When I heard of the San Francisco school board’s decision to boot the Junior ROTC program out of city high schools, I thought of George H.W. Bush’s defiant reaction when he learned of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait: “This will not stand.”

Neither should the school panel’s ruling, which on a stupidity scale ranks right up there with Saddam Hussein’s 1990 decision to attack his defenseless, oil-rich neighbor.

If you’re not up to speed on the two-bit political theater that’s unfolding in the City by the Bay, here’s what happened. Angered by the Pentagon’s policy of not allowing openly gay and lesbian people to serve in the military – and to express its opposition to the Iraq War – the San Francisco school board voted recently to expel the Junior ROTC program from the seven high schools where it now operates.

The program, which has more than 1,600 students, will be phased out of the city’s public schools over the next two years if the school board’s decision isn’t reversed.

“This move sends the wrong message. It’s important for the city not to be identified with disrespecting the sacrifices of men and women in uniform,” Mayor Gavin Newsom told school board members shortly before they voted, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

He should have said: “This will not stand.”

While Newsom has little direct influence over school board members, who run citywide and serve four-year-terms, as the city’s top elected official he has a commanding position on San Francisco’s political soapbox. He ought to use this perch to challenge the school board’s action.

I’m not unsympathetic to the issues that pushed the school board to vote 4-2 to ban the Junior ROTC. Having served in the military during the Vietnam War alongside openly gay men, I don’t think the morale – or the combat readiness – of the men in my unit suffered because of them.

And my experience in Southeast Asia gave me an aversion for war that springs from something other than ideology. But neither that nor my support for the rights of gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces translates into opposition to the military.

Over the life of this nation, our military has spent far more time preserving peace than making war. When it has gone to war, it has done so on the orders of America’s civilian leaders, not the whim of some rogue general.

So if San Francisco’s school board has a beef with the rules that determine who serves in the military – or with the decision to go to war in Iraq – they should take it up with those leaders.

Any punishment they want to mete out ought to be done at the polls. To keep schoolchildren from taking part in Junior ROTC is a foolish act of political bullying.

San Francisco’s school board members appear to be saying they don’t trust their students to be future military leaders. That’s a shame.

This nation has a long tradition of citizen-soldiers who understand the role of the military in our democracy. No president has been ousted by a military coup. No elected government has been chased from power by power-hungry soldiers.

Political change in this country is ushered in by the ballot, not the bullet. The military that San Francisco’s misguided school board seeks to punish is the guardian of our “government of the people.”

Instead of pulling the plug on the Junior ROTC, they should applaud the students who want to be a part of this great democratic tradition.