For those of you who have been following the Seattle anti-war school spectacle we’ve been blogging about for the past week (see here and here), there are new developments. I just got off the phone with Maj. Terry Thomas, who was in attendance at the moonbat assembly at West Seattle High School. He’ll be meeting with the Seattle School Board president today to discuss the controversy.

As you’ll recall, three veterans including Maj. Thomas were invited to speak at what was supposed to be a fair and balanced presentation on the war in Iraq. Instead, they were confronted on the high school theater stage with figures costumed as Iraqi men, women and children splashed with blood. Here’s a reminder of how Maj. Thomas described the scene:

As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.

Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!

“It was the classic, Vietnam War-era baby-killer stuff,” Maj. Thomas told me this morning. Outside anti-war groups had “free reign” on campus, Maj. Thomas recounted. And contrary to the initial defense of school officials, it WAS NOT just unsupervised kids who came up with and executed the idea for the assembly.

As principal Susan Dersé acknowledged in a letter sent home to parents, the assembly “was organized by students with the guidance of faculty advisors and administrators.”

Which advisors? Which administrators? Maj. Thomas and others are demanding accountability from school officials, but so far we have no names. An apology from the unhinged adults who allowed this shameless exercise to occur is in order as well.

The principal, Susan Dersé, has long had an axe to grind with the U.S. military. According to a 1997 Seattle Times article, when she was principal of another Seattle-area high school, Shorecrest High School, she went out of her way to pander to a local peace activist who complained about the presence of military recruiters on campus:

SHORELINE - For years, you could find them regularly in the halls of Shorecrest High School, medals shining, black shoes agleam, trouser creases sharper than a regulation haircut.

They dropped into the weight room or career center, set up tables and chatted up students at lunch, recruiting for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

That bothered Glen Milner.

“It’s so common to see a recruiter on campus, it’s like the school is condoning military activity,” says Milner, whose son just graduated from Shorecrest and whose daughter will be a junior there in September.

“But in the case of military recruitment, there’s no truth squad. There should be an alternate voice,” he said.

It took Milner, a 46-year-old electrician and longtime peace activist, two years to persuade school officials to allow one.

Because of him, the school’s career center this spring started displaying brochures from an anti-war organization that questions recruiting claims about job training and money, the military’s two biggest selling points.

More dramatically, Shorecrest Principal Susan Derse said she planned to reduce the number of recruiter visits starting next fall - from four times a month, as has been the practice for years, to only six times annually. Recruiters would be allowed to meet students only in the presence of career specialists.

Is it any wonder these kids grow up, graduate, and then pull these kind of stunts against the troops?

Maj. Thomas told me this incident “shows to what depths the radical anti-war movement will go to invade our public schools and lash out at returning Iraq war veterans like myself.” It’s a travesty.

Take action:

West Seattle High School Principal (206) 252-8800 Susan Derse
Seattle School Superintendent (206)252-0100 Raj Manhas
rsmanhas@seattleschools.org
Communications Director (206)252-0200 Peter Daniels
wpdaniels@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 1 (206)252-0052 Sally Soriano
sally.soriano@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 2 (206)252-0031 Darlene Flynn
darlene.flynn@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 3 (206)729-3202 Brita Butler-Wall
brita.butler-wall@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 4 (206)297-4533 Dick Lilly
dick.lilly@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 5 (206)720-3303 Mary Bass
mary.bass@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 6 (206)933-5338 Irene Stewart irene.stewart@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 7 (206)760-4747 Jan Kumasaka jan.kumasaka@seattleschools.org

Update: LGF reproduces responses people are getting from the principal.

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