Posted by
Katy Grimes on Monday, April 20, 2009 12:26:30 PM
In Sunday's Washington Post, Thomas E. Ricks, a special military correspondent for The Washington Post and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security wrote an opinion column arguing for the need to shut down America's military academies.
Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.
After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I've concluded that graduates of the service academies don't stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I've been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military... read the entire column
here
If America is going to end the outstanding military training our academies offer, we might as well get rid of the military. Yeah, that's a stretch, I know, but so is Mr. Rick's weak argument.
Ricks fails to acknowledge that the military academies don't just prepare young men and women to become officers, they are trained to become future senior officers - leadership.
If anyone thinks that a ROTC grad is comparable to a West Point or Annapolis graduate is a fool. According to several military who followed this column, they think he's full of hooey, as do I.
One fellow from Blackfive writes this: Now, I'll admit it's been a while but I'm sure the dynamic is pretty much the same now as it was when I was in. I was an ROTC grad. Anyone who believes I was as well prepared as a West Point grad to function at the same level as them doesn't know what they're talking about.
In today's parlance, the West Pointers were "shovel ready" while most of us ROTC grads hadn't even begun the bid process yet.
My own family has produced several in the military: two enlisted, two officers and one academy drop out. Currently, the only active duty is my son, a Midshipman at the USNA. My father was an OCS grad and said that in no way was he prepared militarily post-college and Officer Candidate School. My son however, will not only be educated, he will have had 4 years of military training and preparedness before being commissioned. In just his first year, he did a short tour on a submarine, leared how to command PT boats and became an expert with rifle and pistol - and made the Commandant's List with a 3.5 GPA.
Some of our finest military minds teach at the military academies. The Army officer at Blackfive writes: "
Many of them are serving officers who come from a stint in the field to the classroom where they bring a freshness to their teaching which is utterly unlike the stale academic atmosphere found in most traditional institutions of higher learning. Lastly, the comparison to a community college education is a pretty ignorant one because it ignores the purpose of the service academies. They do what they are there to do and do it well. And I have never heard an academy grad complain about his or her education. Their ability to earn advanced degrees at elite civilian universities seems to argue that it is much more than the level of a community college (unless we now have community college grands routinely headed to Harvard, Yale and Princeton as WP grads do)."
A little digging into Mr. Ricks background finds that he never spent one day in uniform. Ricks has been "covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades."
His bio is telling: "Born in Massachusetts in 1955, he grew up in New York and Afghanistan and graduated from Yale in 1977. He now lives in Silver Spring, Md., with his wife and children. For recreation he enjoys whitewater kayaking, downhill skiing, and reading military history. He is a member of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the Society for Military History, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies."
He's a military poser with no real experience.