Bennett Returns Fire at Pro-War Teach-In
While battles rage in Iraq, prominent conservative thinker William J. Bennett is waging a parallel struggle in this country to win the hearts and minds of the nation's college students.
On Wednesday night, he took his case to UCLA, asking an audience of about 300 students to consider the arguments in favor of the war in Iraq and a broader attack on terrorism.
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Bennett is determined that teach-ins, a concept born during the antiwar protests of the 1960s, not be the exclusive province of liberals and leftists. This, in fact, was the third pro-war teach-in -- the first on the West Coast -- led by the former U.S. drug czar and education secretary on college campuses.
Colleges often are considered a bastion of antiwar sentiment, but Bennett and similarly minded compatriots representing an organization dubbed Americans for Victory Over Terrorism say they are trying to cut through what they regard as the overwhelmingly liberal rhetoric of university professors. Bennett, one of the most outspoken members of former President Reagan's Cabinet, was joined by R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995 and currently a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; and L. Paul Bremer III, a State Department counterterrorism chief from 1986 to 1989.
The conservative initiative, funded by private donations and foundation grants, was launched in March 2002 by Bennett as an offshoot of his Washington-based Empower America think tank.
"We want to answer some of the slanderous remarks and accusations, and in some cases lies, that are made by those in the antiwar crowd," said initiative spokesman Jeff Kwitowski in a telephone interview preceding the teach-in. "We want to answer those in a serious matter, with facts and with serious intellectual arguments, not just cheap slogans."
Although attendance was relatively sparse compared to recent turnouts for war opponents like Gore Vidal and Edward Said, some students clearly appreciated the effort. Ben Storm, a 22-year-old graduate psychology student, said he attended because he backs the war in Iraq and believes it is hard to find people voicing similar sentiments on campus.
"When I think of UCLA, I think of a very liberal school, and biased in that direction," Storm said. "The majority of people on this campus never heard these arguments before and I think if they did, they probably would be more in agreement" with the war in Iraq.
