afrotc-l: ROTC Article

[SARRanger@aol.com]

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Subject: Professional Reading


Recent article below for professional reading.  Obviously views are
exclusively that of the author and are "not to be construed as those of any
service's ROTC unit, the armed services, DoD, or the federal govt."

Steven M Paladini
STEVEN M. PALADINI, Col, USAF
Commander, AFROTC Det 720
Winner, 2000-2001 Right Of Line Award
    as #1 AFROTC Det (of 143) nation wide
Department of Aerospace Studies
The Pennsylvania State University
109 Wagner Building
University Park, PA 16802-3896
phone: (814) 865-5453
fax: (814) 865-1983
email: smp8@psu.edu
PSU ROTC: http://www.airforce.psu.edu
AF ROTC: http://www.afrotc.com


BANNED ON CAMPUS
Ben Shapiro
June 20, 2002

Banned on campus

When the United States builds a missile-defense shield, it should leave a
small hole right above Harvard University -- and Yale, Stanford, Columbia
and Brown. Each of these institutions bans the U.S. Reserve Officer
Training Corps (ROTC) from conducting classes on its campus. Until they let
ROTC
back on campus, let them defend themselves.

Now, when America is under attack, it is vital that America's youth know
the military personally, rather than buying professorial slander about the
military-industrial complex and the "dark side" of the U.S. armed forces.
Still, many top-notch universities ban ROTC.

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and Brown all banned ROTC in the late
1960s and early 1970s because of the "immoral" Vietnam War. Students
protested and took over buildings; university credit for ROTC courses was
revoked; and ROTC was effectively forced off campus. Now, universities
justify the ban by citing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy
regarding homosexuals. These are lame excuses to justify the anti-military
attitude of Ivy League intellectuals.

Because of the ban, Harvard ROTC students must travel to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for their courses. Yale's finest must go to the
University of Connecticut at Storrs. Brown's military men and women must
travel to Providence College. ROTC members at Columbia must go to City
University of New York and Manhattan College for courses. Stanford's ROTC
cadets, ironically, are only allowed course and drill instruction at the
University of California at Berkeley.

Each of these colleges is ranked among the top 20 universities in the
nation by U.S. News & World Report, but what they boast in intellectual
pretensions, they lack in moral clarity. While professors are granted room
to promote Marxism, communism and other anti-American philosophies, the
U.S. armed forces are refused space to teach ideas and strategies that are
patriotic and useful. ROTC teaches personal responsibility, problem solving
and leadership. For non-ROTC students, it teaches respect for the military
and the global centrality of the U.S. military, besides teaching a pragmatic
skill set.

I know the importance of ROTC because I completed a Military Science course
at UCLA last week, during the final quarter of my sophomore year. Roughly
half of the class was composed of UCLA students, and the other half were
ROTC men and women. The class was titled "Principles of Land Navigation
Applicable in Maneuver," a map-reading course. As one of my ROTC friends
joked, the only things we shot were azimuths.

It was the only course I have ever taken at UCLA that was openly
pro-American. One day, a colonel spoke to the class about enlistment in the
Army. "I am an unabashed patriot. I will do whatever it takes to defend my
country. That is why I joined the U.S. Army," he said. My instinctive
response was to look around to make sure no UC administrator was present to
accost him; my second was to smile at proud patriotism being demonstrated
on a college campus. I could have cheered.

Only in this course did I get straight talk from a professor, a captain in
the U.S. Army. In one lecture, she discussed military operations in urban
terrain, and the subject of civilian casualties arose. In my experience at
UCLA, other professors equated purposeful killing of civilians with
accidental civilian casualties while pursuing the enemy. These professors
generally portray civilians in enemy countries as complete innocents
victimized by rogue governments.

The captain was not one for that kind of politically correct garbage. "What
do we call civilian casualties?" she asked the class. The hand of a student
shot up, and he said "Collateral damage, ma'am." "Yes," she replied, "we
try to avoid collateral damage even though those same civilians are probably
helping the enemy." In ROTC courses, honesty is still permitted.

ROTC provides students the opportunity to meet future members of America's
bravest and finest. Most college students picture stupid, doped-up "cannon
fodder" when they think of the men and women of the military. But sitting
and talking with military personnel shatters that belief once and for all.
These are intelligent, vivid people who love their country and are willing
to give their lives fighting for it. Students need to know this.

Universities are constantly touting their diversity of education. To that
end, they provide space for courses on homosexuality, on American
imperialism, on Marxism. Yet they refuse to enrich the education of their
students by allowing ROTC on campus. No missile-defense shield should
defend the morally indefensible.


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"I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me.""   Isaiah 6:8