What is the latest one-on-one combat on the U.S. agenda this week? Berkeley v. the Marines of course. The Berkeley city council, together with Code-Pink, the antiwar group, took on the mission of letting the Marines know they we’re nothing but intruders, and what better place to do that than in front of the Marine recruitment office in Berkeley’s Shattuck Square.

The City Council carefully chose a special parking lot for the Code Pink activists, right in front of the recruitment office – what a coincidence – and gave them full support: “If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”

The public “debate” found another militant, this time anti-Pink: Washington lawmakers. And what they had to stay was not exactly music to Berkeley’s ears: they threatened to cut off $2 million federal funding to the city and the University of California – Berkeley. The city council previously approved to nonviolent means of protests from any kind of organization or the city residents, who wished to express their disapproval with the military recruiting office in Berkeley.

What the Pink Code militants were upset about was that young people get recruited and then sent to Iraq or Afghanistan to kill or be killed, and even if they come back to the U.S., the country doesn’t repay them for their services by taking care of them. However, not everyone agrees, as war veterans and young current or future recruits came to disagree and say the Marines were the best thing they could possibly have.

Sgt. Pauline Franklin, spokeswoman for the Marine Corps recruiting command, said to CNN there is “no plan for that office to move” and that recruiters were sent there to “provide information to qualified men and women who are looking for opportunities that they may benefit from by serving in the military.”