POLICE CAN'T JUSTIFY DRAWING GUNS ON KIDS

I have been following with mild horror the Goose Creek High School story. I
saw the video on TV, cops with guns drawn, at the ready, tensely surveying
and hollering at frightened and confused students. Now in the Nov. 16
Greenville News, I read about the support for the cops and principal. What
is the lesson to be gained from this? What are we trying to teach? We are
teaching our children that they must put up with behavior that we as adults
would not want to put up with ourselves. Would we tolerate the same
pre-emptive strike in the hallways of our workplace because our boss
suspected some were using drugs? We are teaching, "The end justifies the
means."

In the aftermath of 9-11, we have had the biggest threat to our freedom
given to us not by terrorists, but by Congress, in the Patriot Act. We were
told that extreme actions required extreme measures. This is the biggest
threat to our nation ever, bigger than McCarthyism.

When our president says there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we
must have a pre-emptive strike. We sit quietly by and against the world, we
let him do it. The lesson: The end justifies the means.

The end result in both attacks, interestingly, is no drugs, no arrests. The
only weapons of mass destruction were in the hands of the attackers.

Wilfred Lyon

Greenville