BERKELEY, Calif.  On Tuesday night, the nine members of the Berkeley City Council are expected to do something they, or the Marines, for that matter, very rarely do: retreat in the face of fierce opposition.

“The staff are supposed to be there to protect us from our stupidity,” said Councilwoman Betty Olds, who is 87, as feisty as a cornered rattlesnake and a leader of the retrenchment. “And they didn’t do any better than we did.”

For weeks, the Council has been at the heart of a mess related to its proclamation that the Marines  them that stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima  were not welcome to run their three-person recruiting office downtown.

The Council, with its staff’s concurrence, apparently, also set aside a parking spot one day a week in front of the office for Code Pink, an antiwar group that aims to disrupt the recruiters and, like all Californians, loves a good parking spot.