LETTER: Flaring student opinion

Editor: I know that the war in Iraq has many emotions and
opinions flaring. In fact, at my school, Sonoma Academy (where
students and teachers are issued their own iBooks, and we have a
wireless network), an email frenzy was started in response to the
war and a link, which I sent out, to a website where you could sign
and show your support for the troops.
I’ll be quite honest and say that many people were angry about
that, and I’m still not sure why. The good part of this was that it
got every student involved, the whole 80 that go to Sonoma Academy,
voicing their own thoughts and opinions, writing lengthy responses
through email.
Personally, I support our troops and am even considering joining
the army next year after I graduate. I support our president in
this war and our troops who are away from their loved ones, helping
take down Saddam’s regime and liberate the Iraqi people.
Let’s take a trip into the past, to the eight years Bill Clinton
was our president. Many times he sent troops to other countries to
help with maintaining peace in those places, which resulted in
bumblings, combat, deaths of our own troops and innocent civilians
in those countries. Remember Mogudishu? That was the work of
Clinton.
When Clinton was sending men and women to “interfere” in places
like Somalia not one person laid down in a city street “in the name
of peace.” Why is this? Well, California is a mostly Democratic
state. Clinton is a Democrat, Bush is a Republican. Coincidence? I
think it could be, but then again, it might not be.
The bottom line here is very simple: Remember what makes it
possible for you to have the rights that you have, which is this
country. And support the men and women who are in harm’s way to
protect those rights for all of us, even those people who call
those same men and women criminals and murderers.
Jessy Schwartz, 11th grade, Sonoma Academy, resident of
Healdsburg