LTG Gilland,
Congratulations on becoming the 61st Superintendent of USMA. Your introductory letter mentions how you are “committed to ensuring that USMA remains the preeminent leader development institution in the world.” You have an impressive resume. Many of us in the Long Gray Line would like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you come to USMA with the noblest of intentions in what should be a terminal assignment that is meant to free you from unlawful command influence.
Many of us are acutely aware that the same Army and Dept of Defense leaders that picked you also backed the prior Superintendent. Discussions about scandals with the execution of the honor code, drugs, and critical race theory (CRT) still circulate amongst many graduates. Just last month Project Veritas published over 600 pages that USMA and DoD refused to release that proved West Point had been teaching CRT despite the 60th Superintendent’s steadfast denials to graduates at several reunions. USMA’s culture in recent years has appears to have evolved to ignore requests for information by Senators, members of Congress, retired generals and USMA graduates. Public Affairs and other department staffs won’t return phone calls and allegedly are instructed to not do so. Even your Dean, my USMA 1996 classmate, frequently sends jokes to his USMA classmates in mass emails but won’t answer any emails from me. Transparency appears to have been lost which quickly generates mistrust.
While it is refreshing to hear your commitment to USMA and its ideals, it is important to hear certain words from your own lips that will reassure many that you plan to right the ethical ship at USMA. It is easy to conclude that silence on recent scandals could imply business as usual at West Point. Just like in any other leadership position, new leaders likely didn’t cause the issues that they inherited but they volunteered for the task and they now own the problems. As the grasshopper says in Pixar’s movie Bug’s Life, “First rule of Leadership. Everything is your fault.” Specifically, we need to hear from you your acknowledgement of the following publicly known issues and your updates/solutions to them:
USMA’s ongoing and frequent cocaine scandals, most recently the MAR 2022 incident involving 5 cadets. Since the scandal broke, USMA has released no further information despite requests to the USMA PAO. Please release information on punishment/expulsion of the 5 involved and what actions USMA is doing to root out the cocaine and drug culture at West Point.
2020 Honor scandal involving over 70 cadets – cases were delayed, football players appeared to enjoy favoritism by being allowed to be able to play during investigations and few if any were expelled. It is well known your predecessor was a former Army Football player. What is being done to reassure the Long Gray Line that the integrity of the Honor Code will be restored and that the Army Football Team is not the recipient of favoritism when punishment is meted out for honor, regulatory, and legal offenses? Is Worth’s Battalion Orders obsolete?
Allegations a cadet (who was a star football player) stole a watch from the West Point PX and was able to graduate and is now an infantry 2LT in the US Army. Apparently, his case was presented as an honor vignette to cadets. Why was this cadet allowed to graduate?
Acknowledgement that CRT was integrated into USMA’s program and actions you are going to take to eliminate it.
Public condemnation of Marxism (CRT is rooted in Marxism). This should be obvious given USMA’s mission but the hundreds of pages in the court ordered release show USMA has promoted CRT and therefore quite possibly became at best partisan towards one political party and at worst corrupted by Marxist ideology.
Your new billet is a difficult one. Even in the best of times it is charged with tremendous responsibility to the Corps and the Nation. That being said, the institution is generally hard wired and success can sometimes just mean keeping the Academy running smoothly and scandal free. Your predecessor, possibly an affirmative action general promoted to a European command, was apparently given a pass for the scandals he left in his wake. I realize USMA, like most military and government organizations, doesn’t like to air its dirty laundry. However, the scope and frequency of recent scandals coupled with the past Supe’s denials, dishonesty, and arrogance has shaken the faith of many in the Long Gray Line. Many of us have stopped our donations to the Academy as a result.
I pray you clear the air on recent misdeeds at USMA, leave the institution better than you found it, and return it to its founding principles. Our nation depends on it.
Best of luck.
John Hughes
USMA Class of 1996 (#1 graduate)
This article first appeared in Stand Up America. Reprinted here with permission.
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An excellent letter that will likely fall on deaf ears. I am angry beyond words that the Wokeretary of Defense and Congress approved a fourth star for Williams who has done more damage to the institution than even LTG Christman and a host of woke Deans.
Why do I think you’re right? Those deaf ears will continue until the CinC on down are replaced.
You can add my name to your excellent letter.
Bill Fletcher
CoE-1 1974
LTC GA ANG (ret)
Attorney at Law
I second the comment made by Bill Fletcher. Thank you for the letter. You can add my name to the letter as well.
