and a gender that grew up in awe of the Marines, wanting to be a Marine.  We were less than two decades removed from the Second World War, barely a decade after Korea, and the Corps was still virtually all male.  There was always something in the deep recesses of every boy’s mind that said if you were not a Marine you had not tested your mettle as a man.

This was reinforced every week, when we would travel to my grandfather’s house for Sunday dinner.  My brother and I would go into the basement, find the newspaper articles and the medals, and read about a young man who had left the University of Notre Dame, where he had started as an end of the freshman football team, after his first year to enlist in the armed forces.

He became a radio man and fought in two battles in the Pacific.  Then, in late May of 1945, on the island of Okinawa, participating in a mop-up operation, he got up one morning to string some cable.  A Japanese sniper, hidden in a tree, shot and killed him. 

He was 20.  His rank was Pfc.  He was my dad’s younger brother.  His name was Robert J. Callahan.  He was a Marine.

Thank you and enjoy the evening.