Scott Beauchamp; abolish service academies
Do you remember Scott Beauchamps? I do. He was a mealy-mouthed little private who made up stories about his fellow soldiers back seven or eight years ago in the early days of this blog. The stories he created went across the country’s media. Mostly because they were total bullshit.
Not only were the stories bullshit, they were demeaning to the troops. Stories about them clowning around with pieces of human skulls on their heads, luring dogs in close to their vehicles so they could crush the beasts. Picking on a disfigured female contractor. It turns out that he’d written these stories before he even left Kuwait for Iraq. The New Republic pulled the stories down.
Now, for some stupid reason, the Washington Post thinks he’s rehabilitated enough to publish his opinion piece on whether or not the Pentagon should abolish the service academies. Whether he is for or against that process, I’d still be writing this. Not only is he a proven liar, he was a private soldier who doesn’t even understand the word “leader”, let alone the commissioning process.
No evidence shows that officers who attended civilian colleges, or any one of the U.S. Senior Military Colleges such as the Citadel, 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.” After all, perhaps the most preeminent Army leader in recent times, Colin Powell, is a product of the ROTC, not West Point.
Oh, good a private who quotes another fellow who has never served on matters that will never affect either of them.
As an enlisted Army infantryman, I served under platoon leaders who attended both West Point and ROTC. All were competent and professional. But the best graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara. What made him singular was his bravery and his resourcefulness. He was willing, in small ways, to deviate from standard operating procedure when the situation called for it. He also connected to the enlisted guys in an extraordinary way.
Yeah, well the worst company commander I ever had was a graduate of the University of California, Scott. He was so bad that we (the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants) had a plan for taking the company away from him if he started getting people killed in combat. Luckily, that never came to pass because COB6, one of the platoon leaders, refused an order to drive his platoon into the friendly tank fire that had just knocked out an entire platoon of a sister company. So, obviously, Scott, m’boy, there are exceptions to every rule. Beauchamp goes on to quote Gore Vidal and Davy Crockett to support his argument against the service academies.
All I need to consider is the past 240 years of military history and ask “Why are we in such a hurry to change things have proven so successful for so long?” And, oh, “Who the hell are you anyway?” Given his history in the world of journalism, he clearly doesn’t have the best interests of the soldiers or our national defense in his heart when he writes, so why is anyone giving him a podium?
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
See it more and more.
Young soldiers at the tactical level getting out and styling themselves as operational and strategic specialists or Middle East experts.
All without finishing higher education or understanding over-arching command structures/elements.
This turd is just another Dildo-berto waiting to happen.
I made E-8 in 16 years and went from my Platoon to being the Ops for a Company,I had a Butter Bar who had no idea what he was doing.I thank God we didn’t have to go to war with him.He told me one time That I didn’t know how the Army worked,My response was LT not Sir because I did not respect him nor did any of the Troops anyway I told him that I had boots that were nIn the Army longer than he was,his responce he walked away and pouted for 4 days.Sad huh?
Quoting Tom Ricks on anything military is like quoting Daffy Duck (sorry Daffy)
I think the best Officers (for the most part, not 100% of the time, but close to it) are prior Enlisted guys. Just my opinion.
That may be true generally JR, but the two worst officers I ever knew were both prior enlisted. One was just a cynical climber and the other thought his butter bars made him a European aristocrat.
Hahaha I know what you’re saying (European Aristocrat thing made me crack up). The worst PL I’ve ever had was also prior Enlisted, but the best ones were as well.
The problem with prior service junior officers is they sometimes forget they are not NCOs. You wanna be an officer, get out of NCO business.
Agreed. I had a damn good prior enlisted PL once but he was a major micro manager. Never let/trusted the NCOs to get shit done. Very competent officer though.
Served under a bunch of ringknockers from PL all the way up to GO ranks – most were good, solid officers that did the job well. Most mustangs were high speed, but the two worst officers I ever had were both mustangs. One forgot what it was like to be a junior enlisted, and the other had a chip on his shoulder in regard to NCOs from when he was a junior enlisted.
