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West Point Commencement, 06/01/2002 [2]
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75600587
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West Point Commencement, 06/01/2002 [2]
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Records of the Office of Speechwriting (George W. Bush Administration)
Jeanette Reilly's Files
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Tuesday, June 16, 2015
FOIA Marker
This is not a textual record. This FOIA Marker indicates that material has been removed
during FOIA processing by George W. Bush Presidential Library staff.
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Reilly, Jeannette
Location or
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Stack: Row: Sect.: Shelf: Pos.:
Hollinger ID:
W 17 7 4 1
1031
13966
1987
2075
Folder Title:
West Point Commencement, 06/01/2002 [2]
Chile - Consular Information Sheet
http://travel.state.gov/chile.html
Chile - Consular Information Sheet
April 12, 2002
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: Chile has a stable government and a strong economy. Facilities for tourism vary according to price and area.
The capital is Santiago.
ENTRY AND EXIT REQUIREMENTS: A passport is required to enter Chile. U.S. citizens do not need a visa for a stay of up to three
months. At the international port-of-entry, a fee, payable in U.S. dollars only, is levied on U.S. citizen visitors. The receipt is valid for multiple
entries during the validity of the traveler's passport.
In an effort to prevent international child abduction, many governments have initiated procedures at entry/exit points. These often include
requiring documentary evidence of relationship and permission for the child's travel from the parent(s) or legal guardian not present.
Dependent children under age 18 (including the children of divorced parents) arriving in Chile alone, with one parent, or in someone else's
custody, are required to present a letter notarized before a Chilean consular officer in the United States certifying that both parents agree to their
travel. To exit Chile, children traveling under one of these scenarios must present either the notarized letter used to enter the country or a letter
of authorization signed before a Chilean notary if executed in Chile. In either case, the document presented must be executed not more than
three months prior to entry or departure.
Travelers considering scientific, technical, or mountaineering activities in areas classified as frontier areas are required to obtain authorization
from the Chilean government at least 90 days prior to the beginning of the expedition. The portions of Antarctica claimed by Chile are exempt
from these pre-approval requirements. Officials at the Torres del Paine National Park require mountain climbers to present an authorization
granted by the Frontiers and Border Department, obtainable at the Chilean Embassy or Chilean consulates throughout the United States.
For further information concerning entry, exit, and customs requirements, travelers may contact the Chilean Embassy at 1732 Massachusetts
Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, tel. (202) 785-1746, Internet - http://www.chile-usa.org. Travelers may also contact the Chilean
consulates in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Clara, Miami, Honolulu, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San
Juan, Charleston, Dallas, Houston, and Salt Lake City.
SAFETY AND SECURITY: The U.S. Government remains deeply concerned about the security of Americans overseas. As a result of U.S.
military actions in Afghanistan in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, there is a potential for retaliatory actions to be taken against
U.S. citizens and interests throughout the world by terrorists and those who harbor grievances against the United States. The Department of
State urges Americans to review their circumstances carefully and to take all appropriate measures to ensure their personal safety. Americans
are urged to monitor the local news and maintain contact with the nearest American embassy or consulate. The Department will continue to
develop information about potential threats to Americans overseas and to share with them credible threat information through its Consular
Information Program. Information is available on the Internet at http://travel.state.gov and the Embassy's website at http://www.usembassy.cl.
Due to the presence of suspected terrorist organizations in the Tri-Border Area (Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), activities related to terrorism
are a concern in the entire region. However, there are no reports of credible threats directed specifically against American interests in Chile.
Traditionally, September 11-18 is an active period for public demonstrations. Violent political, labor, or student protests can occur at other
times also, often near government buildings in Santiago and Valparaiso or in the vicinity of major universities. Regardless of when or where
such assemblies occur, American citizens traveling or residing in Chile are advised to take common-sense precautions and avoid any large
Chile - Consular Information Sheet
http://travel.state.gov/chile.html
gatherings or any other event where crowds have congregated to demonstrate or protest. Additional advice about demonstrations, particularly
during the September period, may be obtained from the U.S. Embassy at the telephone numbers listed below.
There are credible reports that land mines may pose a danger to hikers in remote sections of several popular national reserves and parks near
northern border areas, including Lauca and Llullaillaco National Parks, Salar de Surire National Monument, and Los Flamencos National
Reserve. Visitors should check with park authorities before entering less-traveled areas and observe all warning signs. There are also
demarcated land mine fields in the Magallanes region of southern Chile, between Punta Arenas and the Torres del Paine National Park, and on
Tierra del Fuego, which should be strictly avoided.
CRIME: The U.S. Embassy is receiving an increasing number of reports of the theft of purses, wallets, backpacks, and luggage containing
passports, credit cards, and money. Thefts have been reported in restaurants, bus stations, airports, and other places frequented by tourists.
There has also been a rise in the report of thefts from hotel rooms, including rooms in better hotels.
Street crime is a problem in metropolitan Santiago in general and specifically in the city center. One should be particularly alert while walking
in the downtown area, especially in the late afternoon, after dark, or on weekends, even in well-traveled areas. In Santiago and other large
Chilean cities, thieves thrive on crowds on the street during rush hour and aboard public transportation.
Petty crime is also prevalent at crowded tourist locations, at Metro (subway) stations, on trains and buses, and occasionally in taxis. Rates of
such crime have increased markedly in the last year. Persons wearing expensive-looking jewelry or carrying luggage or cameras are favorite
targets for pickpockets and purse-snatchers. Bags and briefcases may be stolen from chairs in restaurants and outdoor cafes. Outside Santiago,
robberies and assaults have occurred most frequently in the Vina del Mar and Valparaiso areas, which become increasingly crowded during the
height of the Chilean summer season (December through March).
Individuals whose passports are stolen will be required to obtain duplicates of their tourist cards from the Policia International before they can
depart the country.
The loss or theft abroad of a U.S. passport should be reported immediately to the local police and the nearest U.S. Embassy or consulate. U.S.
citizens may refer to the Department of State's pamphlets,4 Safe Trip Abroad and Tips for Travelers to Central and South America, for ways to
promote a more trouble-free journey. These publications are available by mail from, the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402; via the Internet at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs; or via the Bureau of Consular Affairs home
page at http://travel.state.gov/.
MEDICAL FACILITIES: Medical care, while generally good, may not meet U.S. standards, particularly in remote areas. Although
emergency rooms in some major hospitals accept credit cards, many doctors and hospitals in Chile expect immediate cash payment for health
services.
MEDICAL INSURANCE: The Department of State strongly urges Americans to consult with their medical insurance company prior to
traveling abroad to confirm whether their policy applies overseas and if it will cover emergency expenses such as a medical evacuation. U.S.
medical insurance plans seldom cover health costs incurred outside the U.S. unless supplemental coverage is purchased. Further, U.S. Medicare
and Medicaid programs do not provide payment for medical services outside the United States. However, many travel agents and private
companies offer insurance plans that will cover health care expenses incurred overseas, including emergency services such as medical
evacuations.
2 of 5
5/24/02 10:05 AM
Chile - Consular Information Sheet
http://travel.state.gov/chile.html
When making a decision regarding health insurance, Americans should consider that many foreign doctors and hospitals require payment in
cash prior to providing service and that a medical evacuation to the United States may cost well in excess of $50,000. Uninsured travelers who
require medical care overseas often face extreme difficulties, whereas travelers who have purchased overseas medical insurance have found it to
be life saving, when a medical emergency has occurred. When consulting with your insurer prior to your trip, please ascertain whether payment
will be made to the overseas healthcare provider or whether you will be reimbursed later for expenses that you incur. Some insurance policies
also include coverage for psychiatric treatment and for disposition of remains in the event of death.
In-country medical evacuations from outlying areas to Santiago cost $2,000 or more. For travelers to the Antarctic and/or Easter Island,
additional insurance to cover the cost of air evacuation specifically from those remote regions is strongly recommended. In the event of illness,
injury, or even death, the cost of evacuation from the Antarctic region can exceed $90,000.
Useful information on medical emergencies abroad, including overseas insurance programs, is provided in the Department of State's Bureau of
Consular Affairs brochure, Medical Information for Americans Traveling Abroad, available via the Bureau of Consular Affairs home page or
autofax: (202) 647-3000.
OTHER HEALTH INFORMATION: All of Santiago is affected by a high index of pollution, which appears as heavy smog in the winter
(May through August) and dust in the summer (December through March). The most severe pollution occurs from May to October. Information
on vaccinations and other health precautions may be obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's hotline for international
travelers at 1-877-FYI-TRIP (1-877-394-8747); fax 1-888-cdc-faxx (1-888-232-3299), or via CDC's Internet sight at http://www.cdc.gov/.
TRAFFIC SAFETY AND ROAD CONDITIONS: While in a foreign country, U.S. citizens may encounter road conditions that differ
significantly from those in the United States. The information below concerning Chile is provided for general reference only, and it may not be
totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Safety of Public Transportation: Fair
Urban Road Conditions/Maintenance: Good
Rural Road Conditions/Maintenance: Fair
Availability of Roadside/Ambulance Assistance: Fair
Driving is on the right-hand side of the road, as in the United States. Although major roads in Chile are generally in good condition, secondary
roads are sometimes poorly maintained and/or poorly lighted. At night, heavy fog conditions in rural areas have led to multiple-vehicle
accidents with occasional deaths and injuries. Care should be exercised while driving in the mountains because the roads tend to have many
tight switchbacks and rarely have guardrails. Many major highways in Chile are toll roads; drivers should carry a sufficient amount of local
currency to cover the tolls.
In Santiago, care should be exercised when changing lanes or merging because Chilean drivers do not signal lane changes and rarely yield to
merging traffic. Buses are especially aggressive in moving from lane to lane. Traffic jams during peak hours in downtown Santiago and other
areas are common. Taxis are plentiful and relatively inexpensive. Drivers should drive with car doors locked at all times, especially in the
southern parts of the city and near the airport, as there have been reports of thieves entering cars stopped at traffic lights or moving in slow
traffic.
3 of 5
5/24/02 10:05 AM
Chile - Consular Information Sheet
http://travel.state.gov/chile.html
Santiago's anti-pollution measures call for certain major arteries to switch directions during morning and evening rush hours. Visitors to
Santiago should obtain up-to-date information on these changes from their auto rental company or the Chilean Automobile Association (please
see below).
Driving under the influence of alcohol in Chile is severely penalized, and it can lead to incarceration if the driver is involved in an accident.
Visitors to Chile must have an international driver's permit in order to drive legally in Chile. Although car rental firms will rent to customers
with only a U.S. driver's license, the police have detained several persons for lengthy periods for driving without a valid international permit.
For additional general information about road safety, including links to foreign government sites, please see the Department of State, Bureau of
Consular Affairs home page at http://travel.state.gov/road safety.html. For specific information concerning Chile, driving permits, vehicle
inspection, road tax and mandatory insurance, please contact the Chilean Automobile Association, Avenida Vitacura 8620, Santiago, tel. (56-2)
431-1000, http://www.aclub.cl, or the National Tourist Bureau, SERNATUR, which is located at Avenida Providencia 1550, Santiago, tel.
(56-2) 236-1420, http://www.sernatur.cl.
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the government of Chile's civil aviation
authority as Category 1 -- in compliance with international aviation safety standards for oversight of Chile's air carrier operations. For further
information, travelers may contact the Department of Transportation within the United States at tel. 1-800-322-7873, or visit the FAA's Internet
website at http://www.faa.gov/avr/iasa.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) separately assesses some foreign air carriers for suitability as official providers of air services. For
information regarding the DOD policy on specific carriers, travelers may contact the DOD at tel. (618) 229-4801.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES: While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country's laws and regulations, which sometimes differ
significantly from those in the U.S. and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law. Penalties for breaking the law
can be more severe than in the U.S. for similar offenses. Persons violating Chile's laws, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or
imprisoned. Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Chile are strict, and convicted offenders can expect jail sentences and
heavy fines.
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: Chile is an earthquake-prone country. Limited information on Chilean earthquake preparedness is available
in Spanish from the Oficina Nacional de Emergencia de Chile (ONEMI) via the Internet at http://www.angelfire.com/nt/terremotos2. Other
general information about natural disaster preparedness is available from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at
http://www.fema.gov/.
CHILDREN'S ISSUES: For information on international adoption of children and international parental child abduction, please refer to our
Internet site at http://travel.state.gov/childrer's_issues.html or telephone (202) 736-7000.
REGISTRATION/EMBASSY AND CONSULATE LOCATIONS: Americans living in or visiting Chile are encouraged to register at the
Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy in Santiago and obtain updated information on travel and security in Chile. The U.S. Embassy is located
at Avenida Andres Bello 2800, Santiago; tel. (56-2) 335-6550 or 232-2600; after hours tel. (56-2) 330-3321. The Embassy's mailing address is
Casilla 27-D, Santiago; the Consular Section's fax number is (56-2) 330-3005; and the e-mail address is "[email protected]". The
Embassy home page is: http://www.usembassy.cl, where Americans may also register on-line.
4 of 5
5/24/02 10:05 AM
Chile Consular Information Sheet
http://travel.state.gov/chile.html
***
This replaces the Consular Information Sheet dated July 12, 2001, to update the sections on Safety and Security, and Crime.
Return to Consular Information Sheets and Travel Warnings Page
5 of 5
5/24/02 10:05 AM
com - Bush, Putin sign arms deal - May 24, 2002
wysiwyg://42/http://cnn.worldnews..0204898038partnerID=2006&expirc=-1
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Bush, Putin sign arms deal
Leaders also pledge cooperation on missile defense
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) --U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian
President Vladimir Putin put pen to paper Friday, signing a landmark nuclear reduction treaty that would
remove from deployment two-thirds of each nation's long-range nuclear weapons over 10 years.
"This is a historic and hopeful day for Russia and America," Bush said. "It's a historic day for the world as well.
President Putin and I today ended a long chapter of confrontation and opened up an entirely new relationship
between our two countries."
The two leaders also signed a joint declaration pledging cooperation on missile defense at the ceremony in the
recent
Kremlin's gold-trimmed Andreyevsky Hall.
good
The treaty, Bush said at the signing ceremony, "liquidates the Cold War legacy of nuclear hostility."
relations
Russia
The pact will remove from deployment each nation's existing store of roughly 5,000 to 6,000 warheads by about
65 percent over the next decade. The resulting number of warheads held by each country would range from 1,700
to 2,200.
Bush and Putin also discussed the U.S.-led global war on terrorism and economic relations between the two
countries.
"Our nations will continue to cooperate closely in the war against global terror," Bush said. "We understand full
well that the people of Russia have suffered at the hands of terrorists, and so have we."
Putin said that the talks between the two leaders would have a "positive impact for economic development," and
Bush said his country would welcome Russia into the world economy.
Bush plans to have dinner and spend the evening in the Russian leader's residence Friday evening.
The Friday ceremony marked the fifth time the two leaders have met, but the first time in Moscow.
Senior Bush administration officials have said the treaty will enable the United States and Russia to enter into a
new strategic relationship and to move away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Bush
administration has maintained is an antiquated Cold War agreement that did not allow for modern contingencies,
such as allowing the U.S. to pursue a limited missile defense system.
Critics of the treaty have noted that it requires storage of many of the weapons cuts rather than destruction,
creating scenarios that could make theft of a nuclear warhead possible.
The treaty will have to go before the U.S. Senate and Russian Duma to be ratified.
Security was tight throughout Moscow in anticipation of Bush's visit. At the U.S. Embassy Thursday,
5/24/02 11:34 AM
CNN.com - Bush, Putin sign arms deal - May 24, 2002
wysiwyg://42/http://cnn.worldnews..020489803&partnerID=2006&cexpire=1
Security was tight throughout Moscow in anticipation of Bush's visit. At the U.S. Embassy Thursday,
Communists staged a demonstration, criticizing Bush and Putin. They accuse Putin of being too soft with the
United States.
In addition to the nuclear weapon reduction treaty, Bush said the two leaders discussed the subject of Iran, one of
three countries the president has dubbed an "axis of evil."
"I worry about Iran and I'm confident President Putin worries about Iran," Bush said.
Russia is helping Iran build nuclear power plants, and the United States is concerned that the facilities might be
diverted to other uses and that some of the items that Iran wants could later be aimed at U.S. forces.
The senior administration official briefing reporters en route to Moscow called the concern of Russian nuclear
technology going to Iran the "single most important proliferation threat there is."
But Putin disagreed. "I'd like to point out that cooperation between Iran and Russia is not of a character which
would undermine the process of non-proliferation," he said. "Our cooperation is exclusively as regards to the
energy sector focused on the problems of an economic nature."
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/05/24/bush.europe/index.htm
Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.
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2 of 2
5/24/02 11:34 AM
Awesome80s.com: President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speechttp://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome&.ch/8-Reagan_Evil_Empire_Speech.asp
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President Reagan's "Evil Empire"
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Building on themes previously expressed
most strongly in a speech before the British
Evil Empire Speech
US States
1970s
Parliament, President Reagan refers to the
Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" - a term
which will forever be linked with him - for the
first time in a speech.
amazon.com.
