Davis high school students can 'Opt out'

For those of you outside our little slice of earth known as Yolo County, you may not know about the City of Davis. To help you understand the quirkiness, craziness and the downright bizarre nature of Davis, close your eyes and imagine downtown Berkeley, with less homeless people, more bicycles than Beijing, surrounded by farmland and 'normal people'.

Actually, I love Davis, it's a great little town if you can look past the 'BusHitler' bumper stickers and the Che Guevara t-shirts. The Davis City council has declared Davis a 'nuclear free zone' and built a toad tunnel to keep frogs from becoming street pizza. I am not sure how the city council can stop nuclear fission reaction inside the city limits but, hey they are smart people, they must have a way. The toad tunnel was a bust also, the toads found that the critters that like to snack on frogs found the end of the tunnel like a buffet table.

Does Davis have peace activists?
Boy howdy. Davis must have one of the largest peace activist to normal people ratios in the US. Cindy Sheehan is welcomed with open arms and unshaven legs at peace rallies, and if you listen real close, I bet you can hear a drum circle down at the park as I type this post.

So in summation, Davis is very liberal, kind of kooky, and a nice place to have lunch after church.

Which brings me to The Culture of Peace Working Group.

After discussions with the Davis school district, an 'opt out' form is developed for inclusion in the annual information packet that is mailed to families with high school students, which allows students to withhold their names and phone numbers from military recruiters. Over time, the group also develops an 'Alternatives To Military' information packet, which is placed in the Davis High School Career Center....

'There's a huge budget put into military recruiting, that's obvious,' Wormeli said. 'We could just imagine students going in there, seeing all this material from the military, saying 'We can give you money (to go to college), if you sign up.'

"But a packet about alternatives to military service was not there," Wormeli said. "And there are Davis students who are not going straight to college, for one reason or another."

I am not sure what message the group is trying to send to the high schoolers. The military is bad and should be avoided at all costs? Young adults are stupid, they don't watch the news and can't figure out what the military does? What ever happened to open discussions and looking at all points of view? Not when it comes to the military, at least for these folks.

What about the countless success stories, kids who were going nowhere and who are now thriving in the military. Many have become tremendously sucessful men and women while serving and once they get out. Would they rather have these kids working at the car wash for minimum wage or living in their parents basement going to peace rallies?

I met a Marine Corp seargent this summer, he is completing his degree this year and will ship off for officers training next spring. He knows where he is going, he is going to Iraq, and he wants to go. He wants to lead men and do what he was trained to do. God Bless him.

I don't think this peace group is doing anything un-American or un-patriotic, they are just foolish. They want to live in their make-believe world where everything can be solved by talking. That's a nice place to live, until you are sitting blindfolded, starring in a poorly lit beheading video shown on Al-Jazeera.

Wake up, your world does not exist, it never has and it never will. The more you try to hide the real world from the next generation the larger head start you will give the terrorists. America cannot 'Opt out' of this war, we can bring the troops home, like the Democrats want, but the terrorist will bring the war to our doorsteps, and shopping malls, and schools, and sushi bars, and even to Davis California.

I wonder if the city council will have the imbecility to proclaim Davis a 'terror free zone'.
It wouldn't surprise me.