Bloody Ribbon Week

Via Radley Balko and Mark Kleiman, comes the most sickening observance of “Red Ribbon Week” imaginable.

If classes had been held in a forest yesterday at Marshall Middle School in Fauquier County, it would have been difficult for teachers to take attendance.
As the first bell rang, students bounded into hallways wearing twig- and branch-imprinted jackets or sporting fatigues stamped U.S. Army.
Principal Christine Moschetti said the school asked the students to don the martial clothing to show support for “the fight against drugs.” She wore a leafy, oversized camouflage T-shirt that she had bought at Wal-Mart for $5.
Camouflage Day at Marshall was tied to a national anti-drug campaign called Red Ribbon Week that began Monday. The week commemorates a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was slain on duty in Mexico in 1985. Organizers with National Family Partnership, a Florida-based group, said thousands of schools nationwide are participating through such activities as encouraging students to sign drug-free pledges or sponsoring spirit weeks.

Camouflage Day to fight drugs?
This is what it immediately brought to my mind…

On May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. [pictured right] was herding his family’s goats 100 yards from his home on the US-Mexican border in Redford, Texas, as he did every day. Six days before, he had turned 18 years old.
Unknown to Esequiel or any of the other residents of Redford, a group of four Marines led by 22-year old Corporal Clemente Banuelos had been encamped just outside the small village along the Rio Grande River for three days. After watering his small flock of goats in the river, Esequiel started on his way back home when the Marines began stalking him from a distance of 200 yards.
The four camouflaged Marines were outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment and weapons. Esequiel carried an antique .22 caliber rifle — a pre-World War I, single shot rifle to keep wild dogs and rattlesnakes away from his goats. The autopsy showed that Esequiel was facing away from the Marines when he was shot. He probably never knew the Marines were watching him from 200 yards away.
Thus it was that a 22 year-old United States Marine shot and killed an innocent 18 year-old boy tending his family’s goats. This outrageous act was the inevitable consequence of a drug prohibition policy gone mad. Esequiel Hernandez was killed not by drugs but by military officers of the United States government.

Is this what Principal Christine Moschetti wants to glorify? Or how about some of these? What kind of irresponsible “education” is this?