It is important to recognize that this was not
primarily a foreign policy speech. Reagan
the Sents? for
spoke these words at the National Association
the
Dumber
of Evangelicals Convention and the references
"Seactines sterically funes
to the "Evil Empire" were allusions to his
sencimes scritivite brilling
spiritual notions of there being a battle
Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire"
"Dectrifying"
between "good" and "evil" on earth.
speech was delivered in the
Citrus Crown Ballroom at the
Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel in
Orlando, Florida on March 8,
Transcript
1983.
NARA image
Reverend clergy all, Senator Hawkins,
distinguished members of the Florida
Caller's
Best has fave
PERFECT
congressional delegation, and all of you:
CANDIDATE
I can't tell you how you have warmed my
Reagn
A Perfect Candidate (Ollie
heart with your welcome. I'm delighted to
North '94 Campaign)
be here today.
Tyrants
Those of you in the National Association of
Evangelicals are known for your spiritual
and humanitarian work. And I would be
especially remiss if I didn't discharge right
now one personal debt of gratitude. Thank
you for your prayers. Nancy and I have felt
their presence many times in many ways.
And believe me, for us they've made all the
difference.
The other day in the East Room of the
White House at a meeting there, someone
asked me whether I was aware of all the
people out there who were praying for the
President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've
felt it. I believe in intercessionary prayer."
But I couldn't help but say to that questioner
after he'd asked the question that -- or at
least say to them that if sometimes when he
was praying he got a busy signal, it was just
me in there ahead of him. [Laughter] I think
I understand how Abraham Lincoln felt
1 of 12
5/28/02 9:27 AM
Awesome80s.com: President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Spechttp://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome8..ch/8-Reagan_Evil_Empire_Speechasp
when he said, "I have been driven many
times to my knees by the overwhelming
conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
From the joy and the good feeling of this
conference, I go to a political reception.
[Laughter] Now, I don't know why, but that
bit of scheduling reminds me of a story --
[laughter] -- which I'll share with you.
An evangelical minister and a politician
arrived at Heaven's gate one day together.
And St. Peter, after doing all the necessary
formalities, took them in hand to show them
where their quarters would be. And he took
them to a small, single room with a bed, a
chair, and a table and said this was for the
clergyman. And the politician was a little
worried about what might be in store for
him. And he couldn't believe it then when
St. Peter stopped in front of a beautiful
mansion with lovely grounds, many
servants, and told him that these would be
his quarters.
And he couldn't help but ask, he said, "But
wait, how -- there's something wrong --
how do I get this mansion while that good
and holy man only gets a single room?"
And St. Peter said, "You have to understand
how things are up here. We've got
thousands and thousands of clergy. You're
the first politician who ever made it."
[Laughter]
But I don't want to contribute to a
stereotype. [Laughter] So, I tell you there
are a great many God-fearing, dedicated,
noble men and women in public life,
present company included. And, yes, we
need your help to keep us ever mindful of
the ideas and the principles that brought us
into the public arena in the first place. The
basis of those ideals and principles is a
commitment to freedom and personal
liberty that, itself, is grounded in the much
deeper realization that freedom prospers
only where the blessings of God are avidly
sought and humbly accepted.
The American experiment in democracy
rests on this insight. Its discovery was the
great triumph of our Founding Fathers,
voiced by William Penn when he said: "If
we will not be governed by God, we must
be governed by tyrants." Explaining the
inalienable rights of men, Jefferson said,
2 of 12
5/28/02 9:27 AM
Awesome80s.com: President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speechttp://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome8.ch/8-Reagan_Evil_Empire_Speech.asp
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty
at the same time." And it was George
Washington who said that "of all the
dispositions and habits which lead to
political prosperity, religion and morality
are indispensable supports."
And finally, that shrewdest of all observers
of American democracy, Alexis de
Tocqueville, put it eloquently after he had
gone on a search for the secret of America's
greatness and genius -- and he said: "Not
until I went into the churches of America
and heard her pulpits aflame with
righteousness did I understand the greatness
and the genius of America.
America is
good. And if America ever ceases to be
good, America will cease to be great."
Well, I'm pleased to be here today with you
who are keeping America great by keeping
her good. Only through your work and
prayers and those of millions of others can
we hope to survive this perilous century and
keep alive this experiment in liberty, this
last, best hope of man.
I want you to know that this administration
is motivated by a political philosophy that
sees the greatness of America in you, her
people, and in your families, churches,
neighborhoods, communities -- the
institutions that foster and nourish values
like concern for others and respect for the
rule of law under God.
Now, I don't have to tell you that this puts
us in opposition to, or at least out of step
with, a prevailing attitude of many who
have turned to a modern-day secularism,
discarding the tried and time-tested values
upon which our very civilization is based.
No matter how well intentioned, their value
system is radically different from that of
most Americans. And while they proclaim
that they're freeing us from superstitions of
the past, they've taken upon themselves the
job of superintending us by government
rule and regulation. Sometimes their voices
are louder than ours, but they are not yet a
majority.
An example of that vocal superiority is
evident in a controversy now going on in
Washington. And since I'm involved, I've
been waiting to hear from the parents of
young America. How far are they willing to
3 of 12
5/28/02 9:27 AM
Awesome80s.com: President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speechttp://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome8.ch/8-Reagan_Evil_Empire_Spech.asp
go in giving to government their
prerogatives as parents?
Let me state the case as briefly and simply
as I can. An organization of citizens,
sincerely motivated and deeply concerned
about the increase in illegitimate births and
abortions involving girls well below the age
of consent, sometime ago established a
nationwide network of clinics to offer help
to these girls and, hopefully, alleviate this
situation. Now, again, let me say, I do not
fault their intent. However, in their
well-intentioned effort, these clinics have
decided to provide advice and birth control
drugs and devices to underage girls without
the knowledge of their parents.
For some years now, the Federal
Government has helped with funds to
subsidize these clinics. In providing for this,
the Congress decreed that every effort
would be made to maximize parental
participation. Nevertheless, the drugs and
devices are prescribed without getting
parental consent or giving notification after
they've done so. Girls termed "sexually
active" -- and that has replaced the word
"promiscuous" -- are given this help in
order to prevent illegitimate birth or
abortion.
Well, we have ordered clinics receiving
Federal funds to notify the parents such
help has been given. One of the Nation's
leading newspapers has created the term
"squeal rule" in editorializing against us for
doing this, and we're being criticized for
violating the privacy of young people. A
judge has recently granted an injunction
against an enforcement of our rule. I've
watched TV panel shows discuss this issue,
seen columnists pontificating on our error,
but no one seems to mention morality as
playing a part in the subject of sex.
Is all of Judeo-Christian tradition wrong?
Are we to believe that something so sacred
can be looked upon as a purely physical
thing with no potential for emotional and
psychological harm? And isn't it the parents'
right to give counsel and advice to keep
their children from making mistakes that
may affect their entire lives?
Many of us in government would like to
know what parents think about this
4 of 12
5/28/02 9:27 AM
Awesome80s.com: President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speechtp://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome&.ch/8-Reagan_Evil_Empire_Speech.asp
intrusion in their family by government.
We're going to fight in the courts. The right
of parents and the rights of family take
precedence over those of Washington-based
bureaucrats and social engineers.
But the fight against parental notification is
really only one example of many attempts
to water down traditional values and even
abrogate the original terms of American
democracy. Freedom prospers when
religion is vibrant and the rule of law under
God is acknowledged. When our Founding
Fathers passed the first amendment, they
sought to protect churches from government
interference. They never intended to
construct a wall of hostility between
government and the concept of religious
belief itself.
The evidence of this permeates our history
and our government. The Declaration of
Independence mentions the Supreme Being
no less than four times. "In God We Trust"
is engraved on our coinage. The Supreme
Court opens its proceedings with a religious
invocation. And the Members of Congress
open their sessions with a prayer. I just
happen to believe the schoolchildren of the
United States are entitled to the same
privileges as Supreme Court Justices and
Congressmen.
Last year, I sent the Congress a
constitutional amendment to restore prayer
to public schools. Already this session,
there's growing bipartisan support for the
amendment, and I am calling on the
Congress to act speedily to pass it and to let
our children pray.
Perhaps some of you read recently about the
Lubbock school case, where a judge
actually ruled that it was unconstitutional
for a school district to give equal treatment
to religious and nonreligious student
groups, even when the group meetings were
being held during the students' own time.
The first amendment never intended to
require government to discriminate against
religious speech.
Senators Denton and Hatfield have
proposed legislation in the Congress on the
whole question of prohibiting
discrimination against religious forms of
student speech. Such legislation could go
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far to restore freedom of religious speech
for public school students. And I hope the
Congress considers these bills quickly. And
with your help, I think it's possible we
could also get the constitutional amendment
through the Congress this year.
More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court
decision literally wiped off the books of 50
States statutes protecting the rights of
unborn children. Abortion on demand now
takes the lives of up to 1\1/2\ million
unborn children a year. Human life
legislation ending this tragedy will some
day pass the Congress, and you and I must
never rest until it does. Unless and until it
can be proven that the unborn child is not a
living entity, then its right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness must be
protected.
You may remember that when abortion on
demand began, many, and, indeed, I'm sure
many of you, warned that the practice
would lead to a decline in respect for human
life, that the philosophical premises used to
justify abortion on demand would
ultimately be used to justify other attacks on
the sacredness of human life -- infanticide
or mercy killing. Tragically enough, those
warnings proved all too true. Only last year
a court permitted the death by starvation of
a handicapped infant.
I have directed the Health and Human
Services Department to make clear to every
health care facility in the United States that
the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects all
handicapped persons against discrimination
based on handicaps, including infants. And
we have taken the further step of requiring
that each and every recipient of Federal
funds who provides health care services to
infants must post and keep posted in a
conspicuous place a notice stating that
"discriminatory failure to feed and care for
handicapped infants in this facility is
prohibited by Federal law." It also lists a
24-hour, toll-free number so that nurses and
others may report violations in time to save
the infant's life.
In addition, recent legislation introduced in
the Congress by Representative Henry
Hyde of Illinois not only increases
restrictions on publicly financed abortions,
it also addresses this whole problem of
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infanticide. I urge the Congress to begin
hearings and to adopt legislation that will
protect the right of life to all children,
including the disabled or handicapped.
Now, I'm sure that you must get
discouraged at times, but you've done better
than you know, perhaps. There's a great
spiritual awakening in America, a renewal
of the traditional values that have been the
bedrock of America's goodness and
greatness.
One recent survey by a Washington-based
research council concluded that Americans
were far more religious than the people of
other nations; 95 percent of those surveyed
expressed a belief in God and a huge
majority believed the Ten Commandments
had real meaning in their lives. And another
study has found that an overwhelming
majority of Americans disapprove of
adultery, teenage sex, pornography,
abortion, and hard drugs. And this same
study showed a deep reverence for the
importance of family ties and religious
belief.
I think the items that we've discussed here
today must be a key part of the Nation's
political agenda. For the first time the
Congress is openly and seriously debating
and dealing with the prayer and abortion
issues -- and that's enormous progress right
there. I repeat: America is in the midst of a
spiritual awakening and a moral renewal.
And with your Biblical keynote, I say
today, "Yes, let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream."
Now, obviously, much of this new political
and social consensus I've talked about is
based on a positive view of American
history, one that takes pride in our country's
accomplishments and record. But we must
never forget that no government schemes
are going to perfect man. We know that
living in this world means dealing with
what philosophers would call the
phenomenology of evil or, as theologians
would put it, the doctrine of sin.
There is sin and evil in the world, and we're
enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to
oppose it with all our might. Our nation,
too, has a legacy of evil with which it must
deal. The glory of this land has been its
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capacity for transcending the moral evils of
our past. For example, the long struggle of
minority citizens for equal rights, once a
source of disunity and civil war, is now a
point of pride for all Americans. We must
never go back. There is no room for racism,
anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and
racial hatred in this country.
I know that you've been horrified, as have I,
by the resurgence of some hate groups
preaching bigotry and prejudice. Use the
mighty voice of your pulpits and the
powerful standing of your churches to
denounce and isolate these hate groups in
our midst. The commandment given us is
clear and simple: "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself."
But whatever sad episodes exist in our past,
any objective observer must hold a positive
view of American history, a history that has
been the story of hopes fulfilled and dreams
made into reality. Especially in this century,
America has kept alight the torch of
freedom, but not just for ourselves but for
millions of others around the world.
And this brings me to my final point today.
During my first press conference as
President, in answer to a direct question, I
pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists,
the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly
declared that the only morality they
recognize is that which will further their
cause, which is world revolution. I think I
should point out I was only quoting Lenin,
their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that
they repudiate all morality that proceeds
from supernatural ideas -- that's their name
for religion -- or ideas that are outside class
conceptions. Morality is entirely
subordinate to the interests of class war.
And everything is moral that is necessary
for the annihilation of the old, exploiting
social order and for uniting the proletariat.
Well, I think the refusal of many influential
people to accept this elementary fact of
Soviet doctrine illustrates an historical
reluctance to see totalitarian powers for
what they are. We saw this phenomenon in
the 1930's. We see it too often today.
This doesn't mean we should isolate
ourselves and refuse to seek an
understanding with them. I intend to do
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everything I can to persuade them of our
peaceful intent, to remind them that it was
the West that refused to use its nuclear
monopoly in the forties and fifties for
territorial gain and which now proposes
50-percent cut in strategic ballistic missiles
and the elimination of an entire class of
land-based, intermediate-range nuclear
missiles.
At the same time, however, they must be
made to understand we will never
compromise our principles and standards.
We will never give away our freedom. We
will never abandon our belief in God. And
we will never stop searching for a genuine
peace. But we can assure none of these
things America stands for through the
so-called nuclear freeze solutions proposed
by some.
The truth is that a freeze now would be a
very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the
illusion of peace. The reality is that we must
find peace through strength.
I would agree to a freeze if only we could
freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze
at current levels of weapons would remove
any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate
seriously in Geneva and virtually end our
chances to achieve the major arms
reductions which we have proposed.
Instead, they would achieve their objectives
through the freeze.
A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for
its enormous and unparalleled military
buildup. It would prevent the essential and
long overdue modernization of United
States and allied defenses and would leave
our aging forces increasingly vulnerable.
And an honest freeze would require
extensive prior negotiations on the systems
and numbers to be limited and on the
measures to ensure effective verification
and compliance. And the kind of a freeze
that has been suggested would be virtually
impossible to verify. Such a major effort
would divert us completely from our current
negotiations on achieving substantial
reductions.
A number of years ago, I heard a young
father, a very prominent young man in the
entertainment world, addressing a
tremendous gathering in California. It was
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during the time of the cold war, and
communism and our own way of life were
very much on people's minds. And he was
speaking to that subject. And suddenly,
though, I heard him saying, "I love my little
girls more than anything " And I said to
myself, "Oh, no, don't. You can't -- don't
say that." But I had underestimated him. He
went on: "I would rather see my little girls
die now, still believing in God, than have
them grow up under communism and one
day die no longer believing in God."
There were thousands of young people in
that audience. They came to their feet with
shouts of joy. They had instantly recognized
the profound truth in what he had said, with
regard to the physical and the soul and what
was truly important.
Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of
those who live in that totalitarian darkness
-- pray they will discover the joy of
knowing God. But until they do, let us be
aware that while they preach the supremacy
of the state, declare its omnipotence over
individual man, and predict its eventual
domination of all peoples on the Earth, they
are the focus of evil in the modern world.
It/was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable
"Screwtape Letters," wrote: "The greatest
evil is not done now in those sordid `dens of
crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not
even done in concentration camps and labor
camps. In those we see its final result. But it
is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded,
carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted,
warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet
men with white collars and cut fingernails
and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need
to raise their voice."
Well, because these "quiet men" do not
"raise their voices," because they sometimes
speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and
peace, because, like other dictators before
them, they're always making "their final
territorial demand," some would have us
accept them at their word and accommodate
ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But
if history teaches anything, it teaches that
simple-minded appeasement or wishful
thinking about our adversaries is folly. It
means the betrayal of our past, the
squandering of our freedom.
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So, I urge you to speak out against those
who would place the United States in a
position of military and moral inferiority.
You know, I've always believed that old
Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those
of you in the church. So, in your
discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals,
I urge you to beware the temptation of pride
-- the temptation of blithely declaring
yourselves above it all and label both sides
equally at fault, to ignore the facts of
history and the aggressive impulses of an
evil empire, to simply call the arms race a
giant misunderstanding and thereby remove
yourself from the struggle between right
and wrong and good and evil.
I ask you to resist the attempts of those who
would have you withhold your support for
our efforts, this administration's efforts, to
keep America strong and free, while we
negotiate real and verifiable reductions in
the world's nuclear arsenals and one day,
with God's help, their total elimination.
While America's military strength is
important, let me add here that I've always
maintained that the struggle now going on
for the world will never be decided by
bombs or rockets, by armies or military
might. The real crisis we face today is a
spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral
will and faith.
Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own
religious conversion made him a witness to
one of the terrible traumas of our time, the
Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of
the Western World exists to the degree in
which the West is indifferent to God, the
degree to which it collaborates in
communism's attempt to make man stand
alone without God. And then he said, for
Marxism-Leninism is actually the second
oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden
of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye
shall be as gods."
