by pyrene

i am pyrene.  i am the head mouser cat in the united states military academy’s mess hall.  previous pyrenes wrote columns in ‘the pointer’ [1923-1996].  we pyrenes share the inside scoop on the corps of cadets, tactical officers, academics, and athletics on the friendly fields of strife.

we type well for cats.  we just walk on the keys so we can’t shift up.  write only in lowercase.

the hot poop now is that all three usma leadership positions change this summer.

don’t know who is coming in.  but, a new superintendent, commandant, and dean is a complete change.  maybe it’s meant to be a clean sweep of west point as an institution.  tbd.

the leadership team will get plenty of guidance from the department of war.  they’ll add their own ideas from their exemplary service.  maybe they’ll consider an institutional perspective from the head mouser.    or from the board of visitors.  or congress.

we recall douglas macarthur’s reforms – against hard pushback  – served west point, the army and the nation for the rest of the century.  macarthur understood the leadership needed for a large conscripted citizen army was much different from the small, harshly disciplined, professional army fighting on the frontier and in the phillipines.  so, west pointers needed to know more about the social sciences, including psychology, to lead their fellow americans.  west point needed less isolation and a touch of liberalization.

we are at a profound inflection point in history today.

A new era of war emerges as new and different wars threaten and conflicts of civilizational survival promise – meanwhile the worldviews of cadets and faculty are fractured.

the leadership required for the conflicts to come is different from the lessons learned after 20 years of all volunteer army operations in the middle east.  and the cadets themselves will be different.

macarthur learned from the great war when warfare completely shifted from the gunpowder era to the industrial era.  the army is on the cusp of a shift from the information era to the ai era.

if the fighting between russia and ukraine, around israel and iran, and in the caucuses is illustrative, the differences are stark.  dealing with the precision lethality across the hugely expanded battlefield is an unparalleled leadership challenge at every level of command.  multi-domain operations require new levels of cognition, resilience, stamina, which crt and dei don’t address.

kinetic war with the ccp could be a very long war.  a war requiring industrial and personnel mobilization.   a war requiring re-building much of the u.s. – where the army is the only institution capable of doing so.

and, most likely, the clash of civilizations will include the u.s.

all of western civilization will resolve the issues of mass migration one way or another.

all of western civilization will resolve the issue of an incompatible and un-assimilable identity and ideology in Islam.  when the clash becomes actual conflict, it will be unlike any war we’ve ever fought.

homeland defense may include domestic operations involving identity groups resident in the corps of cadets.

furthermore, up to half of incoming cadets and nearly all civilian faculty will hold a cultural marxist worldview.

the oppositional worldviews of traditional consensus culture of the american creed and cultural Marxism are greater than the difference between the north and south before the terrible west point intramural war a.k.a. the recent unpleasantness, 1861-65.

there’s no common ground on the meaning of our u.s. constitution, let alone the officer’s oath to it.  the foundational virtues must be taught and inculcated differently to embed the honor code and an officership concept in west pointers.

Ironically, maybe west point needs to be more isolated from society to solidify every cadet’s identity as a soldier.  as a career officer in the u.s. army.  make it more of a military academy and less a liberal arts college.

the new leaders at usma will determine what to retain, improve, restore, and reform.  Discussing every aspect of this inflection point in history – which won’t come through normal channels – will serve well.

the usma board of visitors should ask the leadership to address key questions.

with more food for thought to come from the head mess hall mouser…

duty, honor, country

pyrene