I’ve seen some of the best and the worst of both, and I still prefer former Enlisted. It sometimes takes up to a year to properly “season” a brand new Butterbar fresh out of college!!
I had an awesome PL when I was a young CPL. He used to say that we are all the same, but he just got in a different line when he joined. The only problem I had with him is he acted like he wanted to be a NCO. After some words we had privately after a live fire he backed off and didn’t try to be a NCO again.
Worst two officers I ever knew were a drunk Warrant and an LDO who never should have made it past E-5.
Again, rules, exceptions.
I am one of those “prior enlisted” guys who went to a senior military college. We all have our idiots. I am still debating some of the worst leadership under whom I served or served with…it is neck and neck, and all three are from different sources.
This is another in a long line of ongoing efforts to dismantle our venerable American institutions. And that’s all that it is. To the extent that Beauregard/Icouldabeenchamp/Whatever furthers this purpose, he is useful to the Post and its ilk. The progressives have been at it for many decades. Having one of their own in the White House has only emboldened them. He has been working hard from the inside to turn the country inside out and upside down and his confederates in certain businesses and in the media have been doing their part from the outside. Kill the institutions. Revile what was once revered. Change the culture. Make perversion acceptable. Selectively disregard the Constitution and selectively enforce the law. And that is how one radically changes America.
One can compare the Citidel, Texas A&M, Norwitch, VMI Virgina Ploytech, or North Georgia To West Point or Annapolis and be comparing apples to apples. to say any college with an ROTC program is the same as those above would be like saying all law degrees are equal or all engineering programs are the same as MIT.
Very few enlisted ever get a glimpse of what its like to be an officer. We form opinions that are based on the few officers good or bad that we interact with, To take that opinion and expand it to all officers is moronic.
For a former private to think he has any insight into the workings of the Army or Navy is foolish and anyone who gives credence to his opinion if the fool.
Well said.
“All law degrees are equal or all engineering programs are the same as MIT.”
In one sense that’s right: You get nearly identical information whether you’re at Michigan State, Purdue, or MIT. Likewise, Civ Pro is pretty much the same everywhere (except Yale, where it wasn’t always offered). The difference isn’t what you learn. It’s not even from whom you learn it. It’s the other people learning it with you. 98% the same sounds close; but it’s the last 2% that separates us from our poo-flinging DNA-cousins.
This is one of the most succinct blurbs about what makes elite learning institutes elite that I have ever read.
Then try this: Apart from connections, the prime advantage of elite schools is this: It won’t be as great as you hoped; but, having gone to the best school, you never need spend any later portion of your life in a condition of yearning, thinking, `Ah, if only I had gone to one of the better schools, how much better my life would have been.”‘
See comment #1.
Hey, how about disbanding the Columbia School of Journalism and a few other journalism indoctrination camps in favor of beat reporters who can write well–and w/o an agenda– but majored in English or history in college?
Tremendous idea! We can also get rid of most university Education departments (also the federal one) and put people in classrooms that have an experience of the outside world.
Instead of journo school, we can just hire folks who’ve seen All The President’s Men. They’ll know everything they need to know, right? Look at how much they’ll save by skipping that 4 or 6 years they’d waste in Journalism School.
Or they could just watch Michael Moore documentaries!
I really like how the WP hangs out his byline creds as: “Scott Beauchamp is a veteran and a writer who lives in Portland, Maine. He contributes to the Baffler, the Atlantic and Al Jazeera, among other publications.”
They fail to say he was a worthless, malcontent Private and had nothing to do with and knows nothing of the service academies.
I guess of the didn’t spiff up his resume in the byline, no one would read the article and call the WP a worthless ass wipe rag.
Fakheem.
