There is no such thing as a "Former Marine".
Solid decision by the publisher.
I'm glad that you are allowed to have a different opinion in the United States.
1
I agree with the withdrawal of the book, and commend Capstone for it quick course correction. Now, I recommend that instead of leaving the topic altogether, that the right children's book, or at least middle grades book, on Afghanistan be written. Not just because it is our country's moral obligation to educate children about our country's actions, but also for the children of soldiers who don't return home, to help recognize and respect the magnitude of their loss.
5
Good for Mr. Bell and NYT. I’m less impressed with the publisher. An apology and pulling a few titles is not enough. Also, we’re letting the library off the hook.
1. To those who point out that Bell knew what he was getting into when he joined the military - I don’t presume to know his reasons, but the military has always been primarily an economic decision for the underprivileged, mostly boys, who have few other career choices available to them. Patriotism (rightly) has less drawing power these days, though it may be alleged in retrospect.
2. Commendable that Bell pays attention to what his kids are reading, and asking him.
3. He objected (articulately and effectively!) to a reprehensible treatment of a subject that should never be made into an adventure game. The fact that it is, in other myriad books, films and video games, does not make it acceptable.
4. This isn’t a free speech issue; neither is that of the radio station deciding not to play “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. Both media are choosing what they wish. That’s not censorship, it’s sensibility. Objecting to their choices is free speech,.
5. Instead of an adventure game, we all need a reckoning of what war does to combatants, their loved ones, and society. It shouldn’t start at ages 8-10, but it should start before the legal age of military enlistment and include veterans like Bell. I wish my Dad, my husband and my Marine uncle had been able to go to college without going to war first.
3
When will we come to the painful realization that we are just not going to "win" this war? It reminds me the Viet Nam War. We will eventually leave and the world will go on. We should always honor those that fought and died. And abandoning this futile effort is in no way a discredit to them but an acknowledgement of value and merit of their fellow warriors who will not be sent to fight and die in a lost cause. Is there a difference in keeping this war going and the WWI generals who would order their troops to charge across the open fields into machine gun fire- for the umpteenth time? I say no. End it. Bring these kids home.
3
My nephew was one of the most brilliant and fearless young infantry commanders in the U.S. Army, for which he did 28 months of combat in the most vicious moments of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. People with multiple stars on their shoulders begged him to make the Army a career because they wished him to wear those stars, too. He career was directly promoted by a celebrated military intellectual. He is a direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln's great-great-grandfather. And yet when all was said and done, his soul was horribly ravaged by the unspeakable brutality and carnage he was forced to commit and witness, without complaint, without the least inner permission of fear or psychological resistance, with terrible consequences. I don't know Zachary Bell, or what he wishes his children to know. What I know is that I am an old man who will die with a pit of bitterness in his heart for the brutal, thoughtless, impersonal, de-humanized military of this country and its imperial delusions about itself--and all because of what this nation did to one human being whom I loved as much as a father can love his son. If Christ really exists--if God's mercy can't speak without hearing his justice--then there will in fact be a reckoning for what this country did to its own flesh and blood in these wars. That is the only certainty I have, and that certainty I will sacrifice to no wretched patriotism imaginable.
6
What about the school librarians (and history teachers no doubt) who have purchased and promoted this entire series for more than 10 years? This isn’t E. coli. I’ve never had a publisher recall books with the intent of destroying them. And to those who say war isn’t a appropriate topic for 10 and 11 yr olds...these books fly off my school library shelves as do the ones on the Flu Pandemic of 1918, the Titanic and Pompeii. How else do we pique the interest of young students thus inspiring a curiosity and love of history-if not with books? “A truly great library contains something in it to offend everybody.” (Unknown)
1
Can a children's book treat war honestly? I'm not convinced that one can convey the moral complexity the subject demands in a children's book.
Might it not be better to let children grow into learning about war and its terrible consequences by allowing them to pick up what are "adult" books when they are ready. Some 10 to 12 year olds have the intellectual capability to read brutally honest accounts of war while others do not.
