I love the Marines. And apparently the Marines love me too. But frankly, our guys in the Corps are currently living life in a fairy tale. Which fairy tale? Cinderella. Think about it.

Here's Cinderella. She used to be the treasured offspring of an honorable man. And now she's just a scullery maid and a drudge for her wicked stepmother. And if Cinderella represents the Marines in this fairy tale, then who does the wicked stepmother represent?  We all know who - and if we don't, then we should. Oh, okay. I'll spell it out for you. She represents the Bush-McCain clone's boss - that wicked fake evil globalized corporate “mother” who tries to pretend that she has our best interests at heart but who in reality has taken over our home and kicked us out in the cold.

So. How did I get on this Marines-as-Cinderella kick? Here's the story. Some very persistent lady who is the mother of two Marines in Iraq kept writing me and writing me about some incident in Afghanistan that two Marine officers are being court-martialed for - and something she wrote stayed with me. “The Marines are now doing the job of occupation that they were never meant to do.” Scullery work! No grand balls at the castle for them. No glass slippers. Their job now is to just go around and clean up behind the messes created by the wicked stepmother. Cinderellas. Our brave and historic Marines have just become Cinderellas.

The Marine mom who e-mailed me the other day passionately pleaded with me to DO something to help the Marines. What does she expect me to do? Produce a glass slipper or something? Find a handsome young prince? Oh, okay. I'll try.

“Once upon a time, America had a fine fighting force called the Marines. They would fight our country's battles in the air, on land and sea. Only somehow the strong and honorable fathers of our country - from George Washington to John Kennedy - all died out suddenly and the poor Marines were left as orphans, doomed to do the bidding of their wicked stepmother.”

As they say in the movie, “Night and day, it's Cinderella....” You all know that song.

“Now this wicked stepmother didn't care a fig about America and all that it used to stand for and she forced the Marines to live in the attic and perform menial chores. And the wicked stepmother degraded Cinderella, er, I mean, the Marines.”

The Few? The Proud? Now they are out washing the WSM's dirty laundry.

“But Jane,” you might say, “every fairy tale has a happy ending.  So where is the happy ending here?”

Where indeed?

PS: “As a humanist, a spiritual person and a peace activist, how can you possibly defend the Marines,” someone asked me recently. “They are nothing but killers and attack dogs.”

Yep. They ARE killers and attack dogs. That's them. But they are OUR killers and attack dogs. And after all the things that the Marines have done for us, it's the least we can do to rescue our Marines in return - to take them back from the globalization corporate boa constrictor that is swallowing them all up.

There have been several times in the past when Americans needed killers and attack dogs like the Marines - to defend our freedom. And there probably will be times in the future when we will need them again. But if we continue to let that wicked stepmother known as globalization shamelessly use and abuse our Marines and force them to run her various extortion racket errands for her all around the world, then when the time comes when we really do need to call on our Marines to help us here on our very shores, THEY WILL NOT BE THERE. Where will they be? Up in the attic, worn out from doing all the globalization mafia's menial chores.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Jane Stillwate,r is a freelance writer, civil rights and peace activist from Berkeley, California. She is also the author of Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East. Click here to contact Ms. Stillwater.