It would seem to me that that Maj. Lujan’s critique would likely apply to all the service academies not just West Point. Do the service academies really institutionalize professional excellence or merely don’t rock the boat conformity? Is the cadet/midshipmen selection process at the service academies really competitive or is it bureaucratic and weighted towards connections, diversity and other factors not directly related to selecting superior candidates? Is the academic syllabus relevant to the achievement of excellence or is it conformist, and lacking relevance to the challenges facing today’s officers? The Israelis seem to have a process of officer selection that aggressively seeks out superior, technically proficient and physically robust candidates.

Here is a brief outline of IAF pilot selection which is done without the benefit of formal service academies: “. . . potential Israeli pilots are identified prior to reporting for national service at age 18, based on factors such as high grades in school and top scores on standardized tests, excellent physical condition and high technical aptitude. Those who meet these and other criteria are invited to participate in a six-day gibush (cohesion), a selection phase involving physical, mental, and sociometric challenges. Recruits are screened not only for their ability to perform the tasks assigned, but for their attitude in performing them —such as how they take hardships and unexpected difficulties, how well they work in groups and how they approach problem solving and disaster management situations. As many as 50% percent of those who commence the gibush will be dropped from further consideration at its conclusion.”

In sum, I fully understand that the average American officer does not bear comparison with an IAF fighter pilot but it seems to me there might be a better way as Tom suggests to find and groom officers for our armed forces where wide ranging intellectual curiosity is valued.

Read Pete Blaber's and Sean Naylor's books on Operation Anaconda? Flexible, adaptive and innovative meets bureaucratic highly sturctured "the plan is everything even if it doesn't work...it's the PLAN!" mentality. The real frustrating thing is everyone sees the need for change but (to quote Don Bacon) The Iron Law of Institutions wins.

Very well argued. The article was concise, the claims rational, and the timing perfect.

I believe that it is a microcosm for a larger problem. Channeling Fareed Zakaria: "My greatest fear is that 200 years from now historians will say that the U.S. globalized the world, but just forgot along the way to globalize itself."

Someone explains the overarching problems with officer development at the Academy concisely from an overhead perspective. During my time there, we saw that these problems were legion, yet what did we know? We were cadets! I don't think I could sum it all up as succinctly as this, and without sounding whiny. Thank you.
I'd add to the bureaucracy criticism that the goal of the administration seemed to be more to avoid a scandal that would tarnish their OERs. It was more important to preempt any potential negative attention (these are essentially college kids) than to develop cadets as well rounded people. Thus we ended up having pretty absurd rules that limited personal choice and expression to a greater a degree than a private does upon reporting to his unit. Ask a cadet what the "cadet casual" uniform is and you'll start to see what I mean. Add to that a relatively stringent alcohol policy coupled with a "lights out" time, and you'll see why new LTs have a well deserved reputation for screwing up when they suddenly have the freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want (only one LT had an alcohol related incident in my OBC, guess where he graduated from).
More important was the utter lack of academic diversity or freedom. There was very little mixing of disciplines, aside from the core courses, and absolutely no white space to expand one's horizons. I remember that I once overloaded a semester with my mil art course, and was left with a free spot on my schedule the following year. When I said that I wanted another language course, my adviser looked at me as if I had eight heads. He could not understand why I would want to take a class that wasn't directly connected to my major (keep in mind this was a FG officer, not a bureaucrat in the registrar's office). There are no "underwater basket weaving" courses at the Academy, so they really should provide more room on the schedule for culturally related courses, and those vaunted COIN courses you can only fit in if its your major. They could start by axing the engineering tracks everyone is forced into. Language vs. Bridges for non-engineers, seems like a no-brainer. One could further say that the engineering/science heavy course loads encourage a line of thinking that there is always an "approved" solution to any problem, and that all you have to do is follow the prescribed formula. But that's probably my deep and everlasting hatred of the physics department talking.

Just read an article in today's Fayetteville newspaper that confirms much of what I have heard about LTC Frank Jenio being relieved of command for seemingly spurious reasons.

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/06/11/1003278?sac=Home

From what I've heard via the grapevine, Jenio's wife confronted Mrs. Drinkwine on behalf of other wives at Fort Bragg. This infuriated Col. Drinkwine, who supposedly flat out told Jenio he would get him sooner or later.

The PowerPoint slide of Coach Izzo and Mateen Cleeves provided a convenient pretext to relieve Jenio from command in late January.

And, yes, the slides may have been tasteless, but if the Army tossed everyone who has had a hand in a tasteless slide, the Army would be hard pressed to muster a single battalion.

Jenio is no racist. His father is a former college professor at Glenville State, his mother is a middle-school principal in suburban Detroit, and he grew up in a progressive, fair-thinking household. Anyone who knows Frank knows he doesn't have a racist bone in his body. It's worse than unfair; it's ludicrous.

Yes, you can question his judgment, but there have been officers whose judgment cost innocent lives -- and they weren't relieved of command. Why punish him so severely?

What's especially troubling is that Lt. Gen. Rodriguez apparently gave Jenio the top evaluation of any battalion commander in Afghanistan. Let's remember, Army Times described Jenio as "a rock star" for his work as an aide to Stan McChrystal in Iraq. This was a career with an upside.

So we have lost one of our best combat leaders for the most frivolous of reasons -- an angry housewife and a husband with a personal grudge.

I am told a chaplain (who is a colonel) has written a strongly worded letter that takes Jenio's side in all of this. What a grand display of courage on the colonel's part. What guts it must have taken to have written that letter.

Let's just hope others among the top ranks can summon the courage to do the right thing.

Courage is knowing when to ask for help. It would be hubris for the military establishment to ignore Maj Lujan's prescriptive. Hubris being a weakness bureaucracy is .flawed.

Wow. Fernando paints a pretty bleak picture. The truth is, West Point has always had lots of rules and stifiling beaurocracy. He could have made the same points ten years ago when I was a cadet or 170 years ago when U.S. Grant was a cadet. But what I find most unsettling is he thinks that cadets devote zero attention to things that "don't count." Really? At some point, its incumbant upon the cadets to educate and prepare THEMSELVES for their upcoming professional responsibilites. I hope Fernando is being a bit hyperbolic here.

Cadets used to seek out their professors, tactical officers and NCOs, and even fellow cadets with prior enlisted experience to gleen knowledge and professional advice. Is that no longer true? Cadets used to be invovled in hundreds of extracurricular activites that "didn't count" - professionally relevent clubs like the Infantry Tactics Club; volunteer activities in Orange County (NY, that is) and NYC; artistic pursuits like the Glee Club or poetry; pure hobbies like the Kayaking Club (which are as important as anything for well rounded individuals). Those are all gone now? Cadets used to plan and execute "spirit missions" in the middle of night to put "Go Army" banners in off limits locations like the chappel belltower or sneak into the train tunnels for the thrill of it or rappel off the top of Mahan Hall (which is built into the side of cliff). Was some of that disobediant, foolhardy, and often stupidly danderous. Well, yeah. Did it build initiative, comradery, and even some E&E skills? Damn right! Real units (usually from 10th Mountain upstate) used to come to West Point to train the cadets in the summers the first two years, and cadets used to go out to real units for CTLT (Cadet something Leadership Training - sort of like a one month internship) one summer after that. The cadets no longer have meaningful interaction with the "real Army"? Cadets used to voluntarily attend lectures when great leaders like Hal Moore or great academics like Stephan Ambrose came to speak. And some cadets usually fell asleep in the those lectures, so the President has nothing to worry about. :) But cadets nowadays won't go listen to a Hal Moore or a Stephan Ambrose unless they are forced? Cadets used to walk through the cemetary on the way to the PX and sometimes linger, in awe of the men named on the gravestones and whose shoes they were soon filling. Cadets in dress grey used to fill the apron in front of the main barracks building in silent reverence for a "Taps vigil" when one of their own died. There was an event that "counted" for nothing, and yet counted for everything. Cadets used to do lots of other things that "didn't count" towards their academic, physical, or military grades for their own personal and professional development. Not everybody did all these things. But the cadets who truly cared about what they were getting into did at least some of them. The oppurtunity was there.

I am truly thankful for the experiences and oppurtunities I had at West Point (at great tax payer expense, I might add). Experiences and oppurtunities I was lucky enough to share with some truly phenomenal classmates. Guys like Sam Cook, whom you might have read about in Tom's book or Craig Mullaney of "Unforgiving Minute" fame or Karl Hanson, whom you may have never heard of but should know, gave up the first year of his budding legal career, fresh from law school, to deploy and command a Cavalry troop of Wisconsin's finest Guardsmen in Iraq. He didn't have to take on troop command and deployment, and he sure as hell didn't have to join the NG after finishing his active duty obligation. If the Academy is no longer producing Cooks and Mullaneys and Hansons, than that's a shame. If it is, then great. The Corps "hasn't" afterall. Fernando has some great ideas about improving West Point as an institution. The "Center for the Study of Modern Combat" idea is top notch. I hope, REALLY he's talking about building on what's already there, not replacing what's been lost.

I too am truly thankful for the experience that I have had at West Point( WP, the Academy) over the last three years. As I enter my last year, I have had a chance to reflect on what I have gone through over the last three years.
Let me start by saying that I have had the privilege of being in MAJ Lujan's American Politics class, and speaking with him on many occasions post classroom time about subjects related to the Army in general, so don't worry, that still happens. I did speak to MAJ Lujan recently, when the first article, written by Mr. Bruce Fleming (The Academies' March Toward Mediocrity) touched on this very same subject. If you have not had a chance to read it can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fleming.html?pagewanted=all

I have found myself to be a minority among my peers. Let me preface this by saying that I completely agree with what you have said related to it being up to the cadets ('themselves") to take the plunge and hold their education in their own hands. Unfortunately this rarely happens. I have had the opportunity to take extra courses, COIN and Negotiation for Leaders, to name two. Both these classes were some of the best I have taken at the Academy, but I took them because I choose too. In order to do this I has to overload my schedule and give away some free periods. I do not know many cadets that would sacrifice their precious nap time in order to take an "extra" class for their own professional development. This may sound startling, but I am telling it like I have seen if for the last three years. I too was looked at as having some extra body part growing out of my head for wanting to take an extra course.

Too many cadets are forced to fill their schedules with classes that are not vital to their chosen profession. Whatever a cadet may branch, we have all chosen to join the profession of arms. But if you walk around the Academy and talk with cadets, in a way that only a fellow classmate can, you will find that the prevailing attitude at the Academy is anything but. Finishing and reaching the end line are the goals, not the betterment of self. As long as you can pass your classes (with a D) then you are good to go in most cases.* As the Academy attempts to increase number and push out cadets to graduation we see graduates that have spent their summers at school re-taking classes they failed the first time because they did not feel like doing the work. Not much time for military training there. Every year a number of cadets fail the most basic Army physical fitness test, the APFT. Standards at West Point are a little higher than the regular Army, and they should be, for we are supposed to set the example when we graduate. How can we expect our leaders of tomorrow to be the best if all through their four years they accepted mediocrity in academics, and looked at physical fitness as a punishment instead of a necessity and a duty.

Those that do not perform, or constantly get in trouble will most likely eventually be let go from the Academy. This process will take allot longer then it should be, in most cases years, even though the problems are easily identifiable and not being fixed. If you want to talk about a waste of taxpayer money, talk a look at that.

Military training that we think the Academy offers has become somewhat of a joke. Unless you join a club like you said (Cav Scouts, Inf. Tactics, etc.) you will only do one eight hour training event a year. And you are not training for that entire eight hours either, that is just how long it runs. There have been efforts by some Regimental Tactical Officers and certain TAC teams to change training, by holding overnight exercises to test cadets, rappelling off of buildings and doing live fires. These are met by cynicism by the cadets for having to participate, and unpleasantness form the Academy itself for bucking the system. I challenge someone to take the role of a cadet and try to get a range to conduct live fire training, all but impossible. By the way, if you play a sport, even if you are not in season, you can get out of the one military training event a year.

While I consider myself lucky to have been through the Academy, and I am sure I will count it as one of my best experiences, for I too have made great friends while here, I feel that we are lying to ourselves if we say that we are turning out the best prepared young junior officers for our Army. The Academy as a whole needs to step back and reevaluate what it sees as its role in the future. Do we want to graduate the best military leaders we can, prepared to step on the battlefields of tomorrow, or are we looking to graduate the best sports stars and NCAA champions, who know a thing or two about "bridges" and may or may not received a very small taste of what military life was like before being thrown out into the force. If we want the former, then a fundamental change needs to happen, if you want the latter, leave it the way it is

*You need a 2.0 to graduate, so D's in every class will not let you graduate

I both agree and disagree with MAJ Lujan's post. I think he misunderstands the purpose of the rules, regulations and other regimented requirements of West Point and I find it no surprise that an SF officer would find all of that unnecessary. SF draws people who don't want to be a part of the rules bound regimented Army, it's part of the appeal and a big part of what makes them so effective so I am not knocking SF in any way. There does, however, need to be a place where a new recruit or cadet learns about the traditions and ways of the Army. For enlisted soldiers it's called Basic Training and for officers its called West Point or OCS (ROTC in my opinion does a bad job of this). It's where civilians become soldiers. What MAJ Lujan says is missing is what should be taught at a new LT's basic course once he leaves West Point. This new LT should then get more training on being flexible at his first unit before he deploys. One problem, however, is that a lot of new LTs get shipped to units that are already deployed and don't get that train up time. So on the point of West Point being to regimented I disagree. I think they are doing exactly what they should be doing.

What I do agree with is the need for West Point to change accidemically. I think West Point should become the hub of military thought and education at least for the Army. I think they should take the ILE program as well as the course for senior leaders and move it to West Point and create both a graduate degree program and doctorate program for the school. Currently the Army's ILE program (the school for Majors) does not earn the student a Masters degree upon completion. Once you add these programs use the "graduate students" and PhD students to help teach the undergrades similar to other major universities across the country. These higher level students are coming straight from deployments and are subject matter experts in what is going on in the Army. Use that experiance to teach the undergrads. Just my two cents from an ROTC graduate.

Jimbo Slice King:
I disagree with you on a couple of points. First you have to define what type of thinking. Military thought is not specific enough. The "hub" of strategic thought is at Carlisle. CGSC does offer a masters degree program, you just have to take the extra courses, go to class on Saturday, and spend the time that you are not deployed working on the Masters rather than with your family. Much like West Point, some students go after the extra courses, others choose not to.
Learning your actual job; be it armor, infantry, etc... does not occur at the academies, ROTC, or OCS. It comes at OBC, your units, CCC, and all other courses you take throughout your career, be it 8 or 20 years.
I do agree, you have to look at the biases of MAJ Lujan. No surprise that an SF officer would not like the rules and regs offered at a place like West Point. Like most SF officers, he seems to feel that the universe should revolve around COIN. However, SF officers still have rules and regulations that they must adhere to, Army Regs don't just cease to exist when you get your long tab. Sure, you get to no shave down range, but SF officers still operate in other areas of the Army other than just A-Teams, and sure as s#@t from uniform regs to briefing formats, polices are still followed. SF teams still must operate under ROEs, and other legal authorities, not just go out and do what they want.
Finally, West Point is not meant to be some magic kingdom that spits out an Eisenhower with every graduate. ROTC grads (State Schools to MIT), OCS grads, and West Pointers get the same pay-check upon graduation.
Saying West Point should be home to a "Center of Modern Conflict" seems a bit bizarre in my view. What Lujan should do in his off time is read some of the papers produced by each class of CGSC, SAMS, War Colleges, and so forth. West Point, much like ROTC can stick to producing 2LTs ready to lead a platoon under the expert tutelage of an experienced and professional NCO, albeit with a few less keggers, frat parties and bong hits on the way.

including the lauded civilian ones mentioned earlier.

It was suggested to me by a service academy civilian professor that there was a lesson other than blind adherence to largely bureaucratic rules that was behind the apparently endless list of regulations at the institution he served. He suggested that the apparently pointless (and almost all encompassing) rule set was not in place to teach blind obedience, but was in place to provide valuable experience for a critically thinking officer candidate to understand that a rule set was in place and give them experience in deciding how to apply that rule set in the context of the “real world.” He suggested that it was impossible for any human to follow this rule set without fail, and due to this reality, the individual (and to a lesser degree the team) was forced in deciding how to apply overly prescriptive solutions in ways that would get the job done but avoid an unpleasant entanglement with the bureaucracy. When viewed through this lens, this is valuable experience throughout an officer’s career regardless of MOS.

I would suggest that this is just the type of critical thinking and application of knowledge that the good major was suggesting the service academies teach.

As far as some college kids not taking advantage of the incredible opportunities offered at the service academies to expand their education beyond the classroom, I would also suggest this is more reflective of the individual and not the institution. To a lesser degree it is also a leadership failure, but ultimately the responsibility of an adult education (including college) is in the hands of the adult seeking to attain it. One of Mr. Rick’s principle critiques of the service academies is that the resources expended and investment made in each candidate does not return and adequate return on that investment. One of the reasons that the service academies appear to be more expensive than the ROTC or OCS route is that they do in fact provide completely funded opportunities to expand ones education beyond the overly metricized academic and athletic endeavors. Failure to take advantage of these opportunities is again more reflective of the individual than the institution.

On one point, the major and I do find common ground. The service assignment process at all of the service schools should probably be adjusted to reflect something more akin to the quality spread that the USMC uses for officers upon graduation from TBS. This quality spread would relieve SOME of the pressure of the candidates to focus more tightly on the components of the academy education that are measured and used to determine class rank (and by default initial MOS). I suspect (though cannot prove) that this relatively small change would lead to officer candidates with more well rounded educations.
V/R,

I am with Jim King on this one - West Point could probably benefit from some academic revitalization, but the training that Lujan proposes is the type of training you get at ILE and the War College. I am not persuaded by his missive that it is appropriate for what are, after all, undergraduates. Has academic flexibility really helped the civilian academic village? No. And his "starting point" is not irrelevant, either: an SF field grade officer, fresh from a Harvard master's program - not sure we should defer to that particular bias when determining the good of the entire Army educational system. Hang in there, Major Lujan - you'll get to SAMS someday and see what it is you're talking about. In the meantime, cadets do not really need what Lujan is selling.

Bill

COL Casey Haskins, West Point's Director of the Department of Military Instruction, has implemented adaptive and effective platoon leader training that addresses some of MAJ Lujan's concerns.

http://donvandergriff.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/my-week-at-west-point-fantastic/

http://www.lesc.net/system/files/ReasonsWhy.pdf

http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/guestinsights/2010/01/the-us-armys-bottom-up-training-revolution.html

As everybody here knows, there is a difference between education and training. Education wise, it sounds like USMA is doing fine. Training wise, it may be out of balance if what FIRSTIE said is true. Only 8 hours of training a year? Is that including the summers? I hope not. OBC is not the place to teach basic military and leadership skills, it is for branch specific training. There are standards for earning a commission from the President of the United States of America and the right to even pin on a butter bar. If new 2LTs are not meeting those standards, the problem needs to be dealt with at the commissioning source.

I like the idea of colocating the undergraduate college (USMA) and the "graduate" institutions (CGSC and War College) for synergy. "West Point" is just a spot on a map on the "west side" of the Hudson River. USMA - the institution - could be relocated anywhere. Same for CGSC or the War College. Hell, the Navy moved Top Gun out of Fightertown, USA (BRAC did, at least). But supposing that the Army doesn't want to go to the trouble and expense of uprooting any of these schools (which it probably doesn't), they could still instigate more significant interaction. Carlisle and West Point are already geographically close. CGSC is a ways out in Kansas, but it does have a campus at Ft. Belvoir near Washington D.C. within a day's drive of West Point. Why couldn't CGSC majors from Ft. Belvoir travel to West Point to attend a seminar or vice virsa. CGSC already sponsors a weekend trip to the UN in NYC, so its not completely unprecidented. Of course, USNA and NDU are also right there, so the potential for exchange of ideas on the art of war is tremendous if we could tap into it.

My understanding is the "quality spread" way the USMC assigns new officers is more about reinforcing the "sameness" of all Marines - preventing all the hardchargers from winding up in only one or two MOS's. That is, of course, exactly what happens in the Army; every branch has its own very distinct mindset (including SF, as mentioned above). I'm not sure that's all for the bad in an organization as big as the Army. The Marines are a much smaller organization with a more singluar tactical purpose than the other services. They don't have large operational and strategically focus admin and logistical elements. "Quality spread" works for them. Not sure it would in the Army. In any case, West Point is alread "advantaged" in bigger picture of officer assignment. By law, 80% of male cadets and 20% of female cadets must be assigned to combat arms. Many ROTC and OCS cadets who want a combat branch can't get it. USMA cadets select their post assignments before they graduate, while ROTC and OCS LTs have to wait until OBC. So, if a West Pointer gets stuck in Ft. Polk, he or she could try to work a trade. You never know - there might be some ROTC guy from LSU who wants to go back to LA. West Point may not be the Magic Kingdom kicking out Eisenhowers, but if you want to be an Eisenhower, it probably sets you up better than anywhere else under the current system.

Boland: You know as well as I do that the "CGSC" at Belvoir is not the same as Leavenworth. You also left out the other ILE Core schools at Ft. Lee and in Georgia...not exactly a short drive away. The UN trip is on off time and not a mandatory requirment. Belvoir does not offer the same academic setting as Leavenworth, rather classes are in an old unused elementry school.
For those not in the know, the Belvoir campus is only a 4 month core classes, same as the first four of nine month classes that students at Leavenworth recieve. In addition, the ILE at Belvor/Lee is meant for functional area officers (Lawyers, FAO, Doctors, etc...), while manouver folks do the 9 months in Kansas (yes, there are some manouver guys at Belvoir ILE, but it is the exception).

As much as I respect Major Fernando Lujan’s right to opine on West Point’s ability to develop officers, I have to correct him, lest readers be deceived. I was Fernando’s boss for the last two years and know that he knows better, but I am afraid that he has ignored important facts that he knows to be true.

Fernando’s claims that West Point fails to challenge cadets with new situations and uses rigid grading for motivation is just not true. We now have 150 cadets spending a semester abroad annually, over 600 cadets go overseas each year, nearly the entire corps does scores of service projects including Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Special Olympics, Scouts, 800 cadets run in the Twin Towers charity race, and most cadets spend much more time in over 100 clubs and sports than they do on any graded academic course. These activities aren’t part of academic grades, none count toward the class rank, and none help cadets “avoid driving trucks in Louisiana.” So to say that "cadets devote zero attention to activities that ‘don’t count’” is just not true. In fact, Fernando was the officer-in-charge of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters club, which was a great way for cadets to develop—from Fernando’s example—the concept of selfless service, which is essential to the Army profession.

Cadets studying overseas in China, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Brazil, or Spain; or one of hundreds on international summer enrichment with a non-governmental organization; or every single cadet who serves as a brevet lieutenant in an unfamiliar Army unit all deal with uncertainty. So to say "cadets have very little experience adapting to unfamiliar environments," is equally false. And, in their classes, cadets are continuously confronted with challenging, contemporary material in our courses on “Winning the Peace,” counterinsurgency, terrorism, cyber-terrorism, homeland security, and expeditionary economics, among many others.

Fernando says that “the primary engine for change at West Point will be intimate, sustained contact with the changing world.” He is right and he personally exemplifies that contact. While he was in graduate school and at West Point, we sent him overseas twice leveraging his special operations expertise dealing with narco-terrorists in Columbia. Nearly every military faculty member has been in Iraq or Afghanistan and I personally approved a 6-month curtailment in Fernando’s tour to better support the Army. Just this year, at the request of Army commanders in the field who value the West Point faculty, Fernando’s peers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines working with the Army on counterinsurgency missions; his immediate supervisor spent last summer in Afghanistan; and, as his Department Head, I have deployed for 17 months—all while being on the faculty. Finally, we bring recent graduates back to West Point frequently, suspend classes for a day-long "battle command conference" with dozens of combat veterans, and engage with deployed commanders by video teleconference, blogs, and email. So Fernando’s recommendation that the Academy “should be connected by a thousand links to the operational Army,” is largely being accomplished already and he knows that because he has done it!

Fernando says that West Point needs to support vibrant professional debates. In fact, the greatest forum for exchanges of information among company grade officers is Company Command.Com, which was created at West Point and is run by West Point faculty. Beyond this web-based forum, Fernando was the officer in charge of the Undergraduate Journal of Social Sciences, which was designed to promote the exact debate that he claims that West Point does not have. Additionally, we have a robust guest speaker program to expose cadets to multiple perspectives and challenge their thinking.

The "Academy’s strong engineering focus" that Fernando decries is less than half of the core curriculum and about 55% of cadets major in Humanities and Social Sciences, with about 35-40% majoring in Engineering (which the Army also needs!). In the past five years, we doubled the foreign language requirement for Humanities and Social Sciences cadets, while removing 2 core engineering courses. We can still debate relative need for social sciences or language compared with engineering, but Fernando knows the West Point has changed, yet repeats an obsolete criticism of the engineering-focused curriculum that vanished decades ago.

Finally, Fernando’s call for West Point to become home to a "Center for the Study of Modern Conflict" is gallingly disingenuous. West Point does exactly that in the 21 research centers that connect West Point to the Army and DoD. One of the most prominent centers is the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC)—which does exactly what Fernando describes: “where civilian and military experts, cadets, and officers in the field collaborate to advance the Army's collective understanding.” Fernando has not only received CTC funding for his own research, but he has written articles for the Center and is deploying to work in Afghanistan in a center that is modeled after West Point’s CTC and is headed by West Point’s last CTC Director.

Can West Point do better? Of course we can and we should. This kind of vigorous debate happens all the time--which I encourage and which West Point has been on the leading edge of promoting, as reflected in our most recent, independently confirmed Middle States Accreditation. So to say that "the Academy is falling heartbreakingly short of its potential to prepare young officers," is quite a distortion, especially if all the facts are fairly considered.
I think this kind of debate can be helpful, but only if the facts are truthfully presented. Fernando knows these facts and, for his own reasons, chose to ignore them. I am disappointed. Most Special Forces officers consider themselves to be “quiet professionals.” I am afraid that Fernando’s article is neither quiet nor professional. It is just wrong.

Colonel Michael Meese is the Professor and Head of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. The opinions expressed herein are his alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of Defense or the United States Army.

While I respect Colonel Meese's initial spirited defense of the Academy's current curriculum, I am dismayed by the needless personal attack at the end of his response. Major Lujan wrote an opinion piece intended to generate discussion about improving West Point, an institution he cares deeply about; the fact that a faculty member of that academy felt the need to personally attack the character of a subordinate, in addition to the ideas he presented, is indicative of an institution in need of change. I hope that the cadets Colonel Meese oversees are educated to debate ideas, and leave the ad hominem attacks to the bottom feeders.

LTC Bob Wilson

Bob: I focused on Fernando's arguments in my response, not his motives or character, and when I cited him personally it was only to demonstrate that he was in a position to know facts, which he left out of his article. In my closing did not indict him, but his article. By launching it on this website it certainly was not "quiet," by leaving out facts that he knows to be true, it was not "professional." Your opinion may differ, but I stand by my opinion that it is "wrong."

One detects in this thread a bit of confusion and aimlessness in PME that would seem to stretch from West Point all the way through Senior Service College and perhaps to Capstone. Doesn't prove it, but is a symptom and adds some data points to a longer-going conversation on the role and status of PME in the US Army. Yet another area crying out for leadership and direction in My Favorite Army.

Ducky: If the US is your favorite, what is your second favorite, and what army is last on your list?

But i do have a Favorite Air Force too.

I fervently agree with this as I do with the suggestion of transforming the academy into a Sandhurst-esque institution (thinks super-OCS for the cream of the crop officer candidates).
Moreover, in line with making West Point the intellectual epicenter of the profession of arms, I would also make a point of co-locating the Army War College there (from its current backwaters location in middle-of-nowhere PA). This would allow for mentoring, teaching, and training by some of the Army's intellectual powerhouses as well as improved cross-pollination of ideas between the Army's rising senior leaders and soon-to-be minted junior officers.

Background: I'm a 2002 USAFA grad who cross-commissioned into the Army as an Iinfantry officer. After a back injury from Ranger School worsened, I went from Infantry to Intelligence, where I became a UAV platoon leader and then Brigade AS2. From there I got out of the Army and was preparing to go to the FBI when my wife got orders for Italy. I'm now a globe-trotting Army spouse and journalist for Triathlete magazine, for whom I recently interviewed the coaches and Cadets of the Academies' Triathlon teams. I substitute teach on the side.

Here's what I've learned from this haphazard smorgasbord of life experience-- there is not, and will never be, a course named "Adapting to the Unknown 101". If someone attempted to create said course, by the time they came up with a rough draft of the syllabus they'd defeat their own purpose by making the unknown known.

In many regards, the Service Academies are the best places on earth to learn how to adapt to the unknown. By my senior year, I'd learned how to get out of the gate for the weekend when I wasn't supposed to, skip a football game without being missed, bring alcohol, women, paintball guns and a George Foreman grill into a fifth-floor dorm room without anyone seeing me, how to get all of my worldly possessions into a Mazda Miata, and take a girl on a date with only $4.37 in my pocket and still come out a winner. I once helped to paint one of the display planes fire engine red (a stunt that had the Superintendent flipping his lid), snuck into the academic offices at night to make a deadline on a paper, and was threatened with severe punishment from a Cadet Squadron Commander, an E-6, an O-4, and a LTC at various times.

All of this was invaluable education further down the line. To wit, if the service Academies were anything short of lurching bureaucracies then they would woefully underprepare Cadets for actual service life. I'm not taking sides between Meese or Lujan here, but to reflect on Lujan's SF experience, I'm sure he has to agree that if the initial invasion of Afghanistan was done "by the numbers", then we might still be waiting on the ramp today for staff at the Pentagon to approve our GPC purchases of materials tantamount to major end items. There are days where you grease the wheels, and there are days where you take out the largest hammer you can find and smash wheels that you don't need off "the machine". At every rank and position I held in the Army, I ran into situations like that. The moral component of "do I steal this part from the supply yard so I can have a mission ready vehicle" comes up against the bureaucratic component of "my Battalion commander is a raging SOB who will punish my whole Company if this truck stays down" and the reality component of "what's really important here."

I'm glad that rules were placed on me that placed me in impossible situations. Those rules forced me to decide whether to break them or follow them. When I broke them, I was forced to figure out a smart way to do it. When I was smart, I succeeded. When I wasn't smart, I faced consequences. But I'm even glad for those consequences. Being threatened by that MAJ and LTC were invaluable experiences.

They taught me that getting yelled at by a MAJ or LTC ain't such a big deal, and that there are times when the ends justify the butt-chewing.

Trainees at the Spartan Agoge had to learn how to steal food without getting caught, or they'd starve to death. That kind of stealth and cunning served their troops well enough to become legendary. Of course, taking the beatings for getting caught helped in other ways as well.

