"... because the American people want it."

USNA-At-Large,

  Mac McIntosh provides about the best elaboration behind the word "core" in the de facto mission statement that you are going to find anywhere.

    With appreciation, John Howland

Dear John,
 
Further to your good exposition on General Krulak's statement about the Naval Academy's reason for existing (and your comments of agreement), allow me to suggest another reason for maintaining our national service academies.
 
Most of us have read, over the years, occasional studies that show little difference in the quality and motivations of officers commissioned from the service academies and those from the ROTC and other direct programs in civilian life and colleges.  The question such articles usually ask is:  "Why have the expense of service academies, when much less costly civilian sources do as good a job?"
 
I haven't yet seen this question answered, but I believe there is an answer, and a very good one.  It applies to USNA, USMA, USAFA, USCGA, and even the Merchant Marine and various state-funded maritime academies.
 
None of our services can exist as spirited organizations, cast in molds embodying our long traditions and history, unless there is some mechanism for keeping alive the knowledge and framework built up over more than two centuries of war, battles, and peacetime preparation for war.  When World War Two began (and I am old enough to remember those years very sharply), the small existing officer corps, mostly from the service academies, were charged with expanding our land and maritime fighting forces immensely, and not over years but within months.
 
The traditions, the spirit, and most of all the imposing of an identity as a sailor, a Marine, a soldier, a Coast Guardsman, a merchant mariner was done not by handing out books or pamphlets to read, but by daily and intimate contact with the officers who had gone through the academies and absorbed these identities and concepts of duty, honor, and patriotism in their very bones.  Each knew what their service was in every detail, and they maintained these concepts by word and personal daily example to the newcomers.  They were the ones who formed and created the new fighting forces.
 
They had received and absorbed these concepts during their own four-year experience at the service academies, and these had been solidified and strengthened and had become more deeply understood during their [often long and arduous] peacetime experience and continued growth.
 
By and large, it was not the ROTC officers who had stayed in during those long, slow, peacetime years to hold together the internal substance as well as the physical existence of their services.  The reservists' honorable mission was and still is to a considerable degree to come forward during extreme national emergencies and serve for the duration, then return to civilian life.  It was the regular service contingent of officers who, for the most part, had applied for their academy appointments with the purpose of making a lifetime career of it.  A major part of that commitment has to do with understanding, feeling, accepting, and imbuing in others the spirit, the character, and, yes, the ultimate demands of each of our services.
 
It is the service academies that are the repositories of these traditions, the teaching of which shares equal importance with the instruction in the technical knowledge and disciplines of waging war and leading troops.  It is in the academies that we find ourselves surrounded at every turn by the flags, the photographs, the historical relics and reminders of our glorious traditions and deeds.  In the Naval Academy Museum rests the very table at which General MacArthur sat when he received the surrender of the empire of Japan, and the document he signed lies on that table.  In another part of the museum is an exhibit dealing with the Spanish-American War of 1898.  Other reminders extend far beyond the museum, into every building and corridor of the Naval Academy.  It is the same at the other academies 
 
History comes alive and remains forever vital and refreshed in our service academies, and no one can pass through the four-year experience without being changed for life.
 
It is this transfer of our most precious traditions and obligations of military service that is the fundamental and most basic duty of our service academies to achieve, year after year, for each young man and woman entering. To allow or cause these academies and their mission to disappear from our national existence would greatly endanger the very means we have of guaranteeing the continuation of that existence.
 
Respectfully,
 
Charles McIntosh
USNA 1951
 
 
 mailto:BlackfinSS322@aol.com

To:mailto:USNA-At-Large@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 3:21 AM
Subject: [USNA-At-Large] "... because the American people want it."


USNA-At-Large,
  In an exchange on another subject, Jock Craig reminded me of this time-honored and paraphrased quote:
 
 
I should also add in paraphrase of LtGen Victor (“Brute”) Krulak: the Naval Academy exists because the American People want it.  If there should come a time when the American People no longer trust or honor it, the Naval Academy will go the way of the dinosaur.
 
 
  This is a very perceptive observation and deserves a bit of elaboration.
  As we speak, the Naval Academy exists and, therefore, the American People must "want it."
  But, specifically why would the American People "want" the Naval Academy?  We have to attempt to think that through or the value of General Krulak's important observation goes to zero.
  One could probably write at least a bunch of articles on the subject, but in the interests of keeping a single email post short, I'll just go right to the basics.
  The American People "want" AND ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR an institution that provides the core combat leadership for the United States Naval Sea Services.
  The flip side of that truth is that the American People do not "want" AND ARE NOT WILLING TO PAY FOR using the Naval Academy for any other social purpose, period.
  One final elaboration -- if the Naval Academy loses its way so badly that the American People no longer "want it," the Naval Academy's "going the way of the dinosaur" will be shortly followed by the final dying whimpers of The American Experiment.
    Live for Life and Semper Fi to our Marines on their 230th Birthday! John Howland