Giving thanks for open minds

Knowing a column will be coming on a major holiday is more a curse

than a blessing. Ignoring it marks the writer as insensitive, and

addressing it stumbles over the question of what hasn’t already been

said about Thanksgiving.

Columnist Art Buchwald had the only viable answer I know. In his

early years with the Herald-Tribune in Paris, he wrote a wonderful

column explaining this most American of holidays to the French -- and

he has repeated it every year since.

Since I have no such classic in my files and I’ve decided that

making the case for prime rib or beef rather than the archaic turkey

as Thanksgiving fare wouldn’t support an entire column, I will tip my

World Series cap to the spirit of the holiday and move on to another

matter in the current news for which I am thankful.

The recent spate of news stories and pictures of student

demonstrations for peace at UCI and Fullerton Union High School was

deja vu -- as Yogi Berra allegedly said -- all over again for me.

I was teaching in UCI’s English Department throughout the campus

chaos during the Vietnam war, and I find the current growing student

reaction to the threatened war in Iraq a heartening sign that young

people are once again tapping into the world around them in

substantive ways.

One of the things the student protesters won after the Vietnam war

was lowering the voting age to 18. So far, I’ve seen very little

evidence that newly franchised young voters have made extensive use

of this opportunity. Maybe it will take a war in Iraq -- or, much

better, a threatened war -- to make them voting participants in our

society.

I find this a perfectly legitimate motive, especially when the

people most aggressively pushing the current war with Iraq never

fought one themselves and won’t be fighting this one. If it takes the

threat of being drafted into a preemptive war to get our young people

involved, so be it.

I can remember facing a class at UCI the day after our invasions

of Panama and the island of Grenada and asking the students how they

felt about these actions.

In both instances, well over half the class didn’t even know the

invasions had taken place. When I suggested the possibility that they

might be required to serve their country if these actions were to

trigger something larger, they said they would deal with that when

and if it happened. And when I then asked if there were any current

public issues that might move them sufficiently to get personally

involved, they couldn’t think of any.

So I find these new examples of student involvement in public

affairs both positive and encouraging, especially because they open

healthy public debate among young people on issues that may deeply

affect their lives. It has also opened debate among often sharply

divided faculty members, which can only illustrate the most important

element of the lessons being taught in the classroom: the ability of

individuals to think critically in a democratic society.

Caitlin Orr, the 16-year-old junior who started the “Think Peace”

movement at Fullerton High School, has expressed her views in an

antiwar column in the student newspaper in tandem with a counterpoint

column strongly supporting an attack on Iraq -- which caused history

teacher Jeff Rupp to say proudly, “They’re using their heads.”

The protest got more dramatic at UCI, where fake bombs exploded,

scattering flour that turned civilians into victims when it settled

on them. Even though a young letter-writer to the Pilot missed it,

the point was clear: Bombs don’t just fall on soldiers.

The protest was mounted by 14 campus organizations, from the

Society of Arab Students to Amnesty International and was addressed

by a faculty member who suggested that the antiwar movement “needs to

grow and mature and move into a new phase” -- which wasn’t what some

of the protesters wanted to hear.

All of this reminds me of another UCI protest 30-some years ago,

when the library plaza was packed with angry students who had trashed

a bank building and were threatening to get out of hand again.

In this chaotic moment, Chancellor Dan Aldrich appeared on the

library balustrade and quieted the crowd by the sheer size of his

presence. Then for the next half hour he talked to them. I can’t

remember what he said, only that he literally talked them down, until

they began to break up into small groups and drift away.

I would hope -- and expect -- that the current protests don’t

regress to that point. But given the present ineffectiveness of the

Democratic party, we sorely need someone besides Russian President

Vladimir Putin to question the virtually unchallenged assertions

coming from the Bush war camp.

We have been led to believe that a war in Iraq -- including the

taking of Baghdad -- would be a walk in the park in which our air

superiority would bring Hussein to his knees with virtually no

casualties on our side. When a conservative columnist like James

Pinkerton takes issue with such rosy perceptions -- as he did last

week in the Los Angeles Times -- the people pushing a war on Iraq

should at least take notice.

Pinkerton quoted an Air Force Times writer recalling the disasters

suffered by invading armies in the streets of Stalingrad, Hue and

Mogadishu, who concluded, “If our leaders seriously intend to fight

in metropolitan centers, I hope they’ll think again.” Then Pinkerton

went on to quote U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks on the need to deploy 250,000

troops in the Iraqi theater to get the job done.

We can hardly fault the young people who might be drafted into

that force for questioning the wisdom of such a war and the validity

of the information being given them -- and all of us -- in support of

it. If the Bush administration can bypass the constitutional

requirement for approval from Congress to launch a war in Iraq, then

perhaps it should listen to the people who may end up fighting it.

I’m thankful on this Thanksgiving Day that they’re finding such a

voice in our own back yard.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.