Jimmy Kim
Cadet Company: F3
Class of 1989.
For those wanting to add their names to this, please email MG(R) Vallely at: suaus1961@gmail.com
Regards,
Mike
Mr Hughes wrote:
Congratulations: you just got your classmate’s e-mails subject to review! Here’s hoping that none of his jokes would offend the Special Snowflakes™, or he’ll have to resign and retire.
TlDR so here’s the cliffnotes…
Last supe black… grr…
This Supe white… yay…
Listening to you old farts gets really boring really quickly.
You’re the only one that has mentioned the Supe’s race. Like the leftwing loon idiot you are, you’ve displayed your stupidity for all the world to see. Crawl back into your hole, scumbag.
Eric,
The letter assesses the 60th Supe based on the content of his character as demonstrated via his decisions, actions, and inactions.
Furthermore, the letter isn’t presenting the new Supe as a hero; he has, after all, not done anything yet. However, the letter acknowledges that the new Supe has an opportunity for greatness.
Somehow, with all of the above plainly true, you sought to inject race into the issue. I’m sure that the CRT-inclined folks currently entrenched at USMA are mighty proud of you.
Eric,
In case that went over your head… and I’m quite certain it did… your instinct to inject race into the discussion, when nobody even hinted that race is remotely related to (much less causative of) the undeniable institutional problems at USMA, illustrates the extent to which your perverted inclinations have been normed.
My assumption is that you are a USMA grad because most folks would neither care nor comment otherwise. Even if you’re not a grad, we “old farts” have encountered an alarming number of grads with your same perverse inclination to inject race into any and every discussion. We have observed, based on observation and sound reasoning, that the present environment at USMA reinforces this perverse and corrosive behavior. And that alarms us enough to pen letters of the nature shown in the article.
So thank you for providing a data point which serves to illustrate how correct we are in our assessment of the situation.
Know, though, that you’re not special. Somebody was going to wade into this discussion with the same perverse perspective. Such is the nature of the problem.
Any attempt at reason with the likes of all the “Eric’s” out there is a profound waste of time. He’s been called out and is too cowardly to respond.
Except John Hughes has brought up race with the Superintendent in the past. Sometimes he remembers to not say the quiet part out loud. Other times he forgets (or doesn’t care).
https://ussanews.com/2022/06/28/ussma-united-states-socialist-military-academy-established-2020/
The author of the letter injected race into the discussion with his characterization of LTG Williams as “possibly an affirmative action general.” What do you think he meant by that characterization? That was clearly a reference to his race.
I ask that we all keep our comments professional. We are better than that, or at least we should be.
Thank you, Tim, for adding that.
That “characterization”, as you call it, is simply a reflection of the natural reaction to race based quotas. Blacks who are honest about it, don’t want the stigma associated with so-called affirmative action. Via BLM and radical CRT, the new catch word is “equity”, rather than equality. Equity is equal outcomes, not equal opportunity. Enough race baiting. The Army should see only one color, Army green.
That reminds me of an apocryphal story once told about AF general and Air Defense Command legend Chappie James. Supposedly one day he saw an airman trying to start a fight on race, black aggressor white vic, and when the aggressor tried to appeal to him about “you supposed to be on my side brother” his response was “the only colors we see in this Air Force are we wear the same sage-green flight gear and we fly the same gray planes in the same blue sky to hold the same Red Menace at bay–THIS MAN is my brother, not you.”
Similar one from my high-school engineering class… the instructor liked to split us up into groups like a real shop floor with a third-year Team Lead, a second-year Assistant Lead and first-year grunts. My group was jokingly called the “rainbow squad” because we checked off just about every demographic box, and our TL had a passing resemblance to a young Courtney B. Vance. His money quote was “I don’t want to be seen as a black engineer–I want to be seen as a top-flight engineer no matter who I’m being evaluated against, as much a role model to people who look like you or Chen or Katie or Ernesto as people who look like me.” Another good one from him, while he was building a model airliner over lunch one day was, “If we were building this plane for real and it went down, the families of those aboard aren’t gonna care that you’ve forgotten more about aviation than most people will ever know or I look like a Cosby Show reject or that Katie’s a cheerleader with a nice rack or Chen is Asian and gay or Ernesto is Mexican–all they’re gonna care about is that their loved ones are dead because we F—ED UP and they’re gonna want all our heads on pikes together, and rightly so!”
Obligatory note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent, as is my standard practice with any detail from my personal life.