The Western World can answer this
challenge, he wrote, "but only provided that
its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins
is as great as communism's faith in Man."
I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I
believe that communism is another sad,
bizarre chapter in human history whose last
pages even now are being written. I believe
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this because the source of our strength in
the quest for human freedom is not material,
but spiritual. And because it knows no
limitation, it must terrify and ultimately
triumph over those who would enslave their
fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: "He
giveth power to the faint; and to them that
have no might He increased strength
But they that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength; they shall mount up
with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not
be weary
"
Yes, change your world. One of our
Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, "We
have it within our power to begin the world
over again." We can do it, doing together
what no one church could do by itself.
God bless you, and thank you very much.
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Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
http://www.kennedylibrary.org/j012061.htm
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library
Inaugural Address
President John F. Kennedy
Kennedy
Washington, D.C.
January 20, 1961
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Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice
President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom--symbolizing an end as
well as a beginning--signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and
Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters
ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all
forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for
which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man
come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth
from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new
generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter
peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of
those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are
committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any
burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the
success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of
faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there
is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one
form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron
tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope
to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who
foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of
mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is
required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but
because it If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few
who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge--to convert our good
words into good deeds--in a new alliance for progress--to assist free men and free governments
in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey
of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression
or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere
intends to remain the master of its own house.
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To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age
where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge
of support--to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective--to strengthen its shield of
the new and the weak--and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but
a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction
unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt
can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present
course--both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the
steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that
stays the hand of mankind's final war.
So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and
sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to
negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which
divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection
and control of arms--and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute
control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us
explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage
the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah--to "undo the
heavy burdens
(and) let the oppressed go free."
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join
in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the
strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one
thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this
planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our
course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to
give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to
service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as
a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle,
year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common
enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and
West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of
defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I
welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any
other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our
country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do
for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can
do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same
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high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only
sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love,
asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our
own.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library - Columbia Point - Boston, Massachusetts 02125
Tel: 1-877-616-4599
Fax: 617-929-4538
Email: [email protected]
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library Foundation - Columbia Point - Boston, Massachusetts 02125
Tel: 617-929-1200
Fax: 617-436-3395
Email: [email protected]
Visit NARA
Page created June 6, 1996 updated: July 01, 2001
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Countering Terrorism
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Countering Terrorism from the Middle East
R. Jerry Adams, Ph.D.
Evaluation and Development Institute
Seeking Retaliation
It is obvious that the September 11th terrorists attacked civilians and American icons because they
were trying to hurt Americans. What is not so obvious is they may also have been trying to get the
USA to retaliate, as violently as possible, against Middle Eastern Muslims.
By provoking massive counter-attacks in the Middle East, the terrorists hoped to unify Muslims
against the USA. The real purpose, however, was not just to unify Muslims against the USA; the real
purpose was to create an Islamic Empire composed of all current Middle East nations. By getting the
USA to attack, they thought they had the best chance of starting such a unification. Attacking the
USA was just the first step in the plan. In addition, the terrorists were also trying to show the
vulnerability of the West, Western values, and Western technology.
However, Muslims of the world were not fooled. Almost every Muslim nation sided with the USA.
They knew that killing innocent people violates Islam. They also did not want militant fanatics falsely
representing Islam. They did not want militant fanatics destroying their governments and institutions.
This is not the first time that militant fanatics have had this strategy of trying to provoke a military
response. For example, Palestinian terrorists know that they cannot defeat the Israelis in a military
conflict. They want to enrage the Israelis so the Israelis will respond violently with military force and
kill innocent Muslims. They want the world to see photos and television images of Israelis attacking
innocent Muslims. Palestinian terrorists think that Muslims throughout the region will unite against
Israel if Israel kills enough innocent civilians while pursuing the terrorists. The militant fanatics do not
want peace to be negotiated. They want the conflict to continue until Muslims in the region unite into
an empire. That is why they make outrageous attacks when peace efforts gain momentum.
As long as the USA, Israel, and the West avoid civilian casualties, Muslims will support bringing the
terrorists to justice. If the USA misunderstands the situation and regards the situation as primarily a
military conflict, as have the Israelis, then over time the terrorists will win. The more Israel has
regarded their conflict with the Palestinians in primarily military terms, the more terrorism has grown.
AI Jazeera, the primary news medium in the Middle East, broadcasts pictures of all Muslim
casualties from American bombs and Israeli attacks on Palestinians. The news runs 24 hours a day,
so every casualty is seen many, many times. The impact of those pictures, especially of young
children killed or seriously injured, can be very strong. Those news stories present in a compelling
way the allegation of the terrorists, that Muslims (and not terrorists) are the real targets of American
and Israeli war efforts.
The USA needs to be much more effective in the non-military part of its approach. For example, a
poll in November of 2001 showed that majority of Pakistanis thought that someone within the USA
or Israel was behind the September 11th attacks! Only 12 percent thought that bin Laden was
behind the attacks. The majority of people thought that the September 11th attacks were an excuse
for Americans and Israelis to attack Muslims.
The primary way to fight this type of terrorism is to remove the fertile grounds where it grows.
Terrorist networks cannot thrive within populations that see them as criminal fanatics. On the other
hand, nations can harbor terrorists when the civilian population or law enforcement view the
terrorists as justified or even as heroes. This can result in a passive, rather than aggressive,
approach in rooting out terrorists. This passiveness by civilians and law enforcement is at the heart
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of the problem.
The second problem that provides fertile grounds for terrorists is nations allowing (or promoting)
anti-American attitudes, especially among the young. This is not supported by Islam, but it is
supported by some Middle East nations.
The USA needs to focus on solving the two key problems that enable terrorists to thrive by working
with Muslim leadership to create long term solutions. Problem solving with Muslim leaders, our
natural allies, to stop Middle East terrorists, needs to be a central American goal. This goal should
dictate military responses, not the other way around. It is not too late.
we
1. Problem - Nations harboring or tolerating terrorists.
Recommendation - Terrorists are caught most easily when civilians oppose them and provide
information to law enforcement, which also opposes them. Governments, therefore, need to gain
Supports
support within civilian populations for stopping terrorists. If the clergy or government foster the view
that the terrorists are heroes, instead of criminals, this will not happen. Clergy of each country need
to make it very clear that attacking innocent civilians is incompatible with Islam. Further, Islam
requires Muslims to bring those who hurt innocent civilians to justice. Terrorists can only thrive in
nations where there is tolerance for this type of crime within both the civilian population and law
enforcement.
The USA, therefore, needs to act in ways that support each country's efforts to eliminate terrorism. It
is very difficult to eliminate terrorism from the outside, from another country. The USA needs to
collaborate with International Muslim leadership, such as the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, to help clarify within the Middle East that terrorism is criminal behavior, not Islamic
heroism. As long as clergy within each Middle East country do not step forward and condemn
terrorism, part of the general public will view terrorism as Islamic heroism. The USA also needs to
collaborate with Muslim leadership to help ensure that governments do not teach children that hate
is part of Islam.
These efforts may seem obvious, but they are missing. The moderate Muslim clergy in many Middle
East countries have not stepped forward. Many of the public in some Middle East countries think that
terrorism is supported in the Qur'an. Children in at least three Middle East countries are taught
strong anti-American views in schools. The governments of several Middle East countries have not
treated terrorists as criminals, as long as the violence was carried out in another country.
The USA has not done well in forming friendships and trust with the people of Middle East countries.
In the 1980's and 1990's, the USA abandoned the people of Iraq and Afghanistan after the military
effort against their governments ended. The abandonment caused people throughout the Middle
East to distrust the USA. Because the USA also has not insisted on Israel withdrawing from
Palestinian territories, as international law requires, the USA is seen as against Islam. The USA, as
well as the governments and clergy in the Middle East, have not presented to the people of those
countries the many times in recent years the USA has fought on behalf of Muslims, such as in
Bosnia.
2. Problem - Middle East nations that promote anti-American attitudes. This provides support
for terrorism against the USA. Allowing the USA to be the focus of anger keeps the focus of anger
away from the leaders of Middle East nations where a large percent of the people live in extreme
poverty and hopelessness. Fostering anger over a long enough time can lead to violence.
Recommendation - Collaborate with International Muslim leadership, such as the Organization of
the Islamic Conference, to create solutions. Teaching hatred is, of course, contrary to Islam.
Promoting Peace
There are two more key problems, but they do not cause terrorism. Instead, they cause deep conflict
and frustration between the USA and Muslims of the Middle East. Terrorism is the result of a
breakdown in which criminal behavior is accepted and supported. Nations can have conflict
with each other without supporting criminal behavior to resolve it.
Resolving the following two problems can lead to long term peace and cooperation between the
USA and Muslims of the Middle East.
1. Problem - U.S. foreign policies that hurt Muslim nations. Many Muslims regard Islam to be
"one nation," so that when U.S. policies result in harm to Muslims in one nation, it affects Muslims of
all nations. Many Middle Eastern Muslims believe that past and current American foreign policies are
responsible for a great deal of suffering of Muslims in Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, and the
Palestinian territory.
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Countering Terrorism
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/Counter-Terrorism.html
Recommendation - The long term consequences of U.S. foreign policy to the people of any country
where the U.S. intervenes must be considered a very high priority in forming U.S. foreign policies.
When shaping long term policy with Muslim nations in particular, the U.S. government should
consider collaborating with International Muslim leadership, such as the Organization of the Islamic
Conference.
2. Problem - The USA symbolizes the globalization of Western values, which many Middle
East Muslim Fundamentalists view as destructive, as well as attractive. In addition, a strong
totalitarian movement is growing within Fundamentalist Islam; the totalitarian movement has had a
very bad record on human rights.
Recommendation - The USA needs to collaborate with International Muslim leadership, such as the
Organization of the Islamic Conference, to find ways for Western and Islamic cultures to live in
peace. We also need, as a part of this effort, to collaborate on how to promote justice and human
rights.
May we find a way to honor each of our heroes,
firefighters, police, rescue, and emergency crews.
&
May it be our honor to care
for the many in great need.
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Copyright © 1996-2001 EDI and Dr. R. Jerry Adams
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Admiral Blair BBC Interview on Southeast Asia
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01112809.htm
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION PROGRAMS
International Security I Response to Terrorism
27 November 2001
Admiral Blair BBC Interview on Southeast Asia
United States helping to ensure terrorism not taking root
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) November 27 in
Indonesia, Admiral Dennis C. Blair said the United States was working with Southeast
Asian governments to "ensure that international terrorism is not taking root in this part of
the world."
The Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command called the Philippine terrorist group
Abu Sayaaf "the most immediate threat" to Southeast Asian security because the
organization "is unique in the focus and in the size and in the destructiveness right now."
Blair said the United States was assisting the Philippine government fight the threat by
providing American training, advisors, and maintenance support.
"And that's more the model of the way we will operate in this part of the world, supporting
other countries who see it as their responsibility to handle terrorist threats," Blair said.
"I think this model of training assistance, intelligence exchange, working on the other
aspects like customs and financial dealings is more the model for this part of the world," he
continued.
He added that the United States would continue to cooperate on issues such as maritime
security and intelligence sharing with the Indonesian government in order to assist its fight
against local terrorists.
Following is a transcript of the BBC interview:
United States Pacific Command Transcript
Adm. Dennis C. Blair
Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command
BBC Interview
Jakarta, Indonesia
November 27, 2001
BBC: Can I ask you first of all, there have been these reports that Southeast Asia could
become America's next front on its war on terrorism. Is that still the case, and why, sir?
Adm. Blair: Southeast Asia is an area which historically, as long ago as 1995, was a base
used by an international terrorist organization to plot an attack against airplanes in the sky.
There was, as I mentioned earlier, a Southeast Asian brigade that went to Afghanistan and
fought earlier. So this is an area in which terrorists can find a base to operate from and our
campaign here is working with the governments in the region who share our commitment
against terrorism to ensure that it does not use this base for operations against all of our
countries.
BBC: Would your operations involve actually sending in American troops into this region
to fight some kind of anti-terrorism war?
Adm. Blair: The focus of our approach here is working with and in support of the
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governments. A good example is the Philippines. The Philippines are dealing with a
terrorism group, the Abu Sayaaf Group. It does have historical connections with al Qaeda.
Current
We are providing training, advisors, maintenance support, in order to help the Philippines
deal with that threat. And that's more the model of the way we will operate in this part of
terror
the world, supporting other countries who see it as their responsibility to handle terrorist
threats.
Phillippine
BBC: You say you've actually sent in personnel into the Philippines to deal with the
problems there. Do you see that actually broadening out, that American military personnel
might be sent into other countries here in Southeast Asia?
Adm. Blair: The American personnel who have been in the Philippines were part of a
preliminary assessment group to figure out what the right sort of support is.
I thought of another area, in Thailand, for example, we have cooperated closely with the
Thai armed forces and border police against drug running and this involved, again,
American training, American advisors. There's a lot in common between the drug threat and
the terrorist threat. So I think this model of training assistance, intelligence exchange,
working on the other aspects like customs and financial dealings is more the model for this
part of the world.
BBC: But at the moment do you see the Philippines and the Abu Sayaaf as being the
biggest threat to American interests and Western interests as a whole in this region, the
Southeast Asia region?
Adm. Blair: I think that's the most immediate threat. There are two American hostages that
they hold. They're an active group that is working against the Philippine government and
against international citizens. In other areas, though there is a good, they could have some
sympathizers or al Qaeda cells that we need to go after also, but the Abu Sayaaf Group is
unique in the focus and in the size and in the destructiveness right now.
BBC: But you say there are those other cells allegedly of al Qaeda in different parts of
Southeast Asia. One of those is right here in Indonesia. We have reports, there are actually
American officials who briefed to that effect.
Is there still an operative al Qaeda cell as far as you're aware here in Indonesia?
Adm. Blair: I'm not going to talk directly about intelligence matters, but Indonesia with its
huge size, its borders which have been breached in the past by people, smugglers, by pirates
and all, have to be concerned about whether groups like international terrorists could move
in here. We are working with the Indonesians who share our commitment against them.
The support that we're providing right now is in comparing intelligence and in really sizing
up the situation. We are not certainly to the point that we are with the Philippines of more
active American assistance.
BBC: But the sort of security alerts as far as the American Embassy is concerned, seems to
have actually eased. Do you think the threat We've had the reports there are credible
threats against the American Embassy from al Qaeda-linked groups supposedly. Has that
threat diminished now somewhat?
Adm. Blair: I've been here with the Ambassador over the last couple of days and he's
satisfied with the security at the American Embassy right now.
BBC: The other sort of side to this, is the indigenous Indonesian extremist Islamic groups
here which may or may not have some link with al Qaeda. We certainly know they have
links with Afghanistan in the past, maybe in the present as well. How concerned are you
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about that?
Adm. Blair: The sort of sectarian violence in the Moluccas and in Sulawesi is of concern to
Indonesia, and I think it creates A term I've used in the past is a seam of lawlessness, an
area in which normal security and the ability of people to go about their business in peace is
wiped out by violence. Police are not asserting authority. So any time you have these seams
of lawlessness, whether they be in Basilan, in Jolo, in Sulawesi, in Eastern Myanmar, those
are of concern and we support the governments enforcing the rules, checking up on to
protect normal citizens and not allowing international groups to come in and use them for
their own purposes.
BBC: But do you think those groups are likely to be linked with the international people
coming here connected to bin Laden?
Adm. Blair: I think there is certainly a potential there for international groups to establish
themselves. Again, I don't want to talk about the precise situation at the present, but seams
of lawlessness are a big concern.
BBC: And do you think that these Indonesian groups are really some of the most worrying
groups in the region? If you're looking across the region and you see the Islamic extremists
of Indonesia, one which really shows up on the radar screen?
Adm. Blair: I think that some of the Let me think about that question for a second.
I don't want to single out any one group or any one region. We simply need to, with the
governments of the area across the board ensure that international terrorism is not taking
root in this part of the world.
BBC: But you say, I mean obviously the focus is try to root out and eliminate if there are
such groups in countries here, in Indonesia. Are you satisfied with the kind of cooperation
and the progress which is being made by Indonesian authorities here? And do you believe
they're actually capable of dealing with this problem?
Adm. Blair: September 1 1th was not that long ago and we are really getting started in this
new era of cooperation against this threat with the countries of the region including
Indonesia. So we've had a good start, but we have a ways to go.
BBC: What are the real focuses, priorities as far as the American military command is
concerned? What do you want to see your military partners here in Indonesia and in other
countries in Southeast Asia really doing to tackle these groups?
Adm. Blair: I think we're concerned with maritime security, ensuring that the borders
between our countries and the borders in this region are secure, and that those ships that
pass by these borders and the ships and planes that come in are on legitimate business.
That's a big feature.
I think we are concerned that the, really, military support for security forces is followed in
places like Basilan and Jolo where police are overwhelmed. And we're also concerned that
our intelligence sharing is solid so we cannot allow information or individuals to sort of slip
in a crack and not be followed up and not be identified.
BBC: What is the main focus in terms of the assistance which you can give to the Indonesia
government and military forces to help them deal with the issue?
Adm. Blair: It's in the areas that I mentioned. We cooperate on issues like maritime
security. We cooperate on intelligence sharing. Those are two primary areas.