When I left that UAV platoon, I was tasked with showing the new LT (who wound up becoming my best friend) how to be a platoon leader. I laughed at the instruction, as though you can teach such a thing. I took him around the FOB for a day, where I showed him what cigars the motorpool chief liked the best, how to stand guard to make sure no one sees while a guy uses a forklift to pick up an oversized load, and how to hop onto a helicopter without being on the manifest. By the end of the day, he just gave me a dazed look and asked me "How did you learn how to do all this stuff?"

I told him straight. "I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. I was just making it up as I went along. Beyond the motorpool chief's favorite cigars, the rest of it was 10% luck and 90% stuff I picked up along the way. On the helicopter not landing us in the wrong place, it was 50% luck."

I think that's just about everyone's early experiences in the Army. You never know what you're going to "need" to know, because you're never going to know what situations will confront you.

I'm glad I read Walzer, Plato, Huntington and Clausewitz. I wish I'd gained a better appreciation for center of gravity theory and what was being said in "The Clash of Civilizations." But those are books, and by reading them again I gained that appreciation.

But my Astronautical Engineering degree and (meager) flight training at USAFA was invaluable to me in trying to build a clinic for Iraqis and leading a UAV unit. Furthermore, the engineering core imbued me with a mentality that let me approach problems in a successful way. My degree in "bureaucratic circumvention" enlightened me to other methods.

In talking to the triathlon Cadets recently, I found some incredibly successful and well-adjusted people. An Air Force graduate went on to fly F-16s, where he was awarded a medal for his actions supporting an Infantry unit in a 3-hour engagement with Taliban forces. Being an Ironman probably helped him deal with that "marathon" battle. I'm sure he had other experiences that helped him. These Cadets join a military that is fatter than it ever was. Perhaps they'll turn into the pointy end of the spear in that fight.

Ultimately, I don't worry too much about this. I don't think the "Sandhurst model" is what we need. We stick these kids in uniform and then forget too quickly that they're still just kids-- not robots. Meanwhile, last I checked, our officers do a bit better than the Brits. Saying that Cadets aren't getting what they need is no different than the criticisms we throw at our public education system. Many of them probably hold validity, but we're talking about tweaks, not sea changes. I was definitely not the best officer ever to graduate from my institution, but I was effective at landing on my feet in every circumstance combat, the Army, and life threw at me. I went from the Air Force to the Army, from the Infantry to Military Intelligence, from the Army to the FBI, from the FBI to a magazine, from a magazine to a classroom, from military service to stay-at-home parenthood, and from the US to countries all over the world and always landed on my feet.

I continue to read the books on the Army Chief of Staff's reading list. I also think it's important that I get in the next post boxing tournament, because you should never go too long without knowing what it's like to get in a fight.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Likewise, you can change an institution's curriculum all you want, but at the end of the day what a person learns is solely up to the individual. I have confidence that we've got people out there learning the "right" lessons.

Background: USMA grad with 10 plus years of active service.

MAJ Lujan's basic problem is....USMA does not equal the Army.

West Point is an excellent educational institution. Unlike most other colleges, it forces students to take a broad range of subjects, none of which can be considered "gut" classes. As an educational institution, it offers cadets a vast range of clubs and activities. As an educational institution, it excels at graduating students prepared to succeed.

West Point and its Cadets live in a well-funded, extremely efficient world...call it the "Swiss Watch World." There are regulations to cover everything. Everyone is honest and most mean well. For almost every activity, known inputs can generate known outputs (if I study hard = good grades, if I am late to class = I am punished, etc, etc.). Everything is judged, mostly fairly. There are no "real" problems to solve. Instead, there are activities to perform, and Cadets will be measured on how well they perform. This is a wholesome world, with little ambiguity.

Unfortunately, that has little to do with the Army and war. The Army is full of contradictions, of problems (not all solveable), of people (not all good). Likewise, War is extremely ambiguous, where many things are not only not solveable, but not even understood! It is not a wholesome world, but a tragic and unfair one.

This tension between West Point's noble values, and the ignoble realities of the world has always existed, by design. Whether such a dichotomy is appropriate is a different question.

Background: Spent one year at ROTC before transferring to West Point.

I think what this ultimately comes down to is that the onus for developing officers should be on the cadets themselves. As COL Meese points out, West Point offers a number of programs for cadets to participate in that have the potential to be extremely developmental. The problem is often that cadets, who get too jaded by the mandatory requirements and the bureaucracy of the place, don't participate. Are there elements of West Point that can be frustrating? Absolutely. However, the cadet who lets those things stand in the way of his own efforts to develop himself is a failure. Speaking from experience though, there are more opportunities, more legitimate academic debates, and more mentors to seek advice from at the Academy than at any ROTC program I can think of. For cadets, who have zero experience in the Army, there is more information and more chances to learn and grow there than they can possible assimilate in four years.

It's not the responsibility of the institution, the instructors, the TAC officers, or anyone else to develop future leaders. That responsibility rests on the individual cadet. West Point can be a great place for that sort of thing, so long as the opportunities are taken advantage of.

To Boon I would say that cadets like you were part of the problem, not the solution. At every turn you saw what was wrong with things and dwelled on it, bringing it out and criticizing it, bringing others down with you. I'm not saying you should be super perky and ignore the bad things, but they can't be allowed to consume you. When they do you miss the real opportunities that were there.

