May 24, 2007
I'm afraid of New York. I'm afraid of the world.
New York magazine has an interesting article about New Yorkers at West Point. I think the idea was to portray the cadets as bloodthirsty or brainwashed, but the main message of the article is that there are many jerks in my city:
Making the decision to go to West Point during a polarizing war is a bold choice for a high-school student living in one of the deepest-blue precincts of a staunchly antiwar city. “Everybody was all busy protesting the war at the time,” says Marya. “Hunter is really liberal, and I’m a liberal too. But I had one girl ask me what I was thinking about doing for college, and when I told her, she said, ‘How could you do something so immoral?’ They made fun of me in the yearbook.”She is regularly reminded that, apart from her parents’ place on East 84th, New York is not her home anymore. “There’s a graduate of West Point who endowed this great program that sends cadets to the opera,” she says. “A couple of years ago, we went to the Metropolitan Opera and The New Yorker wrote an article and they were dubious about the idea. There was a line in the story, something like ‘After all, Josef Mengele liked to listen to opera when he was torturing people.’ That made me so angry. Do you guys recall who stopped Josef Mengele? It was not reporters at The New Yorker, or people in New York City with correct moral principles. It was people in the Army.”
And the people shaping the next generation seem to be the worst:
Rosenberg recently went back to Hunter, her old high school, to talk to students about what it’s like to be a cadet right now. Mostly the students were respectful; the faculty was another story. “One of the teachers, when I walked down the hall in my uniform, yelled, ‘No blood for oil!’” she says, her face reddening. “Um, I had nothing to do with that. Then I talked to my old art-history teacher, who’s a sweet guy, and I wanted to tell him I’m taking a bunch of art-history courses now. He was like, ‘Oh, so you’ll know what [the] buildings are before you drop bombs on them.’”
Also, it looks like we're teaching our troops to not defend themselves lest we become the "bad guys", which I believe is traditionally a great strategy for winning a war:
Nine instructors, most rotating through West Point after tours in Iraq, teach the tactics of asymmetric warfare. “When you have to hunt the bad guy in the streets in the middle of people trying to live and exist, you’ve got some major issues,” Winkle says. “People are shooting at us from mosques, but if we return fire, we’re the bad guy. It’s extremely tough. We do a lot of mind-set training on what it means to be a warrior: When you’re terrified and someone’s trying to hurt you, how do you not squeeze that trigger? It’s critical that we give them an ethical basis to fall back on.”
Emphasis mine. How do you not squeeze the trigger if you're terrified and someone is trying to hurt you? Shouldn't the lesson be "if you're terrified and someone is trying to hurt you, this is how you squeeze the trigger." They're going into a war zone. Do we want overly ethical but very dead troops? I don't. If our troops are terrified and someone is trying to hurt them, I want them to shoot first and ask questions last. This is a war. It is not a public service campaign. Let's act like it or let's come home.
Posted by Karol at May 24, 2007 03:58 PM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags: New+Yorkers+West+Point Iraq+War New+York+Magazine
Hmm...dunno, how much of this I believe...just seems too extreme. Everybody supports the troops!
Posted by: Not Dawn Summers at May 24, 2007 05:32 PMThey're going into a war zone. Do we want overly ethical but very dead troops?
When my brother was in Iraq, he once wrote to me about the standard operating procedures they're supposed to follow if they notice a bunch of jihadis driving a bomb-packed car full speed towards them. My jaw literally dropped as I read it. I'm surprised we don't offer them some tea while we're at it. He went on to mention a marine who went from Step 3 directly to Step 5, saved a bunch of his fellow marines' lives, and ended up getting reprimanded for failing to carry out Step 4. I often think that if this country cared more about winning than looking good, things would be better off over there.
Posted by: Peter at May 24, 2007 05:47 PMThe flip side of that is wasting a car full of women and children on their way to the market. Then every man over the age of 12 in their extended family is planting bombs on your patrol route.
Fighting a counter-insurgency is damn frustrating, but a large part of it is making sure the right people die and the wrong poeople don't die. Sometimes life sucks, and this is one of those times.
Posted by: Eric at May 24, 2007 09:24 PMI must say the out pouring of troop supporters in this Country is OUTSTANDING!!! We would get packages from people all over the states. To everybody out there that supports us when we are 6,000 miles away and missing every holiday, THANK YOU!!! Your support is what gets us through the times when we need the support the most. It is a mentally and physically draining situation going on in Iraq at this time. It is true. Rules of engagement are very tough. As a side note: PLEASE don't forget why some of us get an extended weekend. Too many friends and brothers will never be able to see this GREAT Nation ever again. You guys will never be forgotten!
Posted by: Freedom doc at May 24, 2007 09:27 PMIt sounds like your school has been taken over by a bunch of normal democrats. They only care about their 'power over the people', not serving the people. Next time you visit ask those same teachers ?? why the United States educational system has slipped from Number 1 in the world to Number 19 in the past 20 years? Could it be that the teachers are all failures themselves? I think that is the problem. No teachers, only democrat political hacks without the brains to teach.
Posted by: Scrapiron at May 25, 2007 12:46 AMSaying no blood for oil to a West Point cadet is like bitching to the cleaning lady at Enron for illegal financing schemes.
I am afraid that the liberals that spit on troops returning from Vietnam are alive and well.
"we support the troops" unless they go to college to become one.
Good grief.
Posted by: PAUL at May 25, 2007 06:31 PMChilly, there wasn't much love for the troops from the right either. Where were the parades post vietnam? Where were the hero's welcomes?
Posted by: bryan at May 26, 2007 10:37 AMps re Rosenberg and her return to her old school: I'm not buying it. Any local press hack would've been outside that school asking questions the day after this posting, and the guys who were allegedly rude to her would've had to put up or shut up. On camera.
Those people are entitled to that opinion, but I've never met a citizen of the USA who would be so rude as to express it the way it has been described. Perhaps West Point needs to develop thicker skins for their students if they are going to get all upset over a crack which is a variation of the old "join the army, meet new people and kill them!" joke.
but I've never met a citizen of the USA who would be so rude as to express it the way it has been described.
As a New Yorker, I can tell you that I've heard far, far worse. Especially toward my black Republican friends.
And, anyway, which is it? Do you not believe it was said or do you think the cadet shouldn't have taken offense? It can't be both.
Posted by: Karol at May 27, 2007 08:57 AMTake the Pledge
All Presidential Candidates should make pledges like those below. If they refuse, then you should refuse to vote for them.
1. No More Oil Wars.
2. Work for independence from foreign oil on day one.
3. No more wars for corporate profit.
4. No more secret deals for $4 per gallon gas.
5. No more Chicken Hawks promoting wars of choice when they themselves avoided combat.
6. Make government green--if you can't make what you have the most control over green, I don't care about your plans to make the country green.
7. No more torture.
8. No more lying about torture.
9. No more re-defining torture.
10. No more drunken hunting.
11. No more secret deals with big corporations to divide up the spoils before the war even starts.
Um, the troops at West Point have received "Ethics" and "Rules of Engagement" training since FAR before this war ever began. Its a standard part of their curricullum. For the very purpose of NOT turning them into bloodthirsty or brainwashed killing machines.
Posted by: katie g. at May 30, 2007 02:05 PM
