Looks like the Military Academy has some huge problems

http://www.weeklystandard.com/what-is-happening-at-west-point/article/2010027

The entire Nation has huge problems that can be allocated in one word: Lieberals.

Treat them as any cancerous malignancy and we stand a good chance to survive. Failure to excise that deadly tumor guarantees death.

Typical of pretty much all other universities & the country in general.

Discipline & integrity are things of the past & the country is suffering because of it; that is now carrying over into the officer ranks in the military as well. Actually into the enlisted ranks too............in all branches.

MM

All of our nation's problems, and the solution, summed up in a few short sentences. Spot on Mr. D.

a friend of mine has a son there right now. He is disgusted with some of the stuff, in particular the female commander that was in charge for the last couple of years. I believe he said she has moved on.

At any rate, his son is an athlete there and has to bust his ass to get in and to stay. He went to a prep school the year before he was admitted. Several members of his team at the prep school were caught using a private chat group using racial slurs against a female cadet. All of them were suspended and had their offers to the academy revoked.

He himself, as a sophomore now, did not correctly annotate a quote he used in an English paper, was cited for violating the honor code by his instructor, brought before a review board and had 6 months added to his obligation to the academy while forfeiting one semester of his sport.

I know this kid pretty well and I can't imagine him ever stepping out of line like any of the examples mentioned in that letter. Then again, as I said, this kid had to kill himself to get accepted and knows what a privilege it is for him to be there. There is a lot of bureaucracy that he and his family dislike, but they understand that he may be making decisions that determine whether a man lives or dies. There is no detail too small, not even forgetting a footnote in a paper, to overlook.

even the pentagon is in agreement that the american empire is collapsing, for whatever reason one wishes to espouse. it's all kinda breath-taking really.

there is some concern about the implosion of the empire, and i'm not talking about that wyoming volcano or whatever.

It's equally as bad, if not more so at the other service academies..

Interesting. My son graduated from USNA in 2012, and it wasn't like that at all. Certainly affirmative action has had a negative impact, but discipline and academic expectations were not at all like the letter suggests is going on at West Point.

I spent thirty years in the canoe club, including my last tour as the "Dean Wormer" of Naval Aviation at Pensacola ( I retired in Dec of 08). The difference between say pre-1996 graduates and what we have today is noticeable. Also spent considerable time on the "Minority Flight Attrition Working Group" and the "feed" from USNA grads. They've been circumventing the "order of merit" for service selection for years now in order to make quotas..er..."goals".

Ouch! I just read that open letter with disbelief.

Question: Can Trump appoint a new Commandant with new orders to clean that up?

I noted that the LT. Col. made several references to "she" cadets, one who failed multiple courses and was not separated. He camouflaged the female problem in the name of PC and his own hide, but easy enough to understand.

As I noted, affirmative action has had a negative impact. However, I think your statement regarding the current status of the other academies, notwithstanding your time in the navy, is wrong. Do you have specific knowledge of the midshipmen treating professors with lack of respect, or ignoring rules of behavior/conduct with impunity? Same question about USAFA cadets. That's what the letter was mainly about, not how quotas have allowed some, or even quite a few, less than academically qualified people in to the academy.

When a society begins to slide into the abyss, usually its primary and major institutions already have gone down the slope.

The present USMA Superintendent's rebuttal to the charges laid out in the letter....

https://www.usma.edu/news/Shared%20...20Letter%20from%20Academy%20Graduate.pdf

That letter is heartbreaking. Is it possible that the Obama malaise has penetrated that deeply?

Smells of Political Correctness, and butt hurt from being called on the sorry state of affairs.

He talks of the switch from "attritional" model to "developmental" model, just after telling us how many he kicked out. WTF is it? Sounds like you have some attrition going on there. Psychobabble for lowering expectations. West Point traditionally was tough. As an 18 year old, you had to mature and have your scheit together to survive. You had to be serious and self motivated. You had to be focused and you went there with a purpose.

Now, kids pick a school away from home that sounds cool. "I want to go to West Point". Old days West Point was filled with legacies and Army brats who grew up in a military home. Not so sure now.

Superintendent Lt General Kiss Butt there is rebutting the charges in a manner to deflect the criticism and please his handlers. He's not making America better or safer following this route.

My daughter got an invite to attend Summer Session at the USNA. She went and it didn't take but what I found interesting was what they are doing with the Summer Session - and I assume this is true of all of the academies.

