A few of you have followed in the path of the perfect West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee, who never received a single demerit in four years. Some of you followed in the path of the considerably less than perfect graduate, Ulysses S. Grant, who had many demerits, and said the happiest day of his life was the day he left West Point. If you were to ask the First Lady, she would be happy to tell you which graduate I would have taken after.
That being said, let’s take care of a little business first. West Point is guided by tradition and I will observe one of the traditions you cherish most. As the Commander-in-Chief, I hereby grant amnesty to all cadets who are on restriction for minor conduct offenses. As somebody with a little higher rank than mine once said, ‘Go and sin no more!’”
At that point it was time to move into the meat of the speech. There had been the requisite laughing and cheering as I pardoned the miscreants and joked about demerits, as well as appropriate applause in various places. Now it was time to get serious.
“When you first arrived here four years ago, your nation was at peace. When your final year started we were at peace. Now, however, we are not. This has happened before to graduates, where the world they started out knowing changed during their time here. A year ago some of you had no idea where Afghanistan was. I can guarantee that is no longer the case now. On September 11th the world changed, and you will need to change as well. From here you will report to various training bases around the country for advanced training, combat training. Pay heed to what you are taught. You will be on the front lines soon. If the need arises, I will be calling on you.”
At this point I segued into the policy section, how counterterrorism was the new game they had to learn, how we would need to be vigilant, always ‘striving for peace yet preparing for war.’ They would need to learn about and face new challenges, yadda, yadda, yadda. After that, it was back to something to emphasize why they were there, and finish things off.
“Part of the challenge we face is in juggling priorities and determining where best to invest our money and our manpower. One frequent target is military education and the service academy system. I have no doubt that many of you have heard the argument that for the money spent educating cadets, we could have gone out and hired graduates of the Harvard Business School and then simply run them through Officer’s Candidate School. That would be an excellent idea if what we wanted was managers.
I have no intention of allowing this to happen. What you and your counterparts at the other service academies are learning is not management, but leadership. We don’t need managers. The last thing in the world we need right now is more managers. What the Army, and the nation, desperately needs is leaders! That is what we have trained you to be, and that is what we expect you to be. Some day you will be faced with the difference between being a manager and being a leader, and it won’t be pretty. This can be a damn ugly business we are in. At some point you are going to have to pocket somebody’s dog tags, zip up the body bag, and stand up and say ‘Follow me!’ That will be when you learn if you are a leader.”
‘Follow me’ is the motto of the Infantry. There were a lot of somber faces in the audience. I let that sink in for a moment, and then continued.
“Well, I bet that was a sobering thought. Right now your mothers are crying, and your fathers are starting to get sick. Now, let me tell you the other side of the equation. It’s the best job in the world! You will never again be challenged like you are about to be challenged. When the brass gets together and starts talking about the ‘good old days’, they aren’t talking about the grand times they had as a major on a staff someplace, in charge of paperwork and PowerPoint presentations! The good old days for them were when they had platoons and companies. The good old days were when they were lieutenants, like you are about to be.
You will be facing the most awesome of responsibilities. By the time I turned 25, I was commanding 125 men, had six tubes under my control, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and enough firepower to devastate a small town. I can guarantee you that none of my classmates at Rensselaer had those kinds of responsibilities! By then they were grad students or junior account managers or management trainees somewhere. I can also guarantee that you’ll have a lot more to talk about at your high school reunions than your classmates will!”
Time to send them out with a laugh. Most of these I had cribbed from a list of Murphy’s Laws of War I had found somewhere, and I made sure to stop after each ‘Law’ to give people time to laugh.
“So before I let you go, here’s some final advice from a broken down old battery commander. Do your captains a favor and try to follow me on this. We sort of know you won’t, but if you do, maybe you won’t get chewed out so often.
Okay, here goes. Always remember, there are three ways to do things. There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. Do us all a favor. Try the Army way every once in a while. If nothing else, you can confuse your captain.
Here’s another important thing to remember — Never share a foxhole with anybody braver than you are.
If everything is going perfectly, it’s probably an ambush.
If at first you don’t succeed, call in air support.
Here’s a good one — never forget that your weapon was produced by the lowest bidder!
And finally, never forget the Law of War — Murphy’s Law. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, and always remember that Murphy was an optimist.
So, congratulations, and welcome to the finest fraternity you can join, the fraternity of honorable officers. Thank you, and God bless you.”
Chapter 151: The Rose Garden of Hell
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Unsurprisingly, several of the networks ran excerpts of my speech during their graduation speech highlight reels. They seemed to run about evenly between some of the last few laugh lines, and the section about zipping up a body bag. Comedy or drama, you pick. For his part, John McCain returned to Annapolis like a conquering hero. A decorated combat aviator who spent seven years in the Hanoi Hilton, he gave a nicely rousing speech, and then ordered that Navy had to beat Army in December. We had won last year, so I was going to have to bust John’s chops when we beat his team again.
Marilyn got into the act, too. Some early birds began requesting the First Lady speak in 2003. Plattsburgh State, her alma mater, got to her first, requesting that she speak at their next graduation, the 25th anniversary of her graduation. When she asked me what to do, I told her to go for it. She could tell all of the other graduates how high they could climb if they married well. That cost me an elbow to the ribs and a lot of squawking and a very nice diamond bracelet. I should have learned by now to keep my mouth shut. It’s like she said with Oprah, groveling is good, but groveling with diamonds is even better.
After the graduations, it was back to Washington. Marilyn and the girls moved down to the White House. We had their 18th birthday party there, and brought a number of the Lefleurs down, as well as the Rottingens. We kept it private and I don’t think the media even twigged to the fact that they had a birthday.