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BBC: (inaudible) like Indonesia, this is a massive country of say 15, 16, or 17,000 islands.
Do you really think they can actually protect those borders and stop people slipping in a
way that they've done for centuries?
Adm. Blair: It's a tall order, but if you look at the destruction that can be caused by
terrorists these days, it's an order that we have to step up to and we have to approach.
Technology has made the destructive capability of terrorists so great that we have to take
our effort to a new level in order to defeat it.
BBC: How satisfied are you with the support which you're getting from President
Megawati in here in Indonesia? She started off being very supportive of the war on
terrorism, but then clearly was forced into a position where she spoke out against American
military action in Afghanistan, saying that America really has no right to attack a sovereign
nation such as Afghanistan in the way it did.
How concerned are you about whether this, the largest Muslim nation in the world, is
actually really behind what you're doing?
Adm. Blair: In my meetings over the last couple of days here I'm convinced that Indonesia
is sharing common cause with the United States and many other countries against terrorism.
We may have policy differences on some aspects of what we both do in areas, but in our
commitment that this sort of threat to our citizens should be eliminated, we agree
completely.
BBC: Do you think that she really is in a position to actually tackle Islamic extremist
groups in the way that you want?
Adm. Blair: I think the Indonesian government is in a position to tackle international
terrorism and has a lot of capability to do so.
BBC: And you believe it will do so?
Adm. Blair: I believe it will do so, yes.
BBC: And one final question. Iraq. Is that going to happen? Is there going to be attacks on
Iraq next year?
Adm. Blair: I'm not in a position to answer that question.
BBC: Thank you very much.
Adm. Blair: Thank you.
This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's Office of International Information
Programs (usinfo.state.gov). Links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the
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Copyright 2000 U.P.I.
United Press International
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June 18, 2000, Sunday
for
intelligere
SECTION: GENERAL NEWS
LENGTH: 1958 words
HEADLINE: Analysis: Military's role in responding to catastrophic terrorism
BYLINE: By Brian Michael Jenkins
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, June 18
BODY:
The role of the U.S. military in responding to catastrophic terrorism is generating the
most controversy among the 36 recommendations made by the National Commission on
Terrorism.
Driving the 36 proposals are three major concerns: One, the terrorist threat has changed,
therefore, new thinking is required. Two, intelligence, especially the collection of
information from human sources, must be improved. And three, we need to think now not
in the middle of a crisis how the nation will deal with an incident of catastrophic
terrorism.
It is the last issue, however, that has provoked controversy regarding the role of the
military. The commission believes that a catastrophic incident of terrorism in the United
States, possibly involving chemical or biological weapons, might require the Department of
Defense to take over as the lead federal agency. Under current rules, the FBI has the lead
role in crisis management in case of a large-scale terrorist incident, while the Federal
Emergency Management Agency has lead agency responsibility for managing the
consequences.
Specifically, the commission recommends that the president's assistant for national security
affairs, in coordination with the secretary of defense and the attorney general, "develop and
adopt detailed contingency plans that would transfer lead federal agency authority to the
Department of Defense if necessary during a catastrophic attack or prior to an imminent
attack." The commission also recommends that the secretary of defense establish a unified
command structure that would integrate the capabilities to respond to catastrophic
terrorism.
Having the Defense Department lead the federal response may not be most effective or
appropriate approach. Which is precisely why I favor the commission's recommendation that
we carefully examine the circumstances and procedures of any transition in relative calm,
not in the shadow of a terrorist catastrophe when angry politicians and an alarmed public
are screaming that something must be done.
How likely is catastrophic terrorism? No one knows. Uncertainty rules. Were we talking
about bombings, the most common terrorist tactic, we could more confidently forecast that
more will occur. The World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, along with a half
dozen foiled bombing plots in the 1990s, underline the continuing threat, the most recent
episode being the plan to carry out a large-scale terrorist attack (or attacks) during the
millennium celebrations.
Fortunately, there have been too few large-scale incidents involving the use of chemical or
biological substances to support any forecast about their possible employment. Indeed, the
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fact that out of tens of thousands of terrorist incidents worldwide over the past 30 years
only a handful involved chemical or biological material suggests that there are technological
difficulties or self-imposed constraints -- it isn't that easy or terrorists may not consider it
that useful. At the same time, the lack of precedents does not mean it won't happen as we
saw in the release of nerve gas in Tokyo's subways in 1995.
The commission's own assessment of the threat is well within the current consensus.
Terrorists have become more determined to kill in quantity. Large-scale indiscriminate
violence is the reality of today's terrorism. Truck bombs are its primary expression. We
cannot rule out the possibility that tomorrow's terrorists will employ weapons of even
greater potential lethality.
Thinking about the unthinkable is not new. Nearly 50 years of the Cold War obliged us to
contemplate the possibility of an all out nuclear war in which tens of millions of Americans
would lose their lives.
The commission does not define how many casualties make a catastrophe, but it is orders of
magnitude less than tens of millions. Generally, analysts view catastrophic terrorism as
an event with a thousand or more fatalities. That would put it well beyond the worst
terrorist incidents to date and at the upper end of the worst accidental fires and explosions
in modern history. The sarin attack in Tokyo killed 12 and made several thousand people ill,
many of them not as a direct consequence of the nerve gas, but rather as a result of panic
and psychosomatic symptoms.
The more likely terrorist scenarios may involve no more casualties than those of large truck
bomb. However, even a small-scale terrorist attack involving chemical or biological
substances could cause widespread alarm and potentially national panic, especially if the
authorities appeared to be unprepared. For that reason alone, it is necessary to examine
how best to communicate needed information and mobilize the necessary resources to
effectively respond to such an incident.
The burden is not entirely on the government. We as citizens can also do much to maintain
calm, ignore rumor, avoid overreaction, and assist one another. Disaster, war or epidemic
can bring out the best in a community as it often has in our own past.
Civil libertarians say soldiers are trained for combat that should be their exclusive
mission. It is not and never has been. There is a well-established history of military
involvement in non-combat roles. Soldiers National Guardsmen and federal troops -- have
assisted in emergency evacuations and relief work following natural disasters. They have
supported public health authorities. They have run the air traffic control system and
delivered the mail. They have patrolled the border and helped interdict drug smugglers, and
they have assisted local authorities in maintaining or restoring order during civil
disturbances. Federalized guardsmen and federal troops backed up the desegregation of
American schools in the 1950s. The use of troops in emergency situations is neither
unprecedented nor a threat to civil liberties.
Few would assert that the armed services are the ideal instrument to fulfill these various
roles. But with trained personnel, an efficient management structure, tremendous logistics
capability, a capacity to deal with large numbers of casualties, and special capabilities to
deal with chemical and biological warfare, the armed forces constitute a powerful back up to
local authorities and other federal agencies.
A worst case terrorist scenario might involve the military in some combination of missions:
assisting public health officials, providing additional emergency medical support and
disaster relief while helping local authorities maintain order.
Designating the Department of Defense as the lead federal agency does not usurp local
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authority. It means coordinating the federal response, not martial law. Hollywood script
writers and paranoid talk radio hosts may share visions of soldiers hunting terrorists on
American soil, but that is not a realistic scenario. What would they look for? Task forces
combining local police and FBI agents have been established in major cities to investigate
terrorism. They have the authority and the competency. If needed, they can draw upon
special military equipment such as protective clothing and masks or military expertise about
chemical or biological weapons. The FBI would keep the lead at the federal level.
A sustained campaign of terrorism conceivably could bring out the troops to guard vital
facilities. When faced with a terrorist bombing campaign on its subways, the French
government flooded Paris with thousands of additional gendarmes and soldiers. It reassured
a nervous public but did not halt the bombings. In the United States, there are mechanisms
already in place to support local authorities who request federal assistance in preserving
order.
A chemical incident, whether a terrorist attack or tipped over tank cars, is best handled by
emergency services. Soldiers might assist in building temporary shelters and feeding an
evacuated population, as they have done in hurricanes. FEMA would remain the appropriate
federal lead agency.
A large-scale biological attack could stretch local capabilities. Military medical personnel
could be mobilized to assist, military and veterans hospitals could provide additional beds;
conceivably, soldiers could be called upon to patrol quarantine zones, and if necessary, help
maintain order. Local public health authorities have enormous authority to deal with health
emergencies, a legacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when epidemics of
yellow fever, typhoid, cholera and other infectious diseases regularly struck American cities.
At the federal level, the surgeon general, a uniformed official, should take the lead in
dealing with what is essentially public health emergency.
A terrorist nuclear attack that causes thousands or tens of thousands of casualties truly a
catastrophe would demand an increased federal role, but coping with an event of this
magnitude would be an appropriate role for the president himself, with the perhaps the
vice-president, assisted by a cabinet level working group, assuming day-to-day
responsibility for coordinating the federal response to the incident. Such a structure was
created for dealing with major incidents of terrorism.
In each of the cases outlined, the Department of Defense plays a supporting role to other
agencies which already have legal authority and greater competency. Increasing the ability
of the Department of Defense to provide support may not require designating it as the lead
agency.
Moreover, designating the Department of Defense as a possible lead agency and
establishing a new joint command to coordinate its efforts would create a new big player in
Washington's bureaucracy. If it has the potential mission, the Defense Department's new
command will understandably seek the resources to carry it out. That could, in turn, divert
resources from other military missions and from civilian agencies.
Given the uncertainty of the terrorist threat, any large expenditure of limited resources
should offer a dual use that is, efforts to increase the nation's capacity to deal with
bio-terrorism are more easily justified if they also enhance the nation's capability to deal
with outbreaks of new or re-emerging diseases that result from increased world trade and
travel. Then, even if the dreaded incident of bio-terrorism never occurs, the effort has not
been wasted. With that criterion in mind, would the country be better served by a
strengthened public health service or a beefed-up military command?
Only in the upper register of catastrophe, the equivalent of wartime devastation, might
existing federal response mechanisms prove inadequate, but that puts us in a realm far
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above any single department or agency.
The commission, whose members represent vast experience in Washington, knows how
government works. There are clear benefits in creating impetus for the Defense Department
to catalogue its capabilities and assuring that all federal resources will be efficiently
mobilized and deployed to assist local authorities in dealing with catastrophic terrorism.
Giving Defense the lead is one approach.
At the same time, other departments and agencies of the federal government may have
greater competency and mechanisms are in place for calling upon military reinforcements. It
may not be desirable to divert resources to a new counterterrorist command -- the dual-use
principle should apply. And it is always a good idea to keep civilian agencies in front when
dealing with domestic issues. Before presuming a course of action, the alternatives need to
be carefully examined.
( Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser to the president of RAND Corp., served as an
adviser to the National Commission on Terrorism).
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"This is a very sentimental place," says Colonel Charles F.
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Philosophy professor Louis Pojman is, at first glance, an
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or military wannabe who gets weak-kneed at the sight of a
man in a uniform. "You might say I've been a convert to
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typical of an academic (or a soldier) and has found amidst
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reminds me of Notre Dame. I've seen so much debauchery
and decadence at American colleges; this is really an oasis.
There are few academic settings where character and
moral values are taken so seriously, where discipline and
integrity are valued as highly, where young people are
learning to accept stress in their youth. If our nation is to
survive its shallow hedonism, it will be because of training
Lee
like that of West Point." (This, mind you, from the
Demerits
green-ish author of the standard text Environmental
Ethics.)
For its first century of existence, the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point was an institution both revered and
reviled. It produced Robert E. Lee, who never collected a
single demerit during his four years and went on to serve
as its superintendent, and Ulysses S. Grant, who said the
happiest day of his life was "the day I left West Point" The
Academy is credited with preserving the Union and with
destroying the Founders' ideal of a citizen-army. Abolition
of the Academy was a live issue in Congress until the
twentieth century, when world wars made heroes and
celebrities of West Pointers like Douglas MacArthur (1903),
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Dwight Eisenhower ('15), and Omar Bradley ('15).
Gradually, West Point became enveloped in a romantic
haze: It was a place of dashing cadets, of smart parades
across the Plain, of Saturday football games along a
resplendent Hudson River. Young boys devoured Red
Reeder's novels of cadet life; reverential movies were
made, from The Long Gray Line to the ineffable West Point
Story (1950), in which James Cagney and Virginia Mayo
dance and wisecrack their way into the hearts of some
really swell cadets.
Then came Vietnam. Linebacker-halfback Sam
Bartholomew ('66) remembers the war's first obvious
impact on the Academy as comical: "The football team had
the 'Chinese bandits'--defensive specialists. Whenever the
bandits would go in the cadets would put on coolie hats,"
until the Secretaries of the Army and Defense banished the
coolies and their Commie imagery.
But as the war expanded, West Point grew grimmer.
Graduates were coming home as corpses. Thirty of
Bartholomew's classmates died in Southeast Asia; more
than 100 were wounded.
The cadet buzz-cut became the symbol of a myrmidon who
was willing to kill and die for Robert McNamara and
Lyndon Johnson. Current Commandant John Abizaid (73)
bitterly recalls going to Boston College for a football game
and "being saluted with 'Sieg Heil." West Point lost its
allure; the once-choosy Academy had to admit every single
qualified applicant to fill the entering class in 1968.
The Academy has recovered nicely. Once more it is among
the nation's best math and engineering schools. The cadets
are top-notch, their leaders are impressive men, hazing is
verboten, no one ever skips class, and the cadets call you
"sir" whether they mean it or not. Yet in some respects,
this is not the West Point of MacArthur and Eisenhower, let
alone Lee. Although all graduates receive a B.S., English
majors roam the grounds. Women parade across the
Plain--and live in the co-ed barracks. For $300 million a
year, West Point graduates 900 second lieutenants every
May, and as the USMA approaches its bicentennial in 2002,
we ought to ask again the most fundamental questions:
What is West Point? And why is West Point?
"SOMETHING LARGER THAN MYSELF"
"Of the river scenery of America, the Hudson, at Wests
Point, is doubtless the boldest and most beautiful," said
nineteenth-century poet Nathaniel Parker Willis. The
British coveted this strategically vital bend in the Hudson;
had they captured the batteries at West Point they could
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have severed the link between New York City and the
interior of the country--a severance that might have
pleased some later Americans, but that would have
disrupted communications and supplies during the
Revolution, perhaps dooming the cause of independence.
As early as 1776 the Continental Congress debated the
creation of a "Military Academy for the Army" so that we
would not have to rely on foreign engineers in the unlikely
event of future wars. In 1782 a "Corps of Invalids' surely a
name to frighten off potential aggressors!--was established
at West Point whereby lame veterans would teach
mathematics to younger officers.
Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton convinced George
Washington of the necessity for a national military
academy; two days before his death at Mount Vernon, the
ex-President took quill in hand and endorsed "a Military
Academy" as being "of primary importance to this country."
Hamilton's arch-foe, Thomas Jefferson, had opposed such
an academy on the grounds that it was "unauthorized by
the Constitution." As was so often the case, President
Jefferson disagreed with citizen Jefferson, and in March
1802, he signed into law the legislation creating the United
States Military Academy. The institution was a ramshackle
affair for 15 years. In 1812, the corps consisted of a single
cadet, for Jeffersonians led by Secretary of War William
Eustis stinted the Academy on grounds of parsimony in
government and a belief in the citizen militia as opposed
to the dreaded standing army.
A humorless New England autocrat named Sylvanus Thayer,
the thirty-third cadet to be graduated from West Point,
saved the Academy when he was appointed Superintendent
in 1817. Thayer instituted summer encampments, which
persist to this day, as well as daily grading, the ranking of
cadets, and rules so strict as to invite disbelief, if not open
rebellion: Cadets were not permitted to read novels, play
musical instruments, possess cooking utensils, or send
unauthorized letters to loved ones. Thayer also turned
West Point into the best engineering and science school in
the country--and, in ways not much acknowledged
anymore, fundamentally altered the Academy's mission.
For as Stephen Ambrose wrote in his standard history,
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, "Graduates
of the Academy would not even be expected to remain in
the Army, where there probably would be no room for
them in any case, but they were expected upon their
return to civil life to join the local militia company and
direct its training and, in war, its fighting." Thus the
Academy was intended to reinforce the militia system and
not become the heart and mind of a permanent army. Yet
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by 1838 Congress had imposed an obligation of four years'
service on graduating cadets, and it has fluctuated
thereabouts ever since.
Abolition of the Academy was hotly debated in the 1830s
and 1840s. (Congressman Davy Crockett called it "not only
aristocratic, but a downright invasion of the rights of the
citizen, and a violation of the civil compact called 'the
Constitution.") But the Mexican War saved its bacon, as
several graduates performed with distinction.
Although three-quarters of the West Point grads who
fought in the Civil War wore the Union blue, Confederate
President Jefferson Davis was of the class of 1828, and the
Confederate generalship was dominated by USMA products.
Senate Republicans took up where Crockett had left off:
Senator Chandler of Michigan demanded abolition of this
viper's nest that had produced more traitors "within the
last 50 years than all the institutions of learning and
education that have existed since Judas Iscariot's time."
Moreover, Northern West Point generals like George
McClellan (1846) seemed shy of carnage; one Republican
politician charged that the Union army was riddled with
"scores of luke warm, half secession [West Point] officers
in command who cannot bear to strike a vigorous blow lest
it hurt their rebel friends or jeopardize the precious
protectors of slavery."
