Telling kids to say 'no' to war

John Grant and Frank Corcoran have both been restless this summer, eagerly awaiting the reopening of school.

Yet the two men are not teachers and they are not students. Nor are they parents of school-age children.

Rather, they are Vietnam vets with a message they long to bring into schools and share with a younger generation.

The essence of that message: Don't be sucked into believing in notions of war as glorious and patriotic. War is an evil to be avoided at all costs.

Military recruiters and government advertising often dominate access to schools and tell teens the opposite, Mr. Grant says. That's why servicemen who have fought need to tell them the truth.

"In ads, you see out-of-work actors on helicopters," he says, shaking his head. "But that's not what it's really like. We've got to go out there and tell them that."

Grant and Mr. Corcoran are both members of the St. Louis-based Veterans For Peace. The group was founded in the mid-1980s by two veterans, one who had fought in World War II, and the other a Vietnam vet. It sees its purpose as debunking false notions of war as glorious, and alerting the world - particularly those who have never fought - to what they see as the stark and horrible reality of combat.

Part of its credo reads: "We find it sad that war seems so delightful, so often, to those that have no knowledge of it. We will proudly and patriotically continue to denounce war despite whatever misguided sense of euphoria supports it."

Governments want young people to believe that war is necessary, the group believes, but that is rarely - if ever - true. Some members of VFP are pacifists, while others believe war may be necessary to counter aggression. But most agree that the US government has - at least at times - waged war unnecessarily.

And they would like young people, particularly the potential enlistees, to examine the reasons for war much more critically than they are encouraged to.

Schools aren't the only channel of outreach of VFP, but they are an important one, says David Cline, president of the group. "It's one of our mainstay activities, especially for the Vietnam vets," he says. "We're trying to pass our experience on to our children and the younger generation."

But the group's forays into schools are limited partly by its small size (they have only 3,500 members nationwide), and partly by resistance from schools.

"There are teachers who want their students to hear another point of view," Mr. Cline says. But many are uncomfortable with bringing into the classroom a message that may seem not only antiwar but possibly even antigovernment.

Grant and Corcoran, who both live in the Philadelphia area, like to work together, and over the past several years have carried their antiwar message into middle schools, high schools, and both community and four-year colleges.

But since the US invasion of Iraq, they have felt an additional sense of urgency about getting into schools. Their main concern: Military recruiters have become more active in schools and may be filling students' heads with false notions of war as a patriotic duty.

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