Most of the Mustangs I flew with were good officers, with a couple marked exceptions. They all generally came from the P-3 Orion enlisted aircrew ranks, and either A) knew what I did as a sensor operator and let me do my job, or B) knew what I did as a sensor operator and thought they could do it better, regardless of changes in sensors, systems, and threats. Guess which ones had better “luck” on-station? 😉
Speaking as a non-veteran here, I noticed that his pivotal example is ROTC-trained Colin Powell. Okay, fair enough. Can I offer some opposing examples?
West Point graduates include:
Robert E. Lee
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
James Peter Longstreet
William T. Sherman
Ulysses S. Grant
John “Black Jack” Pershing
Douglas MacArthur
Omar Bradley
George S. Patton Jr.
Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Creighton Abrams
H. Norman “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf
Annapolis graduates include:
Chester W. Nimitz
William Leahy
Ray Spruance
Victor Krulak
Alan Kirk
Arleigh Burke
Elmo Zumwalt
Thomas “TJ” Hudner
Jimmy Carter (remember, they like him)
Charles Krulak
Peter Pace
Name any one school that’s produced so many badasses (and Jimmy Carter). Since he can’t, I’d say that logically eviscerates Beauchamp’s argument.
How many ROTC programs have produced a future POTUS?
Maybe Reagan? I dunno.
Keep in mind ROTC did not exist as a real program until the early 20th century although some schools had military programs and many served (one of the reasons Georgetown’s colors are Blue and Grey is so many graduates served on both sides of the civil war). also look at Harvard’s military history which is actually fairly impressive.
Kennedy did NROTC
Never mind that Harvard dismantled its own ROTC program years back. Those attending Harvard who desire ROTC go over to MIT for those classes. The only “military” representation today at Harvard is the annual group of 20 or so “National Security Fellows” who study there for a year in lieu of attending the War College, and the other senior programs of much shorter duration. (And as an aside, I count myself privileged to have attended that fellowship along with 3 of my West Point classmates.)
I wonder what it says about the two institutions, or maybe the two branches of the Service, that as a lifelong civilian who has never even had an immediate family member who served, I still recognized every one of the West Point grads’ names on that list except Abrams (was he the guy they named the tank after?) and Buckner, yet never heard of any of the Annapolis grads bar Nimitz and Carter, and had no idea the latter graduated from there.
Is it that the Army gets better publicity than the Navy?
I would say it is more of a bias about teaching WWII. most of those Navy and Marine leaders were in the pacific during WWII and MacArthur was a ego maniac who made sure to upstage everyone else in the pacific.
Your statement reminds me of a conversation I once had with a coworker whose Dad was a WWII Pacific Vet. He said that a sure way to make his Dad cuss bad enough to split a tugboat in two was to mention MacArthur’s name!
MacArthur wasn’t as bad as some say, but he had an undisputable talent for making his troops hate his guts, even when he was doing a good job. And even on his best day, he had an ego equal to Patton and Montgomery combined.
That makes the story of 1LT Harl Pease and his B-17 crew that much more badass, for how MacArthur himself admitted that he’d been an asshole.
For what it’s worth, the absolutely worst CO I ever served under was NROTC. He was the poster child for the phrase “surface warfare eats its young.”
Bottom line is simply that if this clown says it it’s probably wrong.
I once knew the widow of an Army four-star, who had been a contemporary of Colin Powell, and she made no bones about the fact that among the general officer corps, Powell was considered a competent but undistinguished officer who likely would have risen no higher than full colonel had he not been fast-tracked because the Army needed more black general officers.
So much for Beauchamp’s example…
What’s wrong, Beauchamp? Still struggling to rise above your mediocrity?
struggling to REACH mediocrity
I would pity him but I save that for human beings.
Scott Beauchamp never has been and never will be more than a Daniel A. Bernath-like Santorum-stained dingleberry on an inbred lobotomized Swamp Donkey ‘s ass!!
Ohhhhhh my goodness! Its lil SCOTTIE BEAUCHAMPS! Boy, do I remember this special little snowflake. His whole f’ng crew should start rolling through any day now, telling us how mean we are for picking on his born again good lieing veteran ass…Stay classy, Scott Beauchamps…
Citadel grad here (and knew TSO when we were in Beast/1st Batt together in the early 90s)…threw up a little in my mouth when Beauchamp mentioned my alma mater.
