"MILITARY NOT WELCOME"

March 31, 2008 

Whether it’s the Berkley, California, City Council’s attempts to close the Marine Corps recruiting station, schools turning away recruiters, or the Forest Lake, Minnesota, High School cancelling a visit by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, there are places today in America, most troubling many of our schools, where the US Military isn’t welcome. Are these just isolated incidents in a country where the US military is the most respected institution in government? Or are they symptoms of a more systemic problem?

As a Vietnam War veteran I have first-hand experience with anti-war and anti-military attitudes. Fortunately, few Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans have had to experience the pervasive anti-war/anti-military attitudes and behavior Vietnam War veterans experienced. Most Americans today are proud of the US military. Even most of those who oppose the Iraq War know better than to take their opposition to US policy out on the troops who have to execute it. Still, the military-not-welcome sign appears in too many places.

The San Francisco Bay area has a long history of opposition to the military. On March 17, Melody Karpinski, a staff writer for The Oakleaf Online, the Santa Rosa, California, Junior College Student Newspaper noted the most recent incidents. Expressing her displeasure, no doubt shared by many Bay Area students, she said, “I don’t know about the rest of you JC students out there, but I am sick and tired of the way the military is treated in the Bay Area.”

In a country as large and diverse as the United States, there will always be places like Berkley. And during a time of war, especially a war that’s unpopular with a large segment of American society, there are going to be anti-war protests and anti-military attitudes. It comes with freedom and democracy. But as I wrote in my November 12, 2007, column “Confidence in the Military,” in a Gallup poll taken in June 2007 Americans ranked the US military as the institution in which they had the most confidence. Sixty-nine percent said they had either “a great deal,” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the US military. Despite the Iraq War, respect for the military in America is high.

Why then are there so many instances of schools excluding military people from job and career fairs or other appearances in communities where regard for the military is high? Is it because school administrators have become increasingly susceptible to intimidation by vocal minorities?.

Case in point is Forest Lake High School in Minnesota, a place not known for its opposition to the military. The Forest Lake High School principal, Steve Massey, disinvited Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans scheduled to speak at the school, not because of deeply felt anti-war feelings by the majority of students and their families, but because a few parents called the school, complained, and threatened to protest.

In canceling the event, Massey claimed that the visit had become “too political.” When that explanation didn’t play well with the public, Lynn Steenblock, Forest Lake School District superintendent, provided a different explanation. She said it threatened “student safety,” although she produced no evidence that there was ever any credible threat to the safety of the students or the soldiers. No one mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit over the visit, but they didn’t have to.

In “L is For Lawsuit” appearing on March 29 on Salon.com, Janelle Brown writes about this trend in our schools. “Indeed, the number of threats and lawsuits against teachers and schools -- many of which fail to grab the attention of national media -- has risen dramatically over the last decade, forcing schools to spend limited funds on lawyers and insurance, and teachers to spend more time protecting themselves from potential litigation; and, in the process, instituting defense strategies that are changing education in the country's public schools -- and not for the better.” Far too many school administrators have become conditioned to react by giving in at the first sign of opposition rather than resisting it. They’ve learned the hard way that people will sue for the most inane reasons.

Americans are and should be concerned about this kind of behavior for many reasons. They should be concerned about it when it involves preventing interaction between our schools and the military because, over time, it can have insidious and undesirable consequences. A free and democratic society can least afford to build walls between its high school and college students and its warriors. It’s a bad practice not only because, in a country that depends on an all-volunteer military, they are a pool of potential recruits but because they are citizens whose attitudes and future votes affect the course of the country.

Today young men and women can grow up in an America never having had a meaningful conversation with someone in a military uniform. The overwhelming majority will never serve in the military, and all they know about it is what they see in the movies and on TV, not very credible sources these days. 

We may believe, because there are millions of military veterans in American society, that this isn’t a problem. Everyone, we assume, knows someone who has or is serving in the military. To some extent this may be true, but it doesn’t take the place of interaction between students in our schools today and people close to their own age serving in the military.

The next time someone from the military is scheduled to visit a school in your community, remember the words of the 19th Century British Army officer, writer, and adventurer, Sir William Francis Butler. "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards."