Time to abolish West Point, other academies?

The late Gore Vidal and I were once fellow residents of West Point, where my father was cadet chaplain.

But at that time, in the early 1930s, we were both too young to have known each other.

Had we been older, we would have most probably argued strongly – or even with fisticuffs. For in 1973, in the New York Review of Books, Vidal identified our service academies as:

"Loathsome breeding grounds for a permanent military-elite class of ring-knockers" – referring to the class rings worn by academy graduates.

What boggles the mind is that the U.S. Naval Academy has not fired from its faculty Bruce Fleming. Professor Fleming wrote for Salon that our service academy cadets and midshipmen receive "a government-sponsored guarantee of a golden ticket to life: college at taxpayers' expense with no student debts, the highest salary of any set of graduates, guaranteed employment and … health benefits for at least five years, frequently well beyond."

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Despite his strong criticism, professor Fleming has not resigned from the Naval Academy he so strongly denounced – which is hypocritical.

Attempts to abolish the U.S. Military Academy at West Point go back at least as far as Tennessee Rep. Davy Crockett, who introduced a bill to do so.

In 1863, Ohio Republican Sen. Ben Wade also attempted abolition and declared:

"I do not believe that there could be found on the whole face of the earth … any institution that has turned out so many false, ungrateful men as have emanated from this institution."

That astounding claim was made even as both the Union and Confederate corps of generals were dominated by West Pointers – including Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee.

Another West Pointer, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in 1962 told the assembled Corps of Cadets in their great dining hall:

"You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense."

But now, Army veteran Scott Beauchamp, in the Jan. 25 Washington Post, under the headline, "We'd Be Better Off without West Point," contended:

"Their traditions mask bloated government money-sucks that consistently under-perform. They are centers of nepotism that turn below-average students into average officers. They are indulgences that taxpayers, who fund them, can no longer afford. They've outlived their use, and it's time to shut them down."

Mr. Beauchamp also notes that the per-graduate cost of $300,000 the Government Accountability Office study revealed is four times as much as it costs to produce an officer through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, which trains officers-to-be while they attend civilian colleges.

And where they have to pay many thousands of dollars in tuition.

What is wrong about continuing the great traditions of our service academies while providing so many thousands a college education that many of them could not afford?

Mr. Beauchamp also notes: "[G]raduates of the academies, which cover every possible expense for four years, make up only 20 percent of officers serving in the military. The rest are from the ROTC and Officer Candidate School. …

"No evidence shows that officers who attended civilian colleges … are lesser leaders than their service-academy colleagues. Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning defense journalist, put it succinctly: '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.'

"Thirty years ago, most Army three-star generals had graduated from West Point. As of 1997 (the last year for which data is available), only a third had. … Nearly half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serving over the past decade bypassed the service academies. … Admittance requires a nomination from a member of Congress, the vice president, a secretary of the respective military branch or other high-level officials. These nominations are doled out in a process with vague guidelines and nonspecific criteria, making political patronage inevitable."

Should appointments to our service academies be taken away from those politicians who are members of Congress? Or should we – in this democratic republic that is governed by politicians – still allow these politicians the right to appoint whomever they choose to our service academies?

Media wishing to interview Les Kinsolving, please contact [email protected].