William Faulkner once said that in, the South, the past not
only isn't forgotten--it isn't even past. At no If American
school is the past so present as at West Point. (Faulkner S
visit to the Academy in 1962 was one of his last public
appearances. "I had the layman's notion that this was a
stiff, regimented place where robots move to numbers" he
said, "and I've found it's a little different.") Cadets are
made to understand that they are part of the Long Gray
Line, which stretches back into a misty past and ahead to
an unknowable future; from the halls of Sylvanus Thayer to
the shores of West Africa. "Much of the history we teach
was made by people we taught," is a point of pride at the
Academy; West Pointers commanded both sides in 55 of
the 60 major battles of the Civil War and supplied 89 of
155 U.S. ground commanders during the Second World
War.
It would be a dull cadet indeed who could walk these
grounds for four days, let alone four years, and not get the
message: We Produce Great Men. West Point's baseball
team plays at Doubleday Field, named for Abner Doubleday
(1842), who in legend if not fact invented baseball. The
grounds are dotted with cannon, festooned with
regimental flags, decorated with statuary reminders of
wars past. George S. Patton faces the library-an in-joke,
for legend has it he scarcely visited the place during his
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five years as a cadet. ("Pa I am stupid there is no use
talking I am stupid," he wrote his father.)
Most of the buildings were constructed at the dawn of the
twentieth century; they are gray and forbidding,
neo-Gothic monuments with a gargoyle here and there,
perhaps as homage to the Hudson's venerable reputation as
host of goblins and headless Hessians. Though the design
has been called "grimly purposeful," there is a spooky,
eldritch quality, and it is no surprise that Ralph Adams
Cram, namesake of the architecture firm responsible for
most of the structures, was a master of the ghost story.
Ritual and tradition animate (critics say "deaden") every
aspect of West Point, from R-Day, when parents transfer
more than 1, 100 sons and daughters to the USMA and
watch them-heads shorn, posture erect--parade at sunset,
to graduation day, when the 900 or so survivors will toss
their white hats into the sky at Michie Stadium, and
hundreds of children scramble after the prizes (cadets
often hide pictures, dollar bills, and charms inside). The
sight of a cadet pushing a child in a wheelchair in pursuit
of a hat--and the child's delight at its possession--could
make the curmudgeon H. L. Mencken bawl. Proud parents
beam, yet there is a hint of sadness in the air, for their
children are gone now for five more years, scattered
around the globe, in their new family, the U.S. Army, and
"home" will be a series of temporary bases.
It is ceremony, plus the shared tribulations that grow
harsher with each retelling at alumni gatherings, that
imbues cadets with a lifelong attachment to a place of
gray walls and bitter Februaries. The Saturday morning
parades in the fall, three hours before kickoff time, stir
the hearts of visitors and annoy the sleep-deprived cadets,
who respond by cracking jokes in the ranks and passing
along the coordinates of comely spectators. But the stiff
dignity of a march serves a purpose. Novelist Ed Ruggero
(1980) told me, "I was in the fourth regiment, the last to
leave the parade field By the time we passed in front of
the Superintendent's reviewing stand the band was playing,
'The Army Song.' Looking through the files of bayonets and
rifles ahead of me, I could see the Supe's house, the dark
trees in the garden, the hills beyond. It was always on that
stretch that I felt most distinctly that I was part of
something larger than myself, something worth belonging
to"
A note on West Point argot and hierarchy is in order.
Freshmen are plebes, sophomores are yearlings, juniors
are cows, and seniors are firsties. The Superintendent, or
Supe (currently Lieutenant General Daniel W. Christman)
runs the place; the Commandant of Cadets (Brigadier
General John P. Abizaid) is in charge of the
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student-soldiers, particularly their military training. The
Dean of the Academic Board (Brigadier General Fletcher M.
Lamkin, Jr.) rules the academic roost.
Superintendent Christman, who graduated first in the class
of 1965, lives in the 1820 federal-style home of Sylvanus
Thayer, a football's throw from the cadet barracks. ("It's
like living in a two-room apartment attached to a
museum," he says, with the papers and furniture and
bric-a-brac of former occupants like Robert E. Lee and
Douglas MacArthur.) Superintendent has become a "career
job"--next stop, Retirement Village--for three-star generals
who serve here for five years, on the theory that this
positioning elevates them above petty service politics.
Superintendent Christman is popular with the cadets;
despite expanding military training, he is regarded as
something of a liberalizer, though nowhere near as
thoroughgoing as the greatest liberalizer in the Academy's
history, Douglas MacArthur, who, with memories of the
merciless hazing he took in his plebe year, became
Superintendent in 1919 and proceeded to broaden course
offerings, bring in civilian professors, codify the honor
system, greatly expand the sports program, and break
down the utter isolation of the cadets, who were
permitted more leaves and more mail.
The Superintendent's office is lined with portraits of his
predecessors, including MacArthur, who delivered his
"Duty, Honor, Country" valediction in May 1962 to a mess
hall assemblage that included a plebe from Ohio named
Daniel Christman. ("Today marks my final roll call with
you," MacArthur told the hushed cadets. "But I want you to
know that when I cross the river, my last conscious
thoughts will be of the corps, and the corps, and the
corps." MacArthur's wife, almost alone among auditors,
was unmoved, but as she explained, "This is the
twenty-ninth time I've heard it.")
There's an old gag that says, "West Point enjoys two
centuries of tradition untouched by progress, but that's a
lie. The Academy is sensitive to changes in U.S. foreign
policy. MacArthur told the cadets, "Your mission remains
fixed, determined, inviolable-it is to win our wars." Yet
Christman now explains that "We define wars much more
broadly than MacArthur ever envisioned. Our mission is to
win at any operation: restoring power in Dade County,
Florida, if we're asked to do that, or killing Iraq's
Republican Guard, if necessary." The curriculum has
mutated in response to Kuwait, Somalia, Serbia, et al.
"We've moved away from an emphasis on Western
European Judeo-Christian history" says the Superintendent.
"We're teaching a lot more about Islamic history, Arabic
and Chinese, understanding Africa and South Asia" For one
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never knows where next the armed forces of peacekeeping
will alight. (Professor Pojman is dedicating his next book
to his cadets who will give new significance to the green
uniform" the implication being that West Point is training
tomorrows officers for a military of pollution-fighters.)
No one better personifies the changes at West Point than
Lucian Truscott IV, enfant terrible of the Class of 1969. His
first novel, Dress Gray, in which a maverick cadet, Ry
Slaight, takes on a villainous commandant in trying to
discover the murderer of a gay cadet, was banned at West
Point; 20 years later, he does book signings here.
Truscott is the son of a West Pointer, grandson of the man
who commanded the Allied landing at Anzio, and a
descendant of Thomas Jefferson. (He'll be buried with his
family at Monticello.) He was a refractory cadet who
accumulated demerits the way kids collect baseball cards.
His writing career began as a sophomore, with a letter to
the Village Voice that read, "Abbie Hoffman's an idiot." He
graduated 658th in his class and was drummed out of the
Army after one year.
In Dress Gray, a character tells Ry Slaight, "Some day, this
place is going to change. It won't happen while you and I
are here, but we'll see it in our lifetime. You can count on
that"
Well, change did come, and it is reflected in Truscott's
sequel, Full Dress Gray (1998). Ry Slaight, who quit the
Academy at the end of Dress Gray, is back as
Superintendent of a multicultural West Point at which he is
"charged with defending that which he had once
challenged with such vehemence." The novel succeeds as a
page-turner, despite its cartoon villains--the two bad guys
are scions of a "tobacco-farming family" and "the Nassau
County Republican machine" But what is fascinating about
Full Dress Gray is the extent to which Truscott has now
fully embraced an institution at which he was about as
persona non grata as you can get.
Dress Gray reads as if written by a radical democrat of the
early nineteenth century--a Davy Crockett who questions
the very need for West Point. Full Dress Gray, despite the
sinister machinations of an evil commandant and his cadet
henchmen, is a virtual valentine to the Long Gray Line.
"One of the great ironies of my life is that I end up being
a defender" of West Point, says Truscott. Asked what he
would reform about the place, he replies, "I wouldn't do
anything different than what Superintendent Christman is
doing right now."
Truscott returned last summer to a welcome fit for a
prodigal son, supping on the fatted calf at the Supe's
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house. General Christman says, "I devoured Full Dress
Gray. And having read his cybertraffic on the West Point
Forum, I found myself agreeing an awful lot with what he
said." Dean Lamkin says of Truscott that, "In his heart of
hearts he's a patriot and believes in this institution. As,
indeed, he does. Truscott doubts he'd have graduated from
any other school: "If I'd gone to Berkeley I'd have flunked
out in six months for chasing hippie chicks. West Point
probably is the only place I could have graduated from,
because it made you have discipline--and in those days I
was rather lacking in the discipline category."
"YOU BROUGHT NOTHING INSIDE EXCEPT YOURSELF"
Before a contumacious teenager can be turned into a
disciplined, tradition-minded cadet, he or she must be
admitted to West Point, which since 1843 has operated an
official quota system, through which appointments to the
Academy are primarily allotted by states and congressional
districts. About three-fourths of the 1,200 new cadets
each year have been nominated by a member of the House
or Senate; the other places are reserved for soldiers from
the regular Army, sons and daughters of career soldiers,
and other military-connected candidates. "Most people
think your mom or dad has to make a contribution to your
member of Congress, and that's absolutely not true"
assures Director of Admissions Colonel Michael L. Jones
(1970).
The cadet profile is a guidance counselor's dream. For the
class of 2001, the mean SAT scores are 620 verbal and 644
math; 90 percent earned varsity letters, and almost
two-thirds, remarkably, were team captains. Ruggero the
novelist writes, "While West Point attracted some of the
brightest students in America, they were not the same kids
who would have gone to Harvard or MIT. They were the
kind of students who did well at Penn State and the
University of Texas."
A knack for trigonometry is not enough. The admissions
department rank orders candidates by a "whole candidate
score" which also takes into account "leadership skills" and
performance on a physical aptitude exam, which includes
pull-ups, a standing long jump, a basketball throw, and
other feats beyond the ability of your typical MIT geek.
Physical standards are lower for female applicants.
In May 1998, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Equal
Opportunity released a study showing "a substantial
academic qualifications gap between black and white
applicants who have been accepted for future enrollment"
at West Point. Using data from the incoming plebe class in
the fall of 1995, the CEO found that white admittees
outscored black admittees by an average of 40 points on
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verbal SATs and 60 points on math SATs.
Academy officials replied with the usual boilerplate about
"diversity" and the ever-useful "problems with
methodology" but they need not have been defensive:
After all, West Point is based on a quota system, albeit
one with a geographical base.
Whatever leg up affirmative action gives blacks today at
West Point is dwarfed by the preferences granted to
southern and western whites in antebellum days, when
young men from the interior of the country simply did not
have access to the kind of education enjoyed by the sons
of prosperous East Coast families. Throughout the
nineteenth century, Superintendents begged Congress to
tighten admission standards, to no avail, for the ingenious
congressional appointment system was a rich source of
patronage.
Besides, some of the unlettered turned out rather well:
For instance, a Virginia country boy named Thomas J.
Jackson, dressed in homespun, gained admission despite
making it painfully clear that "he could add up a column of
figures, but as to vulgar or decimal fractions, it is doubtful
if he had ever heard of them,' as a classmate said. The
examining board admitted him, in an obvious case of
affirmative action for hard-working crackers, and his
diligence and native smarts soon made him one of the
class of 1846's better students. (In the war that followed
Thomas J. Jackson picked up the nickname "Stonewall,"
and now you know the rest of the story.)
The first black graduate of West Point, Henry Ossian
Flipper (1877), declared, "If my manhood cannot stand
without a governmental prop, then let it fall. If I am to
stand on any other ground than the one white cadets stand
upon, then I don't want the cadetship" Today, says Louis
Pojman, the green-ish philosophy professor, "there's a
little bit of affirmative action and the cadets hate it.
When they see someone get pushed up because of her
gender or because they need a black person, they talk.
That's a demoralizer, but it doesn't happen much."
If nineteenth-century West Point had an aristocratic
tincture, the current corps of cadets is largely middle
class. "In this century our nobles have not encouraged their
sons to go to West Point" notes Gore Vidal, who was born
in the cadet hospital, son of West Point's star quarterback
Gene Vidal (1918). The almost comically genteel nature of
the haughty nineteenth-century cadet is illustrated by a
story told of the painter James McNeill Whistler, who
arrived in 1851 and left two years later, done in by his
"unfortunate opinion that silicon was a gas." An instructor
once reproved Whistler: "what! You do not know the date
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of the battle of Buena Vista? Suppose you were to go out
to dinner and the company began to talk of the Mexican
War, and you, a West Point man, were asked the date of
the battle. What would you dot
Do?" replied Whistler
cooly. "Why, I should refuse to associate with people who
could talk of such things at dinner!"
The Academy acts as a leveller. As a general explains in
John P. Marquand's novel Melville Goodwin, USA, "you
brought nothing inside there with you except yourself.
Pocket money, family, and chauffeurs did not matter at
the Point." In his critical Ivory Fortress: A Psychiatrist
Looks at West Point (1974), former West Point shrink
Richard U'Ren wrote of a gathering of cadets and parents:
"One cadet's father, from Virginia, came dressed in a
Brooks Brothers suit, while another's, from Louisiana, wore
a blue bowling shirt: yet it was impossible to determine
which cadet belonged to which father." Whether this is a
refreshing obliteration of class distinctions or an appalling
triumph of enforced sameness and dull uniformity is for
each reader to decide.
THE BURDEN OF BEAST
New cadets arrive in late June, and if they are not feted at
frat mixers and juice-bar receptions, they don't expect to
be. "When I first came here, I had this idea that
upperclassmen were going to be hitting me," laughs firstie
Thurman McKenzie, a varsity track athlete.
They don't hit you anymore; instead, the teenaged
newcomers are thrown into "Beast Barracks" the decidedly
feral nickname for Cadet Basic Training. As Commandant
of Cadets, Brigadier General John Abizaid is the
commanding officer of the corps. Sturdily built and witty,
Abizaid is described as a "soldier's soldier" by subordinates.
"It's really funny to watch these guys come in here with
their hats on backwards, and next thing you know we turn
them into soldiers," Abizaid says as he shows me a video of
Beast Barracks. (West Point is big on promotional videos
set to incongruous rock music. In this one, new cadets are
soldierized to the tune of "Takin' Care of Business," that
classic '70s ode to idleness. Another video shows Pointers
peacekeeping in Somalia to the strains of U2's "Where the
Streets Have No Name.")
For six weeks, more than a thousand 18-year-olds will
wake at 5:20 a.m. and spend their days running,
rappelling, shining shoes, and studying their M-16s as
though they were geometric theorems. When addressed by
an upperclassman, they can say one of four things: Yes,
sir; No, sir; Sir, I do not understand; or No excuse, sir.
(Cadet Mattox of Los Angeles says that after plebe year, "I
even began my prayers, "Sir") New cadets are permitted
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one 10-minute call home each week. Televisions and other
mass culture entertainment are not permitted. Between 4
and 9 percent will quit during Beast Barracks, and it's a
long ride home, especially for dropouts from small towns,
who are typically given a hero's sendoff when leaving for
the Point.
Beast Barracks is largely cadet-run. New arrivals are
divided into squads of ten; upperclassmen act as squad
leaders in what is seen as a manufactory of leadership.
Some are bullies, others want to to be everybody's pal;
some inspire, others berate. But the grant of responsibility
usually does its job: junior Bryce Bowman of suburban
Buffalo, New York, says that being a squad leader was the
experience that made him feel finally, fully, part of the
Long Gray Line.
The new cadets do almost everything, right down to
shoeshining, as a team. "Cooperate and graduate" goes one
adage, for as former English professor Pat C. Hoy says,
"Few believe they can make it alone. Those who try usually
fail. A lone rifleman does not wage war and win." (Hoy,
who went on to teach at Harvard, lamented, "at Harvard,
where I see so few signs of restraint, I'm yearning for the
gifts of community. At West Point I had yearned for
freedom and solitude.")
Those who have endured Beast Barracks describe it best.
"It's an initiation far harder than Army basic training"
according to General Norman Schwarzkopf (1956),
"designed to drive out those plebes who can't handle
physical and psychological stress, and teach the survivors
the discipline and basic skills they need to get along at
West Point."
Separated from family, friends, and hometown, the
fledgling passes through this summer crucible and emerges
a West Point cadet. Something has been gained--and lost,
as well. As critic U'Ren writes, "Since cooperation and
discipline are esteemed so highly in the military,
individualism and self-reliance--the old civilian
virtues--must be ruthlessly expunged." Colonel Kerry
Pierce, director of the Office of Policy Planning and
Analysis, stresses that cadets must learn that "the group is
more important than the individual," and as this is at odds
with the dominant American ethos, it belies the hackneyed
claim that West Point is "quintessentially American." It is
not--for better and/or for worse.
