I am on the warpath about Tom Ricks opinion piece in the Washington Post titled Why We Should Get Rid of West Point .

Yes it would save some money to close the academies.  But it would also save a boatload of money to close Harvard (Ricks alma mater).  Harvard is a very expensive place to be educated.  For what is spent to educate one young, impressionable pup at Harvard, you could probably educate 20 other students at a community college.  So lets close Harvard.  West Point and the other service academies are a great value for the United States.  Better than Harvard. 

Ricks further faults the teaching at West Point, saying there aren’t enough PHDs on staff, so our young people aren’t challenged enough or taught to the standards Ricks would like to see.   I wonder what his evidence is that the academics are less than they should be.  Has there been a study comparing  a group of Harvard juniors to a group of West Point cows.  No, there hasn’t.  He believes there aren’t enough blowhard liberal PHDs with young pup liberals swooning at their liberal dogma, not enough challenging of the professional military class.  That is a load of bunk.  My son is a junior(cow) at West Point.  His education is diverse, tough, thought provoking and well rounded.  He is learning so much, giving up a lot to have this kind of college experience and he will be putting his life on the line after his graduation in May of 2010. 

If Ricks thinks that those who attend the Service Academies are not educated alongside doctors, lawyers, judges, mayors and congressmen and the like, he is mistaken. Does he think there are not doctors, lawyers, mayors being educated at West Point? Why would he think this? Perhaps his education at Harvard wasn’t as good as he believes it to be. Ricks also seems to think Gen. Petraeus is only valid because of his Princeton degree. That is just wierd.

Ricks also wants to close down the War Colleges that educate officers.  Evidently, Ricks doesn’t want a professional military.  Yes there are and should be more than one route to being a high ranking officer in the military.  Up from the ranks, from ROTC programs, and from the Service Academies.  Not one of these ways produces a cookie cutter military elite.  Somehow, I just think that Ricks wants us “study war no more”.  Why?  To save a few bucks.  Or does he somehow believe that a professional military makes for more wars? 

By the way, Ricks just wrote some story about how Ivy League grads are going into the military because they haven’t been challenged enough in civilian life.  I haven’t read that article.  I guess he was against that too. He must consider it a waste of their fabulous education.  I don’t believe that Harvard and several other elite university’s allow ROTC on campus.