Reference the Iraq and New Republic stuff…BLUF: He was given anonymity and smeared his fellow troops with embellishments. TNR took him at face value and editor Frank Foer (recently turfed btw) foolishly dug in when called out until no evidence came to bear- they subsequently gave Beauchamp every opportunity to prove what he said happened. Couldn’t do it, because it wasn’t true exactly as he wrote it. He did nothing but weasel around everything- but can’t say I’m surprised he’s back. Can’t keep a good shithouse lawyer down, after all.
Credibility = zero.
The end.
Is this corndog related to bernutsky?
They seem to operate on the same level of disorganized, dimwitted rhetoric.
Okay, my experience is one looking from the outside in from the middle.
For years, I was a sports official on a local military base. Many, if not most of the team leaders were officers. It was not unusual to talk with players after games and get to know them and their history.
Trust me when I say that the “good guys” were men and women of character. It didn’t matter what school they had attended. Buttwipes were buttwipes whether they attended an academy or a regular college. It was who they were as people – something I suspect was developed long before college or academies – that mattered.
One thing we noticed was that the academy “good guys” were more polite and willing to listen than their “good guy” ROTC compatriots. Don’t know how that translates in leadership within the military, but that is something I noticed.
Finally, it was amazing to see men and women coming back after serving in harms way. They still enjoyed the competion and the comraderie of the games, but somehow they understood that a game didn’t come close to what they had experienced elsewhere.
Character, not your alma mater, seems to me to make the best leaders.
I am a proud ROTC grad. There are a lot of misconceptions about the officer commissioning programs. The number one problem with ROTC is that there is a huge variation in quality between schools. I was lucky to go to a school with an exceptional program (one of the best complements i got as a cadet was to have a retired Marine General and USNA grad tell me that if all ROTC programs were as good as mine we would not need service academies) but i also saw cadets at LDAC that were not in any way ready to assume the responsibility of being an officer. It is a function of the culture of that ROTC program that determine what kind of officers it turns out. ROTC recruits by telling you that is a limited time commitment but it became clear from my first day that my program expected more from its cadets and the ones who made that clear were not the cadre but the other cadets. My program also had the advantage of being filled with cadets who really wanted to be in the Army (prior to 9/11 we produced reserve and NG officers because lets face it the people who went to the schools making up my program are not the kind of people you expect to find in the Army, and who did not receive school credit for ROTC. I also have seen a lot of officers who did ROTC at other school who majored in the easiest majors they could find and did almost nothing relating to ROTC. There is also the fact that most ROTC cadets don’t get a lot of real field time due to where they are located and lets face it you can’t learn tactics and field leadership or land nav in a classroom, the only way to learn is to go and get lost in the woods again and again until get good at it. On the plus side ROTC is cheaper for the government and rounds out the officer corps by admitting officer who would not want to do… Read more »
I have to partially disagree with you Redleg JO, my last and currentBrigade Commanders are OCS Grads as well as my last Squadron CO who was an E7 when he attended and graduated from OCS, he’s now a Colonel. The majority of my Unit’s officers were Prior Enlisted on my last Middle East tour, that’s probably one reason things went so smoothly on that tour. I’m not bagging on ROTC Grads, it just takes longer to break one of you in and help you get your feet wet!
