Toledo Mayor Finkbeiner Doesn't Like The Marines

Updated: Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008, 1:32 pm -- The guys over at Black Five have a couple of thoughts about Mayor Finkbeiner.

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The Blade newspaper has the details. For my entire life, I have been over-the-top pro-military. As my regular readers know, I have three nephews in the Army -- two in SF. But I have always had mixed feelings about uniformed military holding exercises in the middle of our downtown areas. My concern is with the civilian populace getting too used to seeing this. Becoming desensitized to any kind of regular military presence on our streets.

Still, our military plays a very important role and does need to train. And many soldiers, marines and SF personnel have noted that real-life training helped them deal with urban warfare in Iraq and Afganistan.

Mayor Finkbeiner has several control issues, though, that he is dealing with. I can only imagine that there are a handful of ex-military among Toledo's police department, and that when the order went out to set up a roadblock to keep the Marines out, there were some raised eyebrows at police HQ. His other control issue is an irrational fear of firearms, but that is a post for another day.