The Summer Session is used to bring in diversity to the academies. They aren't bringing in "ideal" candidates to these session - at least not ideal in the sense its kids that are growing up knowing they want to attend the academy, they are targeting women, minorities, muslim, whatever in a definite desire to "broaden" the cadet pool.

Seems like a program with one of the hardest acceptance rates in the United States wouldn't be that desperate to displace qualified applicants for someone who thinks it might be fun to go there because they couldn't get into Princeton.

I caught that too. and the response letter talks about female candidates having to take boxing so apparently they caught it as well.

evidently the Pentagon is more interested in turning out social justice warriors rather than fighting men and leaders. If the purpose of the military were to break things and kill people, we don't need most of what we have, with regards to personnel, or with what we teach these days.

Spot on. One need only access "Navy Knowledge on line" and compare how many "social justice" bullshit courses as compared to killing people and breaking things. SECDEF addressed this the other day and promised to change it. We'll see... (I doubt it)

It is more than a little confusing to read conflicting accounts of how the military is going to hell and at the same time read how they are the best we have ever had.

Exceptional Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines are still out there and they will always succeed with what they have and where they are. There are just less of them in proportion to the people that are trying to hold them back with BS. There is no doubt that our armed services are a superb force but they simply don't have them numbers we used to. We can do what we have to but in a whole lot less places and missions simultaneously than we used. to.

Pugs,

I dunno. I gave the USN four years back in the '60s. The MOSs with the technical skills requiring some education to exercise those skills had a pretty decent percentage of those people who were good at what they did. Officers from full bird and up tech disciplines or not tended toward a higher percentage as well. Below that level of training and time in service, they were by my estimation a pretty sketchy lot. Enlisted were an even more mixed bag. I have known E7s that were truly impressive, but most were just lifers and of little use. Over all, the majority of the people I worked for had no idea of what it was that I did, much less how I did it or why.

only to the unenlightened. The "going to hell comments" usually come from those who've been there, done that, now retired, therefore no ax to grind. The "best we've ever seen" comments are from those in charge now with definite skin in the game, are protecting their retirement (three stars and above have to be approved by the Senate to retire and cash in at that rank), or not going to put themselves on report,because they don't have the balls to stand up for their principles because they want to promote. Pretty simple, really, and above the company level (in ground combat) we haven't been tested. Same for my MOS. Doesn't take a whole lot to fly CAS where one has air supremacy, or in the off chance they launch something at you, it's not many or in the case of another airplane, it's some gomer with about as much experience and training as a student pilot.

No more:

Admiral Arleigh Burke
General Curtis LeMay
General George Patton
General Chesty Puller

The services have all undergone significant and multiple changes since then although some of what you have written remains true. The 60's where we really could "make it up with volume" and had a Navy truly scaled to perform it's command of the seas mission and limitless manpower however many of which were there to avoid being infantry (not a bad plan!) .

This was followed by the post-VN era with a Navy about the same size but with no Operations and Maint budget so many ships, subs and aircraft sitting and useless. The sailors were a mix of post-draft and volunteers.

The Reagan era brought in O&M money, volunteer service members and crack down on drugs and the vision of America an it's place in the world. It was truly an amazing Navy and one that no one on the planet could touch. If the "Somali pirate" problem occurred that era we would have covered the Indian Ocean in fast frigates with a robust supply chain to keep them there and the message and actions would have been loud and clear. "Don't tread on me" TJ would have been proud.

After Desert Storm the "Peace dividend" hit, despite the world being perhaps even more dangerous, and we saw the combined hit of massive ship and squadron decommissions, personnel cuts and Operations dollars cuts. We did have some new weapons that helped mitigate it but those did no good pierside in Norfolk so they really didn't help with presence in troubled areas. Standards were replaced by diversity and we generally ended up with people who fit bins not people picked for capability. Certainly we got some good ones but social engineering drove enlistment quotas and OCS/Service Academy population. This has been followed by overloading the Navy with training and administration that doesn't help fight the ship or jet and a promotion system that self perpetuates in moving people that achieve certain "other duties as assigned" up and skipping those that work hard on real warfighting skills.

As I said. The good ones are still out there but they're drowning in a sea of military snowflakes who see the path to promotion is being special and not being lethal.

As always, eloquent and 100% on the mark,