MAJ Lujan's points are valid in some areas. Though I would say the biggest problem with West Point is the Corps of Cadets itself. Too many cadets went there without really knowing what they were getting into (how could they, they're only 17 when applying) and when they found out it wasn't what they wanted it to be, they turned into bitter, cynical people. Add in those who go to get the name on the resume, the recruited athletes, and the ones whose parents pushed them into it, and you've got a group of people who are more concerned about not being able to party like "real college kids" than they are about learning to be officers. I guess in that respect Tom is right about adopting a Snadhurt type organization.

Enjoying this thread greatly as an '01 USMA grad who was sick of the Army on graduation day. I had a great experience there and a great education as well, but I also got a 4-year "professional development enema." The window policy was the TPS report of USMA and maddened many a cadet as well as a few tac officers who hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid.

The LTC Kierseys were quietly retired in the name of political correctness, while those with the shiniest brass ran the Corps, cadets and officers alike.

I don't want to get too bitter or personal, but I really felt during my time at USMA that the unquestioning, "yessir" types succeeded and those who tried to color outside the lines were smacked down. I got exiled to staff 2nd semester firstie year because my tac didn't like my penchant for disagreeing with him (always professionally) during our supposedly open post-lunch professional development chats. That officer is on his way to general's stars.

As for this discussion, I think MAJ Lujan colors outside the lines the way most SF guys do. I am sure he was frustrated by the institution and his perceptions may be skewed. As someone above mentioned there is a need for a regular Army, and USMA doesn't need to run like the SF. I greatly respect COL Meese as he has spent many summers deployed and his department had a lot to do with the surge (according to this cool book I read), and it has given us thinker/warriors like Petraeus, senior field grades like Charlie Miller and co., and up-and-comers like Bodnar and Gallo

It is also noteworthy that the 5-course engineering sequence was reduced to 3. I majored in history but I thoroughly enjoyed my nuke courses as they taught problem-solving, a skill that helped me greatly during my 5 years on AD (I'm currently a reservist).

The sosh department under COL Meese's leadership has embodied what MAJ Lujan wants to see more of, creating a million links between it and the operational Army. Having graduated 3 months before 9/11, USMA seems to have really changed in the past 9 years. I know the summer training is a lot different. They made Buckner a FOB and they added some sort of 5-week summer training event before firstie year. I would hope the BS and devotion to rules have slid away the way they do during deployments, but that may be a bridge too far. My question is, do they still have the window policy? It's a great metric on whether bullshit still reigns supreme at the Academy.

My two cents: from 97-01 I didn't see much emphasis on intellectual agility from DMI or the tactical department. The upstairs of Washington Hall was a black hole of bureaucracy. Someboy tell me if that's changed.

At my university a fellow military history buff joined the ROTC. A few weeks later he dropped out. I asked why, and he replied that the Army was not a place for an intellectual.

I later spent 5 years in the Army, and the baffling experience for me confirmed my friend's views.

As for why West Point, the real issue is that any and every institution that purports to be in the business of preparing combatants had better be at the cutting edge of the state of the art. To send our people less prepared is murder.

Thanks to Tom Ricks, first of all, for making possible a fascinating discussion.

As a lifelong civilian I have nothing to add to it a far as specific assertions and arguments go. Others with more direct experience with the service academies will have to determine whether Maj. Lujan, Col. Meese or other posters here are closest to being right. The one thing I have read here that sets off some alarm bells for me is the assertion that making the most of time spent at the academy, and even preparing oneself to be an infantry officer, is up to the cadets themselves.

Well, yeah. This is something that with appropriate variations could be said about any group endeavor. Coaches don't win championships, players do. Teachers don't learn, students do. Company presidents and board of directors don't make the sales, the head of NASA didn't land on the moon or fly the Columbia, Senators don't write legislation or their own speeches. And so forth. It's all true, but it's not the whole truth.

Senators can get reelected without ever giving an original statement, but otherwise coaches, teachers, corporate officers, and even (sometimes) government officials either change or get changed out when their respective organizations don't do well. I'm the last person -- seriously, I may literally be the last person -- to assign blame for the very expensive and unsuccessful Iraq and Afghanistan war efforts first to the military, rather than to the grossly incompetent political leadership that ran them aground in the first place. But Iraq and Afghanistan have not been the finest hours in American military history, and the Army doesn't escape being on the hook for that.

What does that say about West Point? Again, I'm not in a position to say. As an intellectual matter, it's certainly possible that USMA is doing everything possible as well as it can be done, and that any shortcoming in how its cadets are educated or prepared for military life is nothing to do with the people running the Academy. It's the cadets own fault. To be fair, the second pat of that is not the argument Col. Meese makes upthread, but reflects the observations of a couple of other posters.

If this is true, then Maj. Lujan is completely wrong. I have to say, though, that seven years into one war that was supposed to be over in months, and nearly nine years into another that is now going badly, the last thing I would want to see anywhere in the Army is complacency about anything. West Point has a noteworthy history of being resistant to change. Col Meese's post upthread basically asserted that this history has ended -- everything Lujan says USMA should do, it is doing already. If the burden of proof were entirely on Lujan in this matter, I'd say Meese's was an effective rejoinder. Under the present circumstances, it isn't.