Let’s Abolish West Point

The service academies are all Potemkin villages, facades with nothing behind them: they don’t teach morals, they don’t make better officers, and they cost you a bundle. Most fundamentally, they combine two incompatible goals: military obedience and the freedom to question offered by knowledge. This is a combustible mixture as students ask why things are as they are and are told sharply that this is the way things are, and are punished if they insist. One day the lid is going to blow.

A confession: I believe in their mission, and so I am a disillusioned former True Believer, as indeed most of the students are. I would give anything if the service academies represented a real alternative to the largely soulless “take one course after another” factories of modern education. Or the only-liberals-allowed prepping for McKinsey.

I wish the academies were the mixture of Athens and Sparta that might solve the problems with today’s academics, the fusion of the Cartesian halves of body and soul. But they aren’t: they’re hollow self-serving grinds where perfectly nice kids suffer.

Still, it’s all paid for by somebody else and the head office assures your parents you’re doing fine. People fawn over you in your spiffy uniform in airports, and thank you “for your service.” Liberals are scared to object for fear of seeming anti-military. And you’re the Ken dolls of the conservatives.

As I understand it, commissioning sources used to matter as to what type of commission you received and that could effect your career. Nowadays, it doesn't matter. OCS is different with respect to National Guard or Reserve and active duty, but ROTC trains up all three. West Point is active duty only. I've served with great officers from all three sources and terrible officers from all three sources. Anyone who claims West Point breeds better officers is full of it.

This is a combustible mixture as students ask why things are as they are and are told sharply that this is the way things are, and are punished if they insist.

I take issue with this comment from the article, though. Sure, there's a fairly strong dogmatic indoctrination, but the point isn't to have 18-year old college students challenge how the Army does things, it's to teach them how the Army does things. That doesn't give them permission to flush their brains down the toilet, just that they have no business reinventing the Army when they don't even know what the problems are yet. Any brand new private has all the ideas in the world to fix the Army, but until the problems are even remotely understood, they just need to put their heads down and learn before they speak.

I'm certainly not absolving the Army of the responsibility of the necessity of teaching higher-level strategic thinking or the overall Army force structure to younger officers. It's ridiculous that those subjects weren't even approached until after I was promoted to O-4. Tactics is a LT's job, but that doesn't mean they need to be completely ignorant of what strategic thinking is and how it comes about and why or which units are involved in which missions, how they're chosen, by whom and why. The education system needs a lot of work. I'm just not convinced that we need West Point to make it complete.

‘English Department at the Naval Academy’

THERE is the rub.

If only his premise were: We should abolish the ENGLISH department at service academies.

The service academies are great institutions for teaching engineering, math, computer science, poli-sci, etc. Do the kids getting into West Point need another lit class?

No. Frees up a spot for Linear Algebra, Mechanical Vibrations, or Diffy Q 2.

I went to the USCGA. English was a waste of curriculum, office space, and the profs were all - to a person - refugees wholly unsuitable for any other work, including fast food or janitorial services.

“It’s paid for by your tax dollars and is run by the government, as are the Merchant Marine Academy, Air Force Academy and Naval Academy.”

Don’t forget the US Coast Guard Academy at New London, CT.

Bruce Fleming pops out with a “Let’s abolish the federal service academies” article every five years or so. His conscience must be bothering him.

Not sure what kind of “academic freedom” he thinks cadets & middies are being denied, but the range of political and philosophical opinion to be found at such schools is surprisingly broad. USNA has the reputation of being the most heterodox of all; faculty members are tolerated even when their antics go beyond what’s considered “polite” in DoD circles. And all of it can be rough and tumble, compared to the dreary doses of PC dogma shoved up the noses of students at civilian institutions.

And some cadets/midshippersons have (after extensive thought and study) declared their moral misgivings about the military establishment and sought conscientious objector status; some even receive it. The academies have let them graduate anyway; nor have repayment of education costs always been sought.

Whatever the origins, and political machinations involved in the ongoing mission (or the lack of one) at the academies, they remain among the few institutions in the United States where wealth doesn’t matter, and origins don’t matter. These are, of course, ideals; they are approached to varying degrees at any given moment, and execution is rarely perfect. Bruce’s complaints notwithstanding, cadets and middies are taught more discipline and self-reliance than they will receive at any other undergraduate institution in the nation. Honorable behavior is an expected norm - a least common denominator. Flubs do happen, but guilty parties are removed. Breaches of honor barely get noticed at civilian schools.

Against Bruce’s personal disappointments, we ought to set the continued ranking of USAFA among the top three or five undergraduate engineering schools year after year, the number of Rhodes Scholars coming from the ranks of grads, and similar measures of merit.

Bruce may indeed have met SEAL or Marine wannabes who chafe at the program, but the forum ought to recall that we’re talking about very young folks who at the best of times can be stunningly immature. It’s typical to find “hard chargers” who have trouble summoning the patience to deal with stuff they cannot accept as relevant. Academy grads are supposed to be able (in theory at least) to deal with everything the military does or might do; they produce officers equal to the long haul, not just platoon, section, or flight commanders who lead small groups of enlisted types. Take the fretting of such not-quite-officers with less seriousness than Bruce thinks it deserves.

A final illustration of the atmosphere at West Point might rattle Bruce’s sympathizers into a more sensible orbit: several years ago, students in a Psychology of Leadership class (or some such; I forget the precise title) decided they wanted to hear an opposing viewpoint to the “approved” curriculum Bruce damns so energetically as one-sided. So, they invited noted radical Left anti-military peace activist Noam Chomsky to be a guest lecturer. The faculty took the cadets at their word, honored their choice, backed them up, and made it all happen. The presentation was aired on C-SPAN; not one catcall nor boo was heard. When the camera swept over the multitude of young folks wearing gray uniforms who had packed the lecture hall, not one single cadet appeared annoyed nor disapproving.

Now, just try imagining students at Harvard, or Yale or Berkley, inviting CJCS to speak on the morality of peace or war. And if you can manage that, imagine a student audience at those institutions behaving respectfully. Or merely maintaining silence.

I am quite amazed at the numbers of self proclaimed conservatives, rock solid member of Free Republic who are willing to jump on the Salon bandwagon. Perhaps they just have person scores to settle, perhaps they do not understand the agenda, perhaps they are just ignorant.

Usual disclaimers; I served for 25 years on active duty, commissioned in the Regular Army from ROTC at the University of Arkansas as a ROTC scholarship student, retiring as a Colonel of Infantry and commanding at every level from Lieutenant to Colonel in both peace and combat. I also served on the faculty at the U.S. Military Academy as well as on the faculty of the Command and General Staff College and am a graduate of the Army War College.

The left can’t stand the Military Academies. They see them take in some of the cream of the American crop of bright young men and women and turn them into dedicated patriots and soldiers. In their view, its a total waste. These bright minds need to be destroying the country not defending it. Most cadets come to West Point because it’s a free education or a chance to play hockey or some other sport. They do not start out aspiring to be the next Patton or MacArthur. But, in the midst of playing hockey and weaving their way through the labyrinth of West Point’s unique obstacle course on the way to manhood and womanhood, a remarkable thing occurs: they are transformed in ways that Harvard, Standford, Yale, and rest can never do. They embrace the dreams of the Founders and become something more than just themselves. They become leaders of the nations and the slime from Salon who write this crap are unworthy to be allowed in their presence.

May God bless them all.

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