| Publicity: | It’s turned out some fearsome warriors in the past but can America’s prestigious military academy West Point manufacture the brass that will ultimately prevail in what’s now being dubbed ‘Obama’s War’ – Afghanistan? |
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| Reporter Michael Maher was granted rare access to West Point and key members of the Class of ’09 for a fascinating examination of this institution at a time of dramatically altered military priorities. |
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| Celebrated generals Grant, Sherman, Eisenhower, Macarthur, Patton and Schwartzkopf were all products of West Point and all faced an enterprising enemy but it’s widely agreed Afghanistan is a most perplexing theatre of war. A quagmire for all comers. The new phalanx of West Point soldiers must win in a place that humiliated those who’ve come before. |
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| Cauterising the Taliban and crushing the exportation of terror are tasks that are not going to play quite like the wars of the past. |
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| Distinguished West Point graduate Craig Mullaney tells Maher: |
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| Maher spends time with three very different soldiers-in-the-making including Caroline Miller whose attendance makes for longest unbroken lineage in West Point’s 207 year history. Cadet Miller represents the 7th generation of her family to attend. |
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| “I don’t want to get shot at. I don’t want to die. I love life, I love living.” she tells Maher. “But honestly, if it comes down to it – I’ll take a bullet.” |
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| Maher reveals the engineering students of crusty General Patton’s day have made room for broader studies designed to round out the modern fighter. He finds cadets soon bound for Afghanistan studying Henry V and arguing about King Lear. |
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| But – once into the breach - will they be adequately equipped for the daunting challenge of shadowy Taliban and death and injury in the field of battle. |
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| Craig Mullaney offers this from experience: |
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| Mist across landscape | Music | 00:00 |
| Obama on Afghanistan | US PRESIDENT OBAMA: [March 27, 2009] ‘The situation is increasingly perilous. It’s been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on. Now we must make a commitment that can accomplish our goals.’ | 00:09 |
| Cadets on campus | Music | 00:25 |
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| CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘I don’t think this is a war that will begin or end in his presidency. | 00:28 |
| Mullaney | Victory in a counter insurgency is not going to look like what Americans have understood victory to mean in the past. | 00:34 |
| Statues of generals | There won’t be a white flag of surrender from the Taliban, al Qaeda won’t fold up.’ | 00:42 |
| West Point campus/ Statues of generals | Music | 00:55 |
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| MAHER: America’s most celebrated generals have all passed through the imposing granite portals of West Point. Grant, Sherman, Eisenhower, Macarthur, Patton and more recently Schwartzkopf and Patraeus are part of the so-called long grey line of West Point officers who have led troops to victories, as well as some military disasters, over the past 200 years. | 00:59 |
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| Music | 01:20 |
| Cadets on campus | MAHER: With their country now stepping up its military efforts in Afghanistan, it will fall to the latest members of the long grey line to join the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in some of the world’s most treacherous terrain. | 01:25 |
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| The Class of 2009 signed up knowing full well it would go to war. SENIOR CADET LEO MARIN: ‘You have a calling to step up and serve and put on the uniform and say, “Yes I want to lead”. | 01:39 |
| Marin | I wanted to do something, you know, a lot larger than just being for myself or making tons of money or anything like that because it’s not about the money here.’ | 01:51 |
| Cadets on firing range | CADET RICH KUBU: ‘You know our goal is not only just to kill people or, you know, or just to go out there and give people a bad day. Ultimately we want Afghanistan to be a self-sufficient country. | 02:02 |
| Kubu | We’re not there as an invading force, we’re there as an assisting force.’ | 02:14 |
| Cadets on firing range |
| 02:18 |
| Miller | CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘I don’t want to get shot at, I don’t want to die. I love life, I love living life, but honestly, I mean if it comes down to it, I’ll take a bullet.’ | 02:21 |
| Squadron briefing |
| 02:33 |
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| MAHER: In a year’s time Senior Cadet Leo Marin can expect to be leading troops on the front line in Afghanistan. | 02:38 |
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| SENIOR CADET LEO MARIN: [Addressing group] ‘So today’s mission we have a downed A10 pilot. We have to go extract him in the mountains of Afghanistan. The team that has the fastest time wins. All right ready? Go! | 02:46 |
| Squadron start training exercise | Music | 02:58 |
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| SENIOR CADET LEO MARIN: ‘I think at first we don’t really realise it and now it’s hitting home more.’ | 03:15 |
| Marin. Super: | We know what we’re going to do for the next five years and, you know, as officers it’s a little more realistic approach. It’s not as far away, it’s a little more tangible.’ | 03:21 |
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| ‘You’re weary, I’m always constantly asking myself, you know am I prepared, you know has my experience here prepared me? Is there anything more I can learn, anything more I can do?’ | 03:48 |
| West Point buildings | Music | 03:55 |
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| US PRESIDENT OBAMA: [March 27, 2009] ‘Our troops have fought bravely against a ruthless enemy, but for six years Afghanistan has been denied the resources that it demands because of the war in Iraq. | 03:58 |
| Obama | Now that will change.’ | 04:09 |
| Caroline Miller working in here room | MAHER: In just a few weeks 22 year old Cadet Caroline Miller and the rest of the Class of 2009 will have finished their final exams and graduated as second lieutenants in the US Army. Her new Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, says Afghanistan is now America’s priority and that he’s nearly doubling the number of troops there. | 04:15 |
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| CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘I’m actually more excited to go to Afghanistan than Iraq. You have all these varied ethnic tribal groups that you’re trying to pull together and unite when they’re fiercely independent.’ | 04:39 |
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| MAHER: ‘Armies from other countries have become bogged down | 04:48 |
| Miller | in Afghanistan, the British, the Soviets…’ CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘The Soviets, yes sir.’ MAHER: ‘Are you