3
From the point of view of corporate and editorial responsibility, Capstone made the right call. But as a researcher and writer about children's literature, I can imagine the value such a book will have to future historians as a record of how we thought about the war in Afghanistan, what we thought children could or should understand about it, and many other related issues. If it is not too late, I hope Capstone will reach out to academic libraries with substantial children's literature collections to see if they would be interested in obtaining a copy of this book. The process by which this book was written, edited, published, criticized, and ultimately removed from publication is itself a fascinating part of the history of children's literature even if we do not want it to be available to children in the future.
6
What about all those kids who saw John Wayne easily winning wars? Or those horrendous Chuck Norris and Rambo movies seen by many kids that falsely presented Americans POWs still being held by Vietnam long after the war ended.
When will movie companies take all of those out of circulation?
Or does Mr. Bell really think that books influence kids today far more than movies, TV, or anything on the internet?
3
From back in the day:
War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things
USN 1967 - 71
Viet Nam 1968
13
Well the book was not factual enough, it was too light? No one thought this book was plainly not right for its target audience? When is War appropriate for children 8-10? I am glad the publisher responded to the criticism I am sorry they did not stop the book before they ever published it.
4
I'm reading Red Platoon now and it is not for children. The vivid description of war made me stop to reflect on the ways that people are maimed and killed. Young readers cannot be expected to grasp what wars are like, or if they are safe in their homes or schools. The horror, the horror.
1
I truly empathize with both parties, my concern, however, is that I seem to read almost every day about a song, book, film, etc that is being removed or pulled from the air due to the objections of one individual.
An Ohio radio station no longer plays "Baby, It's Cold Outside" as a listener found it not in keeping with the Me Too movement.
The Huffington Post recently ran a piece objecting to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
When I was a kid I learned something like "if you don't like it, turn it off." I always thought that a better life plan than writing letters and making calls to get Howard Stern or South Park or Family Guy or Harry Potter (yes, there are more than a few folks deeply against kids reading HP).
When I was young, liberal meant a certain tolerance, question everything, and respect free speech (and by that personal free speech, not necessarily constitutional laws). In fact, I was taught that the speech I most disagreed with was the most worth protecting, if you can believe that!
My point is that I really have no horse in this race and if the publisher wants to stop publishing it, that's their choice. But if we start to judge Faulkner and Twain as racist, that Shakespeare and Mozart are recipients of "White Privilege" and patriarchal chauvinism, we are really not making progress, we are simply dialing back to our puritan past.
15
When I was young a liberal would have no problem understanding how this particular book is inappropriate for young children and misrepresents a very real tragic war. A true liberal would be tolerant of Stockland's decision to not trivialize war. A liberal would understand the difference between literature and pulp fiction. A liberal would not make the false equivalency between metoo# and censorship. I suspect Brian is a wolf in sheep's clothing and not a liberal at all and never has been.
4
I know only what I have read in this article, but the concerns expressed by Bell seem justified and the withdrawal of the book appropriate.
But there is another lesson here as well. The publisher has also withdrawn "four more military-themed books in progress". Obviously, the work of vetting them is too hard and the fear of potential objections is too great. So the area of "military-themed books" is to be vacated.
Many observers may welcome this. But it sets a worrying precedent by establishing how easy it may be in this era of intellectual timidity for members of the public to veto entire topics from being dealt with by publishers.
7
As someone who had two assignments in Afghanistan as a U.S. diplomat (the first in southern Afghanistan, and the second in eastern Afghanistan), I have ambivalent feelings about the resolution of this controversy. I do agree that it is disrespectful to those who served, and more importantly to those who died, to treat the Afghanistan conflict is a frivolous manner. However, I also believe that any discussion about Afghanistan, flawed as it may be, is better than silence. I am continually disturbed and dismayed by the level of ignorance that I see in the vast majority of comments about Afghanistan in news sources ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. The flippant, ideologically-driven, and/or just stupid nature of these comments are even more disrespectful of those who served, appear to indicate that most Americans are too apathetic to make an attempt to understand what is happening in Afghanistan, and represent - in my opinion - an abdication of the responsibility of all American citizens to stay informed in order to make a useful contribution to the governance of this nation.
