Man, the world has changed: when I was a kid, if kids wrote to a soldier overseas it was to make them feel good. The teachers would read the letters to make sure they were at least understandable, and off they’d go. Even at the height of the bitter, highly politicized Vietnam War this was the norm.
No more. This is an OUTRAGE:
February 21, 2005 — An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq.
Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.
That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.
“It’s hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don’t need to be getting letters like this,” Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey. “If they don’t have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all.”
One Muslim boy wrote: “Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?”
This has NOTHING to do with someone’s stance on the war, by the way. The issue here is LARGER:
Policy making decisions are not made by the soldiers in the field. If the teachers, principal, parents, etc felt this is what they wanted kids to be able to say about U.S. policy, then the letters should have been forwarded to New York’s Senators, the State Department or the White House.
But to allow these letters to reach the people out there in the field who have been assigned to a mission is almost beyond belief. What purpose could these letter service except to demoralize people out there who either do their job or refuse to do it and face military justice? Is it to let the kids vent? Then let the kids vent in other ways.
Close to half of these letters had the negative comments, according to the New York Post:
Most of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.
The letters were written as a social-studies assignment.
The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:
“While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation.”
Never censor? The principal didn’t have to censor. He could have used his COMMON SENSE and not forwarded these letters to people out in the field who do not set policy.
We’re sure this will become a politicized issue now — those on the right denouncing it and those on the left trying to defend it. But the people out in the field can’t change policy — they’re assigned to implement it. The principal and teacher were negligent .
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.