Beast Barracks is prominent in West Point lore not only for
the ingenuity of the hazing--forcing the newcomers to
drink Tabasco sauce and toothpaste, stand at attention on
their heads, warm toilet seats for upperclassmen, and
other wholesome hijinks now largely banished--but for its
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"West Pointicization": Memorizing old football scores,
Academy facts, and, most colorfully, bizarre definitions.
"How's the cow?" upperclassmen ask the lowly plebe, to
which he responds, "Sir, she walks, she talks, she's full of
chalk, the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the
bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree."
Irreverence is not among the qualities contributing to an
applicant's whole candidate score, but it ought to be. A
longstanding joke (updated every few years for inflation)
has it that West Point is a "$250,000 education, shoved up
your anatomy a nickel at a time." Upperclassmen are nigh
unanimous in proclaiming a sense of humor as the sine qua
non of a successful plebe year. The healthiest way to deal
with a picayune regulation--besides quitting--is to obey
and have a good laugh later. "I remember making it back
to my room, dosing the door, and laughing so hard" at the
absurdity of it all, says one junior. Then he fell asleep,
woke up before sunrise the next morning, and did it all
over again.
Non-sadistic hazing has a purpose beyond cruelty. "There's
a tendency, when you're 18 years old, in a new
environment, and people are yelling at you, to just want
to give up" notes Lucian Truscott. "My experience was you
didn't get guys to not give up by being nice to them. They
learn they can endure pretty much anything--that's why
they don't give up." Nonetheless, the cruder forms of
hazing have largely vanished--one of the Academy's
ubiquitous "mission statements" declares that instilling
"sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others" is a
purpose of Beast Barracks. Today's regimen, however, is
perhaps more demanding than in Tabasco-guzzling days.
That old spoilsport Commandant Abizaid has
de-emphasized fraternity froth and rededicated Beast
Barracks to "rifle marksmanship, road marches, tactical
training" and other military skills, for as he says
bluntly--his manner of speech is so forthright, so
unadorned, that he probably speaks to his mother
bluntly--"West Point is not going to school to be a physics
major; it's learning to drive a tank."
"Yeah, I know the definition of leather [one of the ritual
memory tests], but this summer the things we were asked
to memorize were much more military--the soldiers' creed
and everything about our assault rifle and grenades" says
plebe Andrew Scott, a descendant of General Winfield
Scott, old Fuss 'n' Feathers of Mexican War fame, whose
remains repose in the West Point Cemetery. Andy's sister,
Katherine, is a firstie, a batallion commander: She lives in
Scott Hall, named after her preening ancestor. Sibling
relations are strange, though not necessarily strained, at
West Point. "We can talk to each other" says Kate. "No
plebes can interact with upperclassmen, that's
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fraternization. But it's my brother, so I'm allowed to
recognize him. If I was walking across the area and saw
him, he wouldn't just come up and say, 'Hey, Kate.' He
would stand at attention. But he can come over to my
room. I can give him advice, but I try to stay away from
giving him unfair advantages. That's not what a brother or
sister is for; we can be there for moral support."
The generals who run West Point today are products of the
Vietnam years--the Academy's nadir. A poll of firsties in
1971 found that more than half regretted coming to West
Point. (It wasn't all bleakness, though. The highlight of
Vietnam-era protest along the Hudson came on Moratorium
Day 1969, when 200 Vassar girls presented flowers to the
cadets. The soldiers-to-be greeted them with wry
cordiality. One football player, offered a daffodil,
promptly ate it; another cadet announced that he had to
leave, as he was late for "poison-gas class.")
After the war, a West Point captain said, "Vietnam taught
us something about leadership. You can't be out of touch
with the people you are going to lead. In Vietnam, if you
gave an order that the troops didn't understand, they
might say, 'F*** you, Jack. I'm not going. See you around.'
Someone who comes out of this place has to know how to
deal with that kind of thing."
Thus the emphasis by Christman & Co. on "ridding this
institution of vestiges of sophomoric behavior." The Supe
contends "there was for far too long a feeling that we
could hector and berate a plebe and that was okay, that
somehow we'd go out into the Army and not be affected by
that. Well, I saw too many junior officers deal with their
platoon or company the way an upperclassman dealt with
a plebe--and you don't do that."
"SIR, THE DESSERT TODAY IS OREOS "
Much as Commandant Abizaid may be loath to admit it,
West Point is a school; each cadet's room contains a
personal computer but not a gun. (The computer's cost is
deducted from their pay, which totals about $7,000 a
year.) Typically, a cadet rises at 6:00 and spends the bulk
of the day in class, until mandatory athletics in late
afternoon. Leisure time--or study time, as it were--is
reserved for evenings. Taps is played over the barracks
intercom at 11:30; lights must be out by midnight, except
for firsties (a recent liberalization). Televisions are not
permitted for a cadet's first two years; plebes may have
stereos after their first Christmas, but the noise mustn't
travel down the hall. Drinking and drug use are forbidden.
In some respects these are typical college kids--Gary
Conway, director of cadet radio station WKDT, tells me
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that the corps prefers alternative rock and country to John
Philip Sousa. But in other ways--well, as Bryce Bowman
asks, "In how many colleges do you wake up and say to
your roommate, 'How do we clean our room today?" Nor
are there many schools in which fatigued students who
start to nod off in class are encouraged to stand in order
to stay awake. Unnerving to the instructor, one might
think, but they seem not to mind.
In his retirement at Gettysburg, where he could walk
around Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top and all those
other lyrically named bloodbaths he had studied half a
century before, Dwight Eisenhower wrote, "The pleasures
of a cadet's life were the same in my day as they were in
Grant's and probably are today--the forbidden food tidbits
smuggled in from the outside and enjoyed in barracks after
taps, the long winter evenings spent in unauthorized
meetings discussing graduation prospects, the practical
jokes on each other or on the lowly plebe." The homely
pleasures of cadet life remain constant. They are bonded
through common trials; these friendships, which will last
past a lifetime, give their lives shape and ballast.
"This is not a monastery" insists Supe Christman, despite
the T-shirt that reads, "Sex Kills Go to West Point and
Live Forever.' Whereas once the plebe was forbidden to go
home from R-Day until the next summer-an obvious
attempt to sever him from family and home-today he gets
two weekend passes before his first Christmas, and in
subsequent years "weekend opportunities grow
exponentially," says Christman.
Ed Ruggero worries about this. "West Pointers are often
criticized for being socially immature, probably as a result
of being locked up for four years. They get out to their
first assignments and many of them act like high school
sophomores (I was one of those). In recent years cadets
have been given more privileges--leaves, passes, etc.--with
the idea that they'll know how to act. I don't think this will
make them soft, but I am concerned that it will dilute
those bonds that come from shared experiences. I believe
this is one of the problems the Naval Academy faces;
midshipmen are a lot closer to being college students than
are West Point cadets. They also have many of the same
problems other college students have (cheating, drugs, sex
scandals).'
Ruggero may be playing the part of Old Grad--each class is
convinced, says Christman, that theirs was the "last time
when Beast Barracks was still Beast Barracks"--but he is
asking the question that West Point has asked and
answered differently every few years--since 1802: What is
the proper balance between regimentation and liberty? A
restive cadet in the 1970s asserted, "The central, ironic
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paradox of Academy life is that the institution attempts to
build leaders by denying them room for individual choice,
thought, and initiative." Or as a critic of the academies
puts it, "Compare this to the lifestyle of an ROTC cadet
who attends a civilian university. Those cadets, generally,
hold jobs to help pay for their education and some even
have families to support. They must decide on their own
whether or not to stay up late, go to class, stay in shape,
etc. It is incumbent upon them to discipline themselves,"
whereas "Academy cadets have most of their decisions
made for them
The Academy may produce a more
regimented officer, but not necessarily a more
self-disciplined one."
At 12:05 p.m., the 4,000 members of the corps of cadets
eat lunch in cavernous Washington Hall, underneath an
assortment of early American and state flags. I am guided
to the table of Company C-4 by Joanna Pietrantonio, a
firstie from Southern New Jersey, a platoon leader who
looks as though she could be cast as the pretty and
wholesome cadet-the anti-Heather Locklear--in a weekly
West Point TV series. (See nearby sidebar.) She is an
English major who likes T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Ezra
Pound, and opera. There are ten of us, including three
plebes who sit, ramrod straight, at the end of the table
opposite "Table Commandant" Iker, a friendly firstie from
Oklahoma. The table commandant sets the tone for the
table, which is conversational but not raucous. Among
those at our repast is Ben Celver, a wrestler from Auburn,
Washington, who took last year off and did volunteer work
in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India to "escape the concrete,
materialist society I'm in here sometimes." Celver is an
engaging fellow: a real self-improver, the sort who "if I'm
reading a book and I don't understand a word I look it up."
Imagine Jack Kerouac at West Point--athlete, Christian, a
boy with wanderlust whose post-Army dream is "to go to a
little high school, teach English lit., and coach wrestling,
just like my father."
Lunch today is sloppy joes and scalloped potatoes
(dietician Dawn Roper tells me that the cadets prefer
"pizza and wings, like all teenagers"); the entire corps is
served simultaneously in a herculean feat of scullery. In 20
minutes, our plates will be cleaned.
One of the plebes reports, "Sir, the dessert today is Oreo
cookies." This news is digested, and I reflect on the
self-discipline it takes to announce, without smiling and
with a sense of gravity, the presence of black and white
cookies. We eat and chat, all but the plebes, who are
quiet. They are permitted to eat unmolested, however,
unlike in days of yore. (Sam Bartholomew recalls, "I'll
never forget July 4, 1962. I had a big steak, strawberry
shortcake, and french fries dumped in the trash because
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an upperclassman thought I had mixed up the first and last
names of the actress in Godzilla vs. Frankenstein.")
A plebe still may not speak to an upperclassman unless
spoken to. I ask the trio of plebes, "Do you dread being in
the presence of these guys, the upperclassmen?
Yes,
sir," they reply in unison.
Lunch has been wolfed down, and a plebe stands to report,
"Sir, there are two and a butt end stalks of broccoli left." (I
was reassured of the cadets' basic normality when, later,
Ben Celver told me that he and his classmates also find it
hard not to crack smiles at this sober-faced accounting of
the table's scraps.) At meal's end, the command is given to
all cadets, "Brigade rise" and the plebes of C-4 stand and
shout, "Go Cowboys, fire it up, C-4, yee-hah, you know it."
Cadet Pietrantonio, tells me that C-4 is the only company
that makes its plebes yell its motto. It's "loud and
obnoxious, she says with a smile, but "our company is
really close," unlike her company of her first two years,
which "was not cohesive" and had "a lot of arguing and
resentment toward the chain of command."
For all the humanizing--or weakening, choose your
adjective-reforms of recent years, West Point can still
sometimes be stern, forbidding, mirthless. Most cadets do
time in the slough of despond--to which religion is a
favorite antidote.
Ardent West Pointers speak of the corps as Christians
speak of the body of believers. West Point is no longer an
Episcopalian redoubt--is any place this side of the
Connecticut suburbs?--but the hillside Cadet Chapel
remains a looming (and booming--its 20,000-pipe organ is
the largest in the world) Gothic hillside presence. Catholic
and Jewish chapels also grace the grounds; there are no
plans--yet--for a mosque.
Mandatory chapel attendance was struck down by the
Supreme Court in 1973--a good thing, says staff chaplain
Scott McChrystal, for it "served the purpose of inoculation:
you take something so you don't get it later." The chaplain
is an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God--you
can't get much farther from West Point's historic
Episcopalianism--who boasts an unusual resume: He was a
platoon leader in Vietnam and a tactical officer at The
Citadel before he heard The Word. He estimates that at
least half the cadets participate in some form of
worship--many in such parachurch groups as Officers
Christian Fellowship or Navigators-although he curses the
enemy Time. "There are ample opportunities to integrate
your faith with what we do. But if you don't grab ahold and
make time, that will get squeezed out by seemingly more
urgent requirements. My son [a plebe] is pressed to find
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even 10 minutes for devotion in a day."
There is probably less racial segregation at West Point
than at other institutions of higher learning. Some of this
is due to compulsion--cadets eat, live, work with other
members of their company; there are no "black tables" or
"ethnic dorms" of the sort found elsewhere. (Cadets do
note that Asian students tend to hang together; the "Asian
Connection" they call it.) But the religiosity of many cadets
dissolves racial barriers. Like athletics, Bible studies and
Sunday school are instruments of integration.
As for politics, the corps is more Republican than most
student bodies this side of Hillsdale College. Cadets are
careful not to denigrate the Commander in Chief in front
of outsiders with pads and pencils, but seldom is heard a
venerating word about President Clinton. Gore Vidal, who
has written about his birthplace with both affection and
mordant wit, captured the irony of a military academy full
of "conservatives" with his observation that "the ideals of
socialism are anathema to them even though,
paradoxically, the West Pointer is entirely cared for by the
state from his birth in an Army hospital (if he is born into a
military family) to taps at government expense in a federal
bone-yard."
SOMETIMES A STUDENT
The B.S. is the only degree granted at West Point,
although cadets may major in 19 fields, including such
unscientific frovolities as History or Philosophy and
Literature. But every cadet takes the same 31-course core:
16 are in the "humanities and social sciences" 15 are
"math, science, & engineering." This ratio is disturbing to
those who fear the Academy is becoming just another
college (albeit one that requires students to study "Terrain
Analysis" and offers courses in "Low-intensity Conflict").
"People say we've turned into Penn State," sighs
Commandant Abizaid, but "there are no civilians walking
around in beads and sandals. We are not training people to
be doctors and lawyers and candlestick-makers--we're
training them to be soldiers."
The catalogues contain the usual guff about the
twenty-first century, our allegedly shrinking world, and
"performing global duties in a multicultural environment,"
but there are no cakewalk courses of the sort that keep
the Ohio State football team eligible. West Point offers
"not a single course in AIDS awareness, or music
appreciation, or bowling, or physics for poets and lovers,"
says Dean Lamkin.
"The heart of this academy must forever be the junior
rotating faculty," insists Superintendent Christman. These
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are captains and majors with master's degrees, often West
Point grads, who teach for three years and then march
back into the Army. They compose 62 percent of the
faculty; another 22 percent are civilians with doctorates,
and the remainder are Academy Professors, military men
with Ph.D.s who lead the departments and stay until
retirement.
"Scholarship is not as important as teaching," says Lamkin.
Unlike other deans, he weighs an applicant's skill in the
martial arts. "Would you hire a brilliant mathematician
who was a so-so soldier?" I ask. "Absolutely not," he replies.
"I cannot be putting up an example that bifurcates the
academic and military development of cadets."
The preponderance of military men among West Point's
faculty is often excoriated by outsiders. Early in this
century Harvard's president Charles W. Eliot offered the
classic criticism: "No school or college should have its
teaching done almost exclusively by recent graduates of
the same school or college who are not teachers and who
serve short terms. West Point, so far as its teachers are
concerned, breeds a very bad practice for any
educational institution."
Does the Point's professoriate stack up against a top
civilian faculty? "No," says Professor Pojman, a civilian
Ph.D. with academic tours of duty at Oxford, Berkeley,
and NYU, among others, "but it doesn't have to. Almost 90
percent of the courses here are core courses: You need
people who know that course, you don't need worldwide
scholars. And, actually, for most teaching at universities,
you don't need a Ph.D. That's a myth." Moreover, "these
officers are there for them," putting in office hours that
would make a State U. prof's head spin. (The civilian
professors are often similarly dedicated. Says Dean
Lamkin, "I interview each of them personally and I ask, 'Do
you believe in duty, honor, country?" Hint to prospective
interviewees: Answer Yes.)
Norman Schwarzkopf, who was an engineering mechanics
instructor during one rotation, declares, "West Point
taught the military ethos in the most effective way
imaginable: It gave us war heroes for teachers." Instructor
Schwarzkopf would often "put aside the textbook, sit on
the edge of the desk, and talk about what it means to be
an officer, about values and morality and honor. I felt that
was my responsibility far more than teaching the principles
of friction and why wheels roll down hills. Sure, I wanted
the cadets to understand mechanics--but only so they'd
graduate and become good Army officers."
Then there is the chronic time squeeze. A faculty member
in the 1970s asserted, "although there are potentially great
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students at the Academy, very few of them ever attain
that status." Professor Pojman concurs, noting that "the
biggest difference between [cadets] and good students
elsewhere is that they don't have the time to develop into
scholars."
Classes at West Point are much like those in a typical
selective university. Except they're not. For one thing, no
one straggles in. "They don't even consider cutting class,"
says Colonel Rick Kerin. "They don't consider being late. It's
just ingrained" Cadets stand at attention as class begins;
the "section marcher" announces their presence. Responses
begin, invariably, with "sir" or "ma'am." Class size is almost
always below 18. Humanities classes are seldom lectures;
they take the form of extended dialogues, as in Professor
Kerin's drama class, where 12 members discussed Ibsen's A
Doll's House. Its feminist themes were chewed over, but
sacrifice, chivalry, and honor also worked their way into
the hour. (Don't suppose that classroom discussion at West
Point pits troglodytes against Neanderthals. As at most
schools today, the theme of the freshman composition
course is "diversity and multiculturalism," by which is not
meant the experience of Swedish Americans and Welsh
Americans.)