17
@Allan Langland ... the people of the US pay mercinaries and a corrupt government to do that job.
5
Such a book seem totally inappropriate for any child no matter if it was realistic or not.
8
These books are described as though they are without authors. I am, at the very least, interested to hear what the authors think.
8
I'm not a Marine but I was horrified when this book came out. When I was a kid, there was a series of books called "I Was There" or "We Where There" that put kids on the scene of various historic events. But they weren't presented as games. This book and project seemed to be designed by someone with zero sense of history. Scratch that. Zero sense.
14
@Steelmen I also remember those stories. They actually had historic, literary and educational value. Choose Your Own Adventure is a formula and a shallow gimmick. I was a middle school reading and English teacher. The school library had a complete set of Choose Your Own Adventure series. They were not well liked, but the older I Was There series was still popular. I don't know how they stay in business.
1
The apology seems appropriate, but why pulp the texts? That seems like self-censorship. Mr. Bell is entitled to his opinion, and to express it strongly. If the publisher comes to a new position, fine. Why, though, extirpate a representation of a historical event because one combatant disagrees with its portrayal? As I understand it, Mr. Bell's desire to write about his experiences is rooted in an observation that he believes most, if not all (here I am conjecturing), such representations are misrepresentations (see below). This begs the question, then, why this text and not myriad others was critiqued, and more to the point, pulped. This seems like pandering for PR purposes more than corporate responsibility.
I might be persuaded that this is not the case if the publisher can point out (1) other instances in which they have taken these measures when concerns were raised or (2) they provide an audit of their book list which shows that they don't treat other historical events or issues in the manner in which the Marjah battle was treated. For instance, in their titles, how are other wars/conflicts treated? How about slavery, WWII interment camps, the civil war, or other events which are, arguably, frequently treated cartoonishly without due gravitas?
"He had hoped to resist cartoonish or airbrushed discussions of military service, and to summon a way of talking about war that, in his words, was not “reverential of combat, but having an honest conversation about it.”
1
While I can understand that Mr Bell would have his own personal viewpoint based on his experiences in that battlefield. Including, I'm sure, may painful memories.
But let's look at history. It's not like that was one of the first wars fought. The problem with many of these stories is they are whitewashed. Especially when it comes to books for children and teens.
We are doing ourselves a great disservice by painting what are, at the moment, only politically correct narratives. Failing to present the truth, and reality, in all of it's glory and horror dooms us to continue repeating mistakes. And it's pretty evident that is still happening.
The purpose of a story is to pass on the knowledge imbedded into it. And we continue to fail to do that.
5
Good for him, and good for her too. All those people are still dead, however, and nothing appears to have been gained except perhaps some glimmer of hope about the futility of war. We all need to learn that: children and adults alike, if we are to prevent repeating the same mistakes, over and over again.
5
@Peter S If there is a lesson here it is that when you start a war you must be willing and able to end a war. We seem not to realize that any more, if we had our current attitude in WWII we might have lost. War means killing, and killing everyone who might harm you. We destroyed German cities and had to use nuclear weapons twice to convince the emperor to quit. Perhaps if we were willing to do whatever might be needed Gulf war two would never had happened and ISIS would be smaller sooner.
3
@vulcanalex The futility of war is that someone starts them. Hitler started one, and it devastated his own nation...Sure, the allies finished it, but it never should have been started in the first instance. That's what is futile about it all. In the end, nobody wins no matter who the victors are.
9
@Peter S As a matter of historical fact, it’s simply not true that all wars are futile. Some wars are; some aren’t. Some wars, while not achieving all of the aims of the declarer of war, achieve many of them. For example, in the modern era, from the perspective of the revolutionaries, the American Revolutionary War was a success. It led to the creation of the most powerful nation state the world has ever known.
2