I would never say that Prior enlisted OCS grads are bad officers as a whole. what i was trying to point out and i guess didn’t do a good job is that they have their cons along with their pros just like ROTC grads and USMA grads do. And keep in mind this is all empirical. In my experience (since i am not a LT i am allowed to say that)you tend to get more top performers and bottom performers out of the prior enlisted, they tend to cluster at the top and bottom instead of in the middle like USMA and ROTC grads. For example the LT who ordered his men to murder (and yes it was murder, i was in the AO when it happened)the Afghan Civilians was an ROTC grad but also prior service. Also i know some Prior Service make it to top ranks but just looking at officer and enlisted timelines it is much harder for them to reach top ranks simply because i started at year 0 of service and they start their officer time somewhere between 4-10 years of service. so when i am getting looked at full bird (maybe) i will be at around 18 years of service and they will be at somewhere between 22-28 years. that is why most (not all by any means but when looking at officer commissioning sources we have to look at the average) do not make it past CPT/MAJ before retiring. It is also the reason our prior enlisted are getting hit harder by the officer separation boards. they are at 15-20 years of service and hence can be given early retirement as opposed to people like me who as a CPT will be at 10 years of service and if i get separated well i get squat. Also lets not forget that prior enlisted can do ROTC via the green to gold program and USMA. But not all Enlisted even great NCOs and be good officers, it is a different skill set. Lastly and this is something to consider when we talk about commissioning… Read more »
Redleg JO: “Lastly and this is something to consider when we talk about commissioning only prior service NCO to be officers, do you really want the army taking all your talented NCOs and making them officers hence depleting the NCO corps? Think what taking 4-5K of the best NCOs out of the NCO corps every year would do the NCO corps.”
This is an excellent point (though it should be said that this is also one of the arguments against “elite” units like Paratroopers and Rangers: That by creating such units you draw the best soldiers out of the conventional units and diminish them as a result.)
I graduated from college in 2000 while I was still serving in the National Guard, and several times when officers found out I was a college graduate (and a law student at the time) they would ask “why haven’t you applied for a direct commission?” I understand that in their minds that would be the natural thing to do but it galled me a little that they didn’t seem to think the Army needed educated NCOs as well as officers.
Of course, one of the biggest differences between the RC and AD is that every commissioned officer on AD has a college degree and it’s rare to see one in the enlisted ranks below the grades of E8 or so.
OTOH in the Reserve Components the “Sp/4 with a graduate degree” is so common it’s almost a cliché. And not just academic degrees, I knew at least 3 enlisted soldiers who were practicing attorneys in their civilian lives.
Officer is an antiquated bullshit aristocrat system of privilege. It’s amazing that in the 21st century in supposedly professional non caste militaries it still exists.
That’s only true in caste societies, like the UK Royal Family. In democratic societies, officer status is not dependent on socieo-economic privilege.
Well, who is really surprised, here? After all, anyone who can lie and make it sound like the truth works for the MFMC, now doesn’t it? I mean, we’ve got Lena Dunham, Rolling Stone, TNR, and now the WaPo. I mean, TNR as Beauchump’s alma mater has just published a review by Dennis Jett on the….wait. for. it…American Sniper TRAILER, FFS!! You cannot make this shit up.
Oh, Claire Fallon, where are you when I need that wicked Rhode Island accent to say,”Well, Fuck me dead!”
Officers of any school should feel fortunate they get to go to a “college” to get their education/development.
NCOs are cursed with SSD (5 levels of it). The Army spent less than 50 bucks on the whole thing (though they probably paid a bunch of civilians 6 figures each to “create” it.)
Bitch-boy must have gotten his ass ( rightfully) run up by a West Point Grad.
Left wing fuck-knuckles like him just can’t stand the idea of conservative military-oriented school being allowed to exist, period.
If there was to be a federally funded accademy for our youth to learn to be pot-smoking, socialist ass-lords he’d be all for it.
Thus I’m certain that booger-eating Swamp Donkey scrotum-sniffing bedwetting Santorum-stained dingleberries like him are all for “Common Core Education “!
Luckily, that never came to pass because COB6, one of the platoon leaders, refused an order to drive his platoon into the friendly tank fire that had just knocked out an entire platoon of a sister company.
What war did this happen as I had a commander the same as this, although we were the ones that drove into the tanks. My commander was Captain Lee “The Bod” Wilson.
http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=Arts+%26+Entertainemnt&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=3C223530ACDF485C8EF12ED77850EB6E