Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
April 11, 2007
Pg. 6
Remaining in Iraq Essential, Cadets Say
By Alec MacGillis, Washington Post Staff Writer
LEXINGTON, Va., April 10 -- In recent years, Virginia Military Institute, with its turreted buildings and surrounding mountains, has been a scenic and suitably martial backdrop for supporters of the Bush administration to report on its foreign policy hopes and achievements.
President Bush came here in April 2002 to announce a reconstruction effort for Afghanistan modeled after the Marshall Plan for Europe. Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gave a graduation speech last year in which he defended his oversight of the Iraq war. On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the most outspoken supporter of the war in the field of 2008 presidential candidates, will argue that success in Iraq is essential to the nation's security.
McCain will find an audience generally receptive to the message on which he is staking his presidential campaign. But the 1,200 cadets at the state-run military school are hardly unaware of the uncertainties about the U.S. mission in Iraq that threaten McCain's candidacy.
There may be a consensus at VMI that the United States must not give up on the war, but ask cadets why staying in Iraq is so important and the agreement falls away.
Knox Witcher, a first-year economics major from Bristol, Tenn., says it was "unwise" for the United States to invade Iraq in the first place, given the uncertainties about the threat posed. But once it did, it took on obligations. "It was irresponsible to go to war to begin with, and now that we're there, it would be irresponsible to leave," he said. "We're in too thick."
Charles Snyder, a civil engineering major from Pittsburgh, said: "If we left now, there would be a power vacuum, and warlords would come in" and the Iraqi people would "be worse off than they were before."
To David Adams, a history major from Smithfield, Va., it's all about self-defense.
"Whether we like it or not, we have to keep men in Iraq because America right now is an enemy to everybody, and as long as we have men in the Middle East, the negative attention is going to be concentrated there," Adams, 20, said. "If we bring them back, the only place for the terrorists to destroy us will be at home, and you'll have more 9/11's. It's better to have them trying to hurt Americans that can shoot back."
It is a mark of how long the war has lasted that the cadets graduating this spring will have spent their entire time here under its shadow. Several said the war has helped shape, in one way or another, their thinking about the major decision facing them: whether to accept a military commission.
All cadets must be enrolled in the reserve officer training corps of one of the service branches, but after graduation only half have decided in recent years to join the armed services. (A small fraction of cadets serves in the Reserves or National Guard while enrolled.) More than 1,000 VMI graduates have served in Iraq, and eight have been killed. That is fewer than the 10 cadets who died in a single day of fighting in 1864 at the Battle of New Market in the Civil War, and far fewer than the 180 alumni lost in World War II.
While all of those interviewed said they know of someone who has been killed or seriously wounded in Iraq, the war hardly dominates daily life at the institute.
"It's one of the unsaid subjects," said David Miles, 19, a civil engineering major who arrived back from Easter break at his home in Virginia Beach loaded down with Goldfish crackers and soda. "Everybody knows what's going on, but it's not a big topic."
What frustrates some cadets is knowing that thoughts of the war are even less present in the lives of many others, particularly other young people. "What the American people don't realize anymore is that war takes time, war takes money and war takes lives," said Adams. "For the most part, it's been forgotten about."
Jake Maier, 19, a history and international studies major from Powhatan, Va., said such forgetting is a result of the distractions that surround his peers at other colleges.
At VMI, cadets gather for formation at 7 each morning, and the gate into the barracks holds the words of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, who taught here: "You may be whatever you resolve to be."
Amenities are limited to a gym, a PX and a single TV room. Cadets cannot have cars on campus until their fourth year; they have serious restrictions on cellphone use, and they are not allowed televisions in their rooms (or microwaves or coffee makers).
They typically live four to a room, in spaces so cramped that two of the cots are folded up each day. They wear dress uniforms at almost all times -- the street clothes they arrive in can't even be kept in their closet but must be stored in a separate locker. First-year students, or "rats," endure a toughening-up period in their first six months.
"Here, there's a simplicity where you can understand things. It's not as cluttered as elsewhere. I see things with more clarity since I've been here," Maier said. "You don't take as much for granted. You realize what matters in life, that this is something crucial for our country, that we need to finish it, get the job done, and then get out."
Maier says the United States must stay in Iraq to protect its reputation, to show enemies that it will stay in a fight when the going gets rough and thereby prevent more attacks. But he understands that other Americans don't see it that way. "People lose patience," he said. "It kind of disheartens you a little, but that's their opinion, and that's what makes America what it is."
April 11, 2007
Pg. 6
Remaining in Iraq Essential, Cadets Say
By Alec MacGillis, Washington Post Staff Writer
LEXINGTON, Va., April 10 -- In recent years, Virginia Military Institute, with its turreted buildings and surrounding mountains, has been a scenic and suitably martial backdrop for supporters of the Bush administration to report on its foreign policy hopes and achievements.
President Bush came here in April 2002 to announce a reconstruction effort for Afghanistan modeled after the Marshall Plan for Europe. Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld gave a graduation speech last year in which he defended his oversight of the Iraq war. On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the most outspoken supporter of the war in the field of 2008 presidential candidates, will argue that success in Iraq is essential to the nation's security.
McCain will find an audience generally receptive to the message on which he is staking his presidential campaign. But the 1,200 cadets at the state-run military school are hardly unaware of the uncertainties about the U.S. mission in Iraq that threaten McCain's candidacy.
There may be a consensus at VMI that the United States must not give up on the war, but ask cadets why staying in Iraq is so important and the agreement falls away.
Knox Witcher, a first-year economics major from Bristol, Tenn., says it was "unwise" for the United States to invade Iraq in the first place, given the uncertainties about the threat posed. But once it did, it took on obligations. "It was irresponsible to go to war to begin with, and now that we're there, it would be irresponsible to leave," he said. "We're in too thick."
Charles Snyder, a civil engineering major from Pittsburgh, said: "If we left now, there would be a power vacuum, and warlords would come in" and the Iraqi people would "be worse off than they were before."
To David Adams, a history major from Smithfield, Va., it's all about self-defense.
"Whether we like it or not, we have to keep men in Iraq because America right now is an enemy to everybody, and as long as we have men in the Middle East, the negative attention is going to be concentrated there," Adams, 20, said. "If we bring them back, the only place for the terrorists to destroy us will be at home, and you'll have more 9/11's. It's better to have them trying to hurt Americans that can shoot back."
It is a mark of how long the war has lasted that the cadets graduating this spring will have spent their entire time here under its shadow. Several said the war has helped shape, in one way or another, their thinking about the major decision facing them: whether to accept a military commission.
All cadets must be enrolled in the reserve officer training corps of one of the service branches, but after graduation only half have decided in recent years to join the armed services. (A small fraction of cadets serves in the Reserves or National Guard while enrolled.) More than 1,000 VMI graduates have served in Iraq, and eight have been killed. That is fewer than the 10 cadets who died in a single day of fighting in 1864 at the Battle of New Market in the Civil War, and far fewer than the 180 alumni lost in World War II.
While all of those interviewed said they know of someone who has been killed or seriously wounded in Iraq, the war hardly dominates daily life at the institute.
"It's one of the unsaid subjects," said David Miles, 19, a civil engineering major who arrived back from Easter break at his home in Virginia Beach loaded down with Goldfish crackers and soda. "Everybody knows what's going on, but it's not a big topic."
What frustrates some cadets is knowing that thoughts of the war are even less present in the lives of many others, particularly other young people. "What the American people don't realize anymore is that war takes time, war takes money and war takes lives," said Adams. "For the most part, it's been forgotten about."
Jake Maier, 19, a history and international studies major from Powhatan, Va., said such forgetting is a result of the distractions that surround his peers at other colleges.
At VMI, cadets gather for formation at 7 each morning, and the gate into the barracks holds the words of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, who taught here: "You may be whatever you resolve to be."
Amenities are limited to a gym, a PX and a single TV room. Cadets cannot have cars on campus until their fourth year; they have serious restrictions on cellphone use, and they are not allowed televisions in their rooms (or microwaves or coffee makers).
They typically live four to a room, in spaces so cramped that two of the cots are folded up each day. They wear dress uniforms at almost all times -- the street clothes they arrive in can't even be kept in their closet but must be stored in a separate locker. First-year students, or "rats," endure a toughening-up period in their first six months.
"Here, there's a simplicity where you can understand things. It's not as cluttered as elsewhere. I see things with more clarity since I've been here," Maier said. "You don't take as much for granted. You realize what matters in life, that this is something crucial for our country, that we need to finish it, get the job done, and then get out."
Maier says the United States must stay in Iraq to protect its reputation, to show enemies that it will stay in a fight when the going gets rough and thereby prevent more attacks. But he understands that other Americans don't see it that way. "People lose patience," he said. "It kind of disheartens you a little, but that's their opinion, and that's what makes America what it is."