Chris Owens is running for Congress in 2006 from the 11th
District, a Brooklyn seat his father, Major Owens, has held since
1982. He is obviously an intelligent man, having graduated from
the Bronx High School of Science, so I'm having difficulty
understanding why he doesn't comprehend what the phrase
"freedom of speech" entails. Two reasons might explain
that failing: He is a Democrat and he went to Harvard.
Mr. Owens sent out a press release February 22, defending those
students from Junior High School 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who
sent letters critical of the Iraq war to a soldier stationed in a
combat area. Mr. Owens chastised the New York Post for using
phrases such as "poison-pen pals" to refer to the
students who, Mr. Owens said, were engaging in "the most
essential of democratic activities - free speech."
To recap what the controversy is all about, Private First Class
Rob Jacobs received 21 letters from those students, nine of which
were full of political rhetoric and viciously critical of our
presence in Iraq. One accused the soldiers of burning mosques and
killing civilians. They were demoralizing and offensive, and the
public reaction has been vehement, with some suggesting that the
children were mouthing the opinions of adults.
When it comes to the Iraq war, Mr. Owens, like many other
Democrats, has a problem distinguishing it from the Vietnam
conflict, even though, he writes, he was only 8 at the time. A
very precocious third-grader, I might add, who read daily
newspapers and went on protest marches with his parents.
"I was no more a victim of propaganda in 1967 than these
children are today," the candidate said. "And, as
students, none of us were as influenced by media-stoked hype and
fear as the millions of Americans who never challenge the Iraq
War or its foundations."
Mr. Owens writes in his press release:
"The Iraq conflict is allegedly a defense of our way of
life. Are we not defending free speech? If the purpose of writing
letters to our men and women in uniform was to only say nice
things and pretend there are no issues, then there would be no
educational value to the exercise. Thirty years ago, it was the
moral conflict in America that ended the slaughter of American
and Vietnamese lives. Young people were the catalysts for change
then and it is the next generation's power that will change our
policies in this decade."
Some Harvard professors think freedom of speech refers only to
speech that is politically correct. Right, Mr. Summers? As for
Mr. Owens's statement that he was not a victim of propaganda,
I'll just put that statement down to third grade naivete. The
only news coverage of the Vietnam War was by a left-leaning press
sympathetic to the anti-war movement, coverage that accentuated
the negative and eliminated anything positive. One day in the
future, the havoc that journalists such as Walter Cronkite
wrought on this nation by deliberately distorting our military
victories will be exposed, but not by this current crop of
accomplices who've been trying to do the same thing in Iraq.
No one is denying anyone the right to free speech, but when Mr.
Owens can say the purpose of writing letters to soldiers should
not be to say nice things he has no heart. By all means, have
those students write to President Bush, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Rice, but to the grunts out in the
field? Write nice things. Wish them well. Save your scathing
remarks for the powers that be. Teach your children compassion.
Events like this make me embarrassed to be a New Yorker, but then
it's always good to hear a story with a different slant about us.
Matt Friedeman, who has a state-wide radio program in
Mississippi, received a call from a soldier who commented on that
beer commercial showing soldiers getting cheers at an airport.
This Marine, who called himself Rick from Winona, came back in
December and landed at JFK airport. He and seven other soldiers
had been nervous about how they would be treated. "We didn't
know what to expect," he told Mr. Friedeman. "From the
news media we were seeing, the whole country was basically
telling us we're a bunch of jerks."
As they stepped off the breezeway in trepidation, an elderly man
stopped, tears came to his eyes, and he saluted them.
"Everybody in the terminal ... I kid you not, at least two
to three hundred people ... just started clapping,
spontaneously," the Marine said. "To me, it was so much
worth what we were doing, to realize that people over here
actually get what we are doing."
Would you have clapped, Mr. Owens?