We also sat in on Major Kellie Simon's "Discrete Dynamical
Systems and Introduction to Calculus" a required course for
plebes. Major Simon is a rotating instructor with a
no-nonsense class demeanor. After the morning salute, she
sends her plebes immediately to the blackboards, in teams
of two. They scrawl their names in the upper corner of
each pane and spend the next 55 minutes "working
problems" that were absolutely incomprehensible to your
innumerate fly on the wall. After much conferring,
head-scratching, and trial and error, one cadet team
comes up with the right answer and is invited by Major
Simon to enlighten the others. Cadets who don't get it are
invited--nay, strongly encouraged--to come by for extra
instruction, for at no college in America are teachers as
available for tutoring. (Nor is one likely to overhear a
calculus student at any other school of higher learning ask,
"Did you have boxing today?"
Every plebe takes a freshman literature course that
consists largely of poetry--contemporary poetry, not
Kipling and "In Flanders Fields." While some of the military
instructors view it as sissy-ish, Terry Freeman, the founder
of West Point's visiting poets program, argues, "No one
familiar with the ugliness of the simplistic, heavy-handed,
impersonal rhetoric that sometimes infests military
discourse can doubt that sensitizing cadets to the beauty
and power of poetic language will ennoble and enrich their
leadership in a profession that must involve saving lives
more than it does taking them." (Jefferson Davis would
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have approved. As Secretary of War, he wrote President
Buchanan, "It has long been the subject of remark that the
graduates of the Military Academy whilst occupying the
first rank of scholars in the exact sciences were below
mediocrity in polite literature. Their official reports
frequently exhibited poverty of style.")
Freeman and his successor, Colonel Kerin, have brought
such poets as Mark Strand, Robert Pinsky, and Charles
Wright to give readings--which the poets do with great
enthusiasm, for as Kerin says, "we buy 1,000 books or so of
theirs as course texts" which often quadruples the poet's
sales. The visiting poets are pleasantly surprised. As one,
Jorie Graham, remarked, "What moved me deeply was the
way [the cadets] searched through the literature, from
Shakespeare to contemporary poetry, in order to
determine a right moral choice in a situation where,
increasingly, that is impossible."
SOMETIMES A SOLDIER
So what are they: college students receiving military
training or soldiers talking college-level courses? "We are
all confused, chime in several top-rank firsties to whom I
posed the question.
Commandant Abizaid is not confused. "Cadets are future
officers of the United States military," he says forcefully.
"They are not college students. They take college courses
in the process of becoming officers in the Army." There is
no hand-wringing among the military instructors over the
dearth of meditation time at the Academy. "We
understand that the cadet lifestyle denies the possibility of
contemplation, one faculty member has said, "but then
who wants a platoon leader who contemplates the order to
take the hill?"
Upon graduation a cadet becomes a second lieutenant in
the U.S. Army and is obliged to serve at least five years.
The highest-ranked grads choose their branch--infantry for
the gung-ho, Corps of Engineers for the calculating--while
the "goats" (lowest-ranked cadets) get the leftovers. A
cadet may drop out without incurring any further military
obligation until his COW year. "Walking into class the first
day of third year is like breaking a mirror" goes one old
joke. "Both bring seven years of bad luck" Quit
thereafter--or be separated for bad grades or
misbehavior--and you're in the Army now, as a lowly
enlisted man.
This past summer, on the Sunday before classes began,
Commandant Abizaid instituted an Affirmation Ceremony
at which the incoming COWS were presented with second
lieutenant's bars to carry until graduation. He has also--to
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the discomfort of some upperclassmen--required cadets to
address each other by their shadow ranks: plebes are
privates, yearlings are corporals, COWS are sergeants, and
firsties are lieutenants.
A large majority of those retaking the oath arrived at West
Point with aspirations that went beyond soldiery. (The
"South Hudson Institute of Technology" is one mocking
nickname for the Academy.) "I came desiring Sparta,' says
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Chura ('80), deputy director of
the Department of Military Instruction; "I was in a
minority." Colonel Pierce, director of policy planning, says
that only 20 percent of male cadets (and 14 percent of
females) in the classes of 1998-2002 came to West Point
primarily out of a "desire to be an Army officer" (These
figures are obtained from surveys of cadets during the first
three days of Beast Barracks; "How are you enjoying it so
fart" is not among the questions.)
So why do they come? They want a challenge; a good
education (a free education if you don't count the
five-year obligation as payment in full); something
different, difficult, and exciting. But then again most
people join the military for reasons other than the smell of
gunfire. The armed forces are the nation's largest
government jobs program, and today's recruitment ads sell
the military as a kind of Job Corps with tanks and
helicopters. Michael Chura spent two and a half years as a
recruiter; he found that people join the regular Army for
job security, as a means to get money for college--"so why
should West Point be any different?"
Those who expect their post-Beast education to be math
and engineering with a few marches thrown in are soon
disabused. Summers are devoted to military training: after
plebe year, they train at nearby Camp Buckner, learning to
fire the M-16 and survive in the woods and taking
ever-popular demolitions training; they also spend a week
at Fort Knox, where tank-driving is among the skills
acquired. The next summer cadets act as squad leaders at
Camp Buckner or Beast Barracks or sojourn in actual Army
units around the country. Finally, the summer before
becoming a firstie, half the class leads training at Camp
Buckner or Beast, while the other half are posted at bases
around the world.
The downside of placing cadets in charge at Camp
Buckner, according to one cow, is that "it's their first time
making decisions, and their mistakes cost 1,000 people
their time and make them hate it." The upside is, well,
that it's their first time making decisions, and mistakes
cost time, not lives. West Point takes upon itself the
burden of being a "leadership laboratory" As
Superintendent Maxwell Taylor stated in 1946, "West Point
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is essentially a school for leaders."
There is also leadership by the book: juniors must study
Military Leadership, which includes classes on "vertical
dyad linkage theory." Old-fashioned West Point-haters
would have a field day with this; as the Academy's
one-time scourge, Harper's Weekly, scoffed, "war being an
art, not a science, a man can no more be made a
first-class painter, or a great poet, by professors and
textbooks; he must be born with the genius of war in his
breast."
Robert Shaw, a North Carolinian, son of a disabled Vietnam
vet, is First Captain of the class of 1999. The first captain
is a sort of valedictorian-plus: selected on the basis of his
academic and military records, he is responsible for the
entire corps. ("We old first captains must never flinch" said
one 'Black Jack" Pershing--to another--Douglas
MacArthur.)
Shaw is a rarity: a First Captain who is a product of the
U.S. Military Academy Prep School, located in northern
New Jersey, which over ten months prepares enlisted men
and high-school grads with substandard records for the
Academy. Each year about 150 prep schoolers enter West
Point; they rise to the top quickly, for as Shaw says, "The
prepsters are the ones who already know everything as far
as wearing a military uniform, shoeshine, room
appearance." Yet a stigma also attaches itself to USMAPS
grads, for an inordinate number are jocks who lacked the
grades to make West Point on their first go-around. (More
than a third of black West Point cadets started at USMAPS,
as compared to 11 percent of whites. Yet USMAPS alumni
graduate from West Point at a rate slightly above
average.)
"I started college," says Shaw. "First semester I did so well
they asked me not to return; so I enlisted in the infantry
and spent just short of three years in the 82nd Airborne
Division." His platoon leader was a West Pointer who
pushed, pulled, and lobbied Shaw into USMAPS.
Now Shaw is a star, and a true believer. He speaks
reverently of his hero, General James Gavin, the 82nd
Airborne assistant commander on D-Day. (And a West Point
critic--"the Academy]' said Gavin, "tends to stultify
curiosity") Shaw says that "the most rewarding" thing he
has done at West Point is mentor two plebes: a sophomore
task that provides genuine leadership training.
"There's worse ways to go," says Shaw, when I ask if he
ever thinks about dying in battle. He is not vainglorious
about it; his father's disability is more real to him than
John Wayne movies. At an 1880 West Point reunion of the
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Grand Army of the Republic, General William T. Sherman
(1840) said, "There is many a boy here today who looks on
war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell." Despite the CNN
interventions of the 1990s "There's nothing more moving
than having an infantryman or soldier help a young child
across the street or help stabilize a region without having
to resort to violence" says Major Peter Bechtel, a political
science instructor--one suspects that certain of these
cadets will someday find hells that make Somalia look like
Eden.
WHERE THE GIRLS ARE
The nineteenth-century poet Charles Fenno Hoffman asked
of West Point, "Where dost thou find a fitter place on
earth / To nurse young love?" Alas for these young hearts,
the point is moot.
Cadets may date each other, but the Academy takes.
parietals seriously. Hand-holding, let alone kissing, is
PDA--public display of affection--and thus forbidden in
view of others. Male and female cadets may visit each
other, but the door must be open, and they are not
allowed to sit on the same piece of furniture. (What
cadets do with each other off the post is their own
business, though an off-post romp between a plebe and
upperclassman would be fraternization, and thus illicit.)
"Sometimes the two sexes don't look at each other in a
favorable way here" says Joanna Pietrantonio. "When a guy
dates a girl cadet, he usually gets some flack from his
classmates." She has been dating Joe Benson, starting tight
end on the Army football team, for over two years and
concedes "it's hard to maintain a relationship because we
only get to see each other at night."
Private displays of affection are not unknown. One
graduate of the Class of 1998 impregnated his cadet
girlfriend, secretly married her, then had the marriage
annulled and deposited the baby with family for
safekeeping. Given that regulations state, "Any cadet who
is married prior to graduation, or who has custody of a
child or incurs a legal obligation to support a child prior to
graduation shall be separated from the military academy;'
one might have assumed that the lovebirds would be
headed for points non-West. But these are litigious times,
and since the annulment erased, Kennedy-like, the cadets'
marriage, Academy administrators permitted them to stay.
(Pregnant cadets may take a one-year leave of absence
and return, sans baby.)
Which brings us to the broader question, one that Academy
officials insist has been answered once and for all: Should
women--who compose 15 percent of the class of 2002--be
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at West Point? In 1975, Congress ordered the academies to
admit women the next year. (Delaware Republican
Congressman Pete du Pont was the prime sponsor of
integration.) Former Superintendent William
Westmoreland protested, "Maybe you could find one
woman in ten thousand who could lead in combat, but she
would be a freak, and we're not running the Military
Academy for freaks, But the women came.
Finding a West Point officer today who will criticize the
sexual integration of the Academy is like stumbling across
a Honus Wagner baseball card. Lieutenant Colonel Rick
McPeak, a professor of popularity-fading Russian and
member of the last all-male class at West Point (1980),
recalls that former Dean General Gerald Galloway once
began a lecture to the faculty, "If you don't think women
should be at West Point, please leave by the door behind
you." The exodus did not commence. McPeak explains,
"When the Army adopts a policy, many looking from the
outside say, 'You just salute; you have your views and you
go on.' Well, no. "When the Army adopts a policy, there is
an expectation that you will internalize the values
associated with that policy.' What West Pointers regard as
praiseworthy loyalty can sometimes seem to a civilian like
Winston Smith learning to love Big Brother in 1984.
Not all men in the early '80s classes behaved chivalrously.
"when a woman comes up to a cadet and says, 'Good
morning, sir' and the response is, 'Good morning, bitch,' we
have a real problem," says McPeak. "Those things were
going on 20 years ago. Either I'm naive or that's ancient
history now.
The sharpest critics of letting girls in continue to be old
grads. Karl Day ('57) of the Family Research Council says
that "mixing and mingling of young females and young
testosterone-laden males who are warriors is disruptive of
unit cohesion, morale, and discipline. Feminization has
degraded the Academy and required a broadening of
academics to accommodate women who are not
particularly engineering-focused.) He explains the attitude
gap between old and new grads: "There's a remarkable
difference between those who have seen serious warfare
and those who have experienced made-for-TV wars, where
you put Marines on the beach and there are cameras
already there. There's going to be a big change in this
country when the bodybags start coming back in size 34B."
The party line is that things are going swimmingly and that
only a few mossbacks still gripe about women. Dean
Lamkin sounds fed up, as if he's sick of hearing for the
500th time that females ruined the Point and how today's
kids couldn't shine the Goat of 1947's shoes. "I don't need
to respond to the class of 1951" he says. "I don't need to
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respond to anyone but the people of the United States.
We've got the greatest student body in the world, and for
somebody in an older class to question the morals, the
ethics, the intelligence, the dedication of these cadets is
totally out of line. That means they haven't been back
here in 30 years. They don't know what they're talking
about."
So have women changed West Point? Does West Point
change women? Kate Scott, the descendant of Old Fuss 'n'
Feathers, fiancee of a fellow cadet, a woman whose
bloodlines on both sides run West Point gray, says, "There
are times when it's clear that there's a difference between
me, a female cadet, and a regular cadet. A regular cadet!"
she catches herself. "But usually it's not a big deal."
Major Peter Bechtel, whose sister is also a West Point
graduate, insists that the presence of women has changed
little. "I've seen the same camaraderie [at Camp Buckner],
the same discussion. If there's profanity or jokes in a bus,
they're said without regard to who's around. It's not the
case that they're trying to protect the girls."
"Is it harder to discipline women?" I ask First Captain
Robert Shaw. "Not at all," he replies, which is the right
answer, though it's hard to see such a polite young man
screaming in an 18-year-old plebe girl's face. Reverse roles
and complications multiply. Professor McPeak recalls a
female platoon leader who had a nightmare: "I give an
order and everybody ignores met' McPeak remarks, "I
would never in all my life" have such a concern.
Among the most trenchant critics of sexual integration is
James Webb, a Naval Academy graduate and former
Secretary of the Navy, whose essay "Women Can't Fight"
remains the classic exposition of the theme. "There is a
place for women in our military, but not in combat," wrote
Webb. "And their presence at institutions dedicated to the
preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that
preparation." (One cadet suggests "it's kind of a waste" to
put women through summer infantry exercises, in light of
the prohibition on women in combat.)
Given that West Point is training its cadets to serve in an
army whose mission is, more and more, the occupation of
various Third World countries for purposes of
nation-building, infrastructure creation, and
"peacekeeping," Webb's conclusion retains its relevance: "If
it is the consensus of Congress that the service academies
no longer perform their historic function of preparing men
to lead in combat it would be logical and cost-effective
to close them down
If the taxpayers
want simply to
buy a brain with military training, they can purchase that
combination through an expanded ROTC program at a
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fraction of the cost."
Both Lucian Truscott's Full Dress Gray and Ed Ruggero's The
Academy feature conservative members of Congress
seeking to de fund West Point, for as the senator in
Truscott's book charges, "we have an Army today that is
being feminized, and much of the responsibility for this
trend lies with West Point." Yet Truscott dismisses the
prospect of real live conservative opposition to West Point.
"There's no percentage in it for 'em. They all appoint kids
up there, they go to the Army-Navy game, West Pointers
inhabit all the military-industrial complex companies."
Davy Crockett ain't in Congress anymore.
HONOR THY MATER
"A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those
who do." That is the West Point honor code, the 13 words
that are "the reason this academy is here" says Cadet
Honor Captain Richard Gorini.
The honor code was not formalized until 1922; prior to
that, cadets were sometimes expelled for cheating, some
times not. "In the early days an officer's spoken or written
word was his bond," says West Point historian Steve Grove.
"Cheating went on when Thayer was here, and he called
the boys in and said, 'You mustn't do that kind of thing,'
but it wasn't looked at as an honor violation."
The code is the property of the cadets. They administer
it--though the Superintendent can reverse a verdict of
"found," or guilty, a matter of frustration to some cadets.
This is the way it works, at least on paper: a cadet who
has reason to believe that another has lied, cheated, or
stolen must report this violation (after confronting the
cadet, if he so chooses) to the Cadet Honor Committee
within 24 hours. This sets in motion a series of
investigations by Honor Committee members, which may
culminate in a hearing--a trial, really, for the accused has
certain rights, including to legal counsel--before a panel of
four Honor Committee members and five randomly
selected cadets. If six of the nine find that the cadet
under suspicion intentionally violated the code, he is
"found" and will be expelled, unless the Superintendent
intervenes. (The Superintendent cannot, however, reverse
a "not found" verdict.)
In recent years, according to Colonel Anthony Hartle, a
professor of philosophy and chairman of the Honor Review
Committee, "we have around 100 investigations a year,
about 50 go to an honor hearing, and about 25 are found.
About eight or nine are separated"; the rest receive lesser
punishments.
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Although a disproportionate number of cases involve
plebes, upperclassmen who violate the code are dealt with
more harshly. Honor Officer Christopher Eastburg says, "If I
was found for having committed an honor violation, I
would suffer much harder sanctions than if I was a
freshman, because the longer you're here, the more you're
supposed to internalize integrity." (Those who run afoul of
West Point regulations--say, by leaving one's room after
taps to meet a girl--will be punished if caught, but unless
these offenses involve lying, cheating, or stealing, they are
not infractions of the honor code.)
Until 1973, a cadet who was "found" by his peers and
refused to resign was silenced; that is, subjected to as
complete an ostracism as possible. He was not spoken to;
if he dared bring a girl onto the dance floor, everyone else
walked off. Among those silenced was cadet Timothy
Leary, the future Harvard LSD guru, who was "found" by his
peers for lying about the possession of booze. The
administration reversed the verdict, but Leary went "days
without talking to a single person," except for
Superintendent Robert Eichelberger, who "felt the
silencing was wrong" and invited the shunned cadet to
make a weekly trip (non-hallucinogenic) to his office for a
chat. Leary left in 1941, concluding that "Nothing good for
America could come from those gray gothic piles."
The "toleration" clause, added in 1970, is the hardest for
cadets to swallow. Ultimately, a cadet must be prepared
to turn in a roommate or buddy for an honor violation. "It
would be really, really difficult to turn in a friend," says
one first-class cadet. "I would never do it." Nor, he
guesses, would most of his classmates. (Twenty-five years
ago a cadet told Richard U'Ren, "Most of us know where
our loyalties are, and we ignore the toleration clause. I
don't like to squeal on my brothers.")
Those who seem over-zealous in reporting fellow cadets
are derided as "Honor Nazis." In George S. Patton's day
they were called "quilloids" and the friendless Patton was
among the most disliked quilloids. (Not that Patton cared:
He endured pitiless hazing for asserting that VMI was
tougher than West Point.)
Defenders of the toleration clause deny that it encourages
"squealing." Karl Day explains the stakes: "I don't want my
son going into combat with a platoon leader who will go
out on patrol about 200 yards, sit down for three hours,
and come back and render a false report. The place we
teach them not to do that is the Academy."
Is it possible to teach honor? Cadets receive 44 hours of
honor education--primarily cadet-led bull sessions about
"ethical dilemmas" ranging from U.S. Army massacres (My
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Lai) to illicit leg-shaving (Tailhook). Colonel Rick Kerin
suggests that teaching honor has become a necessity:
"When I came to West Point, I didn't encounter much in the
way of values, particularly with respect to honesty and
integrity, that was at all different from what I'd been
taught at home. I'm not sure I can say that now of the
cadets who come here."
Nevertheless, the Academy is not the sort of place where
one needs a bike lock or car alarm. "I leave my office
unlocked" says one civilian professor. "People leave their
valuables in hallways, and they invariably remain
there--even if left for a week or so. I've never felt more
secure."
West Pointers take with them a code of honor that acts as
lodestar in the wider world. As Bryce Bowman says, "When
I'm home, I'll be in a situation and say, 'What would I do at
West Point?"
When I asked my long-time former congressman for names
of West Point grads in our area (rural Western New York),
he smiled. "Once I appoint 'em to the academies, they're
gone for good." Standing armies are uprooting forces:
soldiers are scattered to the corners of the globe, and few
ever make their way back home for anything more than a
visit. Colonel Hartle, whose tone bespeaks his native
Cunningham, Kansas, says, "It sounds cold-hearted, but I
never thought a whole lot about Kansas. Your roots simply
change: The focus is on the organization."
The West Point ring is worn on the same finger as the
wedding ring; sometimes they are fused, but as volumes of
evidence have shown us, the military and the family are
not a good fit. Numerous are the pathologies associated
with "military brats" or children of career soldiers who
grow up homeless, always moving, never stable. Cadets
are not unmindful of the price they will pay. Rare indeed is
the grad who weds his or her high-school sweetheart.
Those who hold onto the girl or boy back home are known
as members of the "2 Percent Club." Joanna Pietrantonio
has dated Joe Benson for more than two years, but "we're
not engaged" she says. "We've talked about it, but
unfortunately there's a high divorce rate for people who
get married right out of West Point so we're going to wait."
In Ed Ruggero's novel The Academy, the protagonist
discovers that his own imperfect family has been
supplanted by the corps of cadets, for "he had more in
common with these people than he had, perhaps, with his
own father." But it is an inadequate substitute family
indeed that permits some members to remain anonymous.
Congress swelled the corps from 2,500 to 4,400 in 1974,
and though it has since been trimmed to 4,000, might this
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still be too large?
Colonel Hartle does not advocate a smaller corps, but his
explanation of why silencing would be ineffective today is
revealing: "If you said a cadet was silenced you'd have a
quarter of [the corps], half of them, who would have no
idea who the person was. It's a slight exaggeration but I
think I knew the face of every person in my class. When
my son graduated in 1989, it would not have occurred to
him that he should know" his classmates' faces.
Historically, the most incisive criticism of West Point, the
one leveled by Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett, is that
it created an elite military caste that was estranged from
the broader society and contemptuous of the citizens,
who, after all, keep them in their dress grays. As the
authors of one sharply critical book, West Point: America's
Power Fraternity (1973), asked, "Should Americans trust an
institution that produces men who don't trust them?"
In 1962, education researcher David Boroff noted that
cadets "have a lofty disapproval of young people" as "soft,
selfish, egocentric." Today, Professor Pojman says, "These
kids go home and see friends from high school: They're
smoking, drinking, on drugs. They feel a mild
estrangement. Remarks about 'fat Americans' have come
up a few times in my classes."
I spoke with one cadet, an outstanding student and
athlete, who had not been home in two years. Another
pitied his old friends, who are "still in this little town, they
don't know about the larger world, they don't know about
Iraq." Part of this estrangement, of course, is simply
accelerated maturation. Cadet Eastburg recalls, "You grow
up in the first six months. When I went home at Christmas
freshman year everybody else was still playing video
games, and I was like, 'Wow, I've really changed a lot."
ON BRAVE OLD ARMY TEAM
Superintendent Douglas MacArthur, who played left field in
West Point's first-ever baseball game against the Naval
Academy, instructed that these words be incised upon the
gymnasium and in the mind of every cadet:
Upon the fields of friendly strife
Are sown the seeds
That, upon other fields, on other days
Will bear the fruits of victory.
No American school takes athletics more seriously than
West Point, where Sylvanus Thayer instituted exercise as a
part of the curriculum in 1817. The head of physical
training at West Point bears the Dungeons and Dragons-ish
title "Master of the Sword." She is currently Maureen
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LeBoeuf, a lithe and serious Olean, New York native who
admits, "It's a disappointment when I walk in. 'Master of
the Sword'--people expect to see Xena the Warrior
Princess."
"While most universities and colleges are eliminating their
physical requirement, here we have 168 hours over four
years" says Colonel LeBoeuf. Male plebes must take boxing;
females take self-defense. Other requirements include
gymnastics, swimming, and a battery of fitness tests
culminating in the "famous indoor obstacle course, which
cadets love to hate." Climbing, vaulting, swinging, rolling,
shimmying up ropes, and carrying medicine balls--it is
every non-athlete's recurring gym-class nightmare. The
obstacle course is run during cow year in "an old typical
gymnasium--we tell them it's the same dust Eisenhower
sucked," smiles Colonel LeBoeuf. Standards are lower for
women, though administrators are quick to tell Old Grads
that the average female cadet does more pushups and
situps than did the average male cadet of 30 or 40 years
ago.
Consistent with MacArthur's dictum "every cadet an
athlete," intramural sports are mandatory for all four
years, and one's performance in what is elsewhere known
as phys-ed makes up 15 percent of a cadet's overall grade.
Varsity athletes usually get automatic As, which brings us
to the most glamorous aspect of West Point: Army
football, and in particular the Army-Navy game, the
emotional centerpiece of the cadet year. (Among the first
bits of plebe knowledge memorized during Beast is "What
rank
do plebes rank?" The answer: "Sir, the Superintendent's
dog, the Commandant's cat, the waiters in the mess hall..,
"Super's
pat,"
and all the Admirals in the whole damn Navy.")
The first Army-Navy football game was played at West
Point on November 29, 1890, after a challenge from a
group of midshipmen. The cadets were relative strangers
to the game of the oblate spheroid--only two had ever
played before--but a challenge is a challenge, and led by
Dennis Mahan Michie, son of legendary professor Peter
Smith Michie, Army took the field and was routed 24-0.
Those were, indeed, different days. At one point, Navy
faked a punt and ran the bah for a touchdown, a bit of
razzle-dazzle that drew cries of outrage from the West
Point side. Gentlemen do not fake punts, the affronted
cadets explained. (Among the early football skeptics was
James McNeill Whistler, who protested that "to dispute..,
for a ball kicked round the field is beneath the dignity of
officers of the United States.")
Even today, Army-Navy is "without question, it's not even
close" the greatest rivalry in football, says Coach Bob
Sutton. "It's like when you play a brother or a real close
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friend. You want to beat them because you're really
playing against yourself." ("I've never heard any trash
talking" in the Army-Navy game, says fullback Ty Amey.)
The game traditionally is the final regular season contest
of the college year. "Most of the seniors, this is their last
football game ever, and that leads to an unbelievable
commitment by those players to pour everything out" says
Sutton. Unlike most games, which ebb and flow depending
on the score, "Army-Navy just elevates every quarter, and
it has nothing to do with what's on the scoreboard." The
cadets and midshipmen stand throughout the game; when
Army digs in for a goal-line stand, the cadets chant,
charmingly, "Fix bayonets!"
Army-Navy is usually played in Philadelphia, but there may
be no more spectacular place to watch a college football
game than at West Point's Michie Stadium, dedicated in
1924 to Army's first football hero, who was killed in 1898
in the Spanish-American War. On October Saturdays, the
trees are ablaze with a splendor to still any Hudson Valley
poet's heart; three cannon on the shore of Lusk Reservoir
boom whenever Army scores. And the assembled 40,000
fans go light on the home team, even when it falls behind
by several touchdowns, because, after all, they, unlike
many of the gridders on the other side of the ball, went to
class yesterday, and will go again on Monday.
West Point and the other academies are the only Division I
football programs to pay their players (like the rest of its
cadets) over the table, although $600 or so a month
probably couldn't pay a University of Miami linebacker's
monthly cell-phone bill. The squad is much larger than
other teams--180-plus--and while Army might never beat
Tennessee, a randomly selected team of 11 West Point
cadets would destroy a randomly selected team from
Tennessee or any other civilian school.
The problems Coach Sutton faces are different from those
that bedevil his Division I counterparts. For instance, the
typical plebe loses 15-20 pounds during Beast summer,
which pretty much rules out freshmen starting on the
offensive line. (Plebes do not, however, call their
teammates "sir" in the huddle.)
A former Air Force assistant coach has observed that "At
every other school in America, the hardest part of any
football player's day is football practice. At the military
academies, the easiest part of a football player's day is
football practice." Still, some cadets call the players
"get-overs," a variant of "shirker." They are excused from
most of the parades; they get bigger portions at mealtime;
they avoid certain scut tasks. To which former tight end
Bryce Bowman replies, "Okay, we'll switch: you go out and
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get your head knocked around for three hours by
300-pounders, and I'll deliver laundry."
I ask Coach Sutton if football is like war, expecting the it's
just-a-game reverse, but he takes the hand-off and plunges
in with a qualified yes. "All the elements that are involved
in battle are present here on a smaller level. They need to
function as a unit under stress. You've got to be trained, to
have great poise, and maintain your composure in chaos.
Nothing goes as planned, because you don't have control
over your opponent." (George Marshall, a VMI man, is
said--perhaps apocryphally--to have once given an order
with the instruction, "I have a secret and dangerous
mission. Send me a West Point football player.")
Army's record (3-8last fall) lags behind the won-loss record
of the U.S. military, but then again there are no Grenadas
on the schedule. There are regular games against the likes
of Notre Dame and Syracuse. While Army competes in the
Patriot League in most other sports, the football team is a
new member of the motley Conference USA, a collection
of mostly Southern schools (Tulane, Cincinnati, Memphis,
Louisville, Houston, Southern Mississippi, and East
Carolina) which are about as rivalrous with Army as
Colorado School of Mines is with Bowdoin. But times have
changed. "Conference affiliation is mandatory for a
Division I school that is serious about competing at that
level," says Superintendent Christman. The league has a TV
deal with Fox Sports Net and tie-ins with the Liberty Bowl
and the oddly named Humanitarian Bowl, which
presumably frowns on personal fouls. Army football can
rake in close to $12 million, supplying the lion's 'share of
the Academy's $15 million athletic budget.
(The basketball team, overshadowed by Army football, is
best known for producing a tough Polish point guard
named Mike Krzyzewski, class of '69, who played for a
mercurial locker-kicking, chair-throwing wildman named
Bobby Knight. Krzyzewski coached Army to NIT
appearances in 1977 and 78 before building perennial
champions at Duke. Although the height restriction on
cadets has been removed, seven footers with soft
touches--hell, seven footers who can tie their shoes--aren't
clamoring to get in.)
AND WHEN I DIE
When I asked Director of Admissions Colonel Michael L.
Jones his favorite spot at West Point, he replied softly, My
roommate's grave. Randy Carlson. He was killed in
Lebanon." Haltingly, he continued, "Randy went to The
Citadel for a year before he came here, and he is the
reason I graduated. He dragged me through math for two
years; without him, I never would have made it. During the
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really hard times plebe year we would go to the cemetery
because it was a really quiet place where no
upperclassmen were around. We could do our homework,
we could read Scripture, we could talk. We had a favorite
tree.
"Randy and I were later stationed here when he was in the
French Department and I was in admissions. He left in May
of '82. The last night before he left we had him over for
supper; he never married so he was like a second father
for our kids. Then he and I walked down to the cemetery
and Randy told me that night that if anything ever
happened to him he showed me where he wanted to be
buried. Three months later I had to bury him there. So
when I need to get away from life, that's where I go: I go
to talk to Randy and just sit there."
Every cadet is required to learn "The Corps,' an anthem
written a century ago by West Point chaplain Bishop
Herbert Simpson.
The long gray line of us stretches
Through the years of a century told,
And the last man feels to his marrow
The grip of your far-off hold.
Grip hands with us now, though we see not,
Grip hands with us, strengthen our hearts
As the long line stiffens and straightens
With the thrill that your presence imparts.
Grip hands--though it be from the shadows-
While we swear, as you did of yore,
Or living, or dying, to honor
The Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps!
Old men cry at the singing of "The Corps." Someday graying
members of the Class of 1999 will too. They will recall
marches across the Plain, surviving "discrete dynamical
systems" beating Navy, tossing hats in the air after a
mind-numbing speech by a cabinet official or Vice
President. And they will think of the white crosses in the
cemetery, of classmates returned to dust well before their
allotted three score and ten years, dying in Serbia or
Africa or some other place on the map that can never
mean to a member of The Corps what this gray gothic
redoubt in the Hudson Highlands does.
West Point 10996
West Point promotes itself to solicit candidates as any
school does, and it soon may have help from an old
standby: television.
Fans of TV's 'golden age" those gilded nights when living
rooms across the land were invaded by the likes of Efrem
Zimbalist, Jr.--may recall "The West Point Story."
Whatever the artistic shortcomings of that 1950s series, it
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served as a valuable recruiting tool, and it is a measure of
the Academy's determination to sell itself to American
teendom that Hollywood producer Beth Sullivan gained the
full cooperation of everyone from the Superintendent on
down when she filmed a pilot episode last summer for a
proposed new series to be titled "West Point, USMA."
Sullivan produced the treacly CBS drama "Dr. Quinn,
Medicine Woman" in which Jane Seymour battled
prejudice, sexism, and degrading environmental practices
on the frontier. Word is--surprise!--that the villain of her
"West Point, USMA" is a cranky old grad who can't accept
the presence of women at his alma mater. Commandant
Abizaid says, "My fear is that it will turn into 'West Point
10996" a teenaged soap opera on the Hudson, in which
models will embody duty, honor, country, pulchritude.
Superintendent Christman, by contrast, insists that "West
Point, USMA" will be "a value-laden show" Sullivan is still
peddling her pilot, with Academy assistance: General
Christman actually accompanied her to a meeting in
California with CBS brass where she pitched her wares. At
press time, the show had not been picked up.
PHOTOS (COLOR): West Point Cemetery
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): James McNeill Whistler
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Abner Doubleday
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Robert E. Lee
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Douglas MacArthur
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Omar Bradley
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Norman Schwarzkopf
PHOTO (COLOR): Lucian Truscott IV, enfant terrible of the
Class of 1969. His first novel was banned at West Point; 20
years later, he does book signings there.
PHOTO (COLOR): Cadet crawls under wire during a field
training exercise.
PHOTO (COLOR): Second class cadet Bryce Bowman
PHOTO (COLOR): Ben Celver--athlete, Christian, a young
man with wanderlust, whose post-Army dream is "to go to
a little high school, teach English lit., and coach wrestling,
just like my father."
PHOTO (COLOR): Staff chaplain Scott McChrystal is an
ordained minister with the Assemblies of God. He was a
platoon leader in Vietnam and a tactical officer at The
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Citadel before he heard The Word.
PHOTO (COLOR): Major Kellie Simon is a calculus instructor
with a no-nonsense class demeanor.
PHOTO (COLOR): First Captain Robert Shaw
PHOTO (COLOR): First class cadet Joanna Pietrantonio has
a sister who also attended West Point.
PHOTO (COLOR): Kate Scott has West Point bloodlines on
both sides of her family, all the way back to Mexican War
General Winfield Scott.
PHOTO (COLOR): "I have a secret and dangerous mission.
Send me a West Point football player."
By Bill Kauffman
TAE associate editor Bill Kauffman is the author of four
books, most recently With Good Intentions? Reflections on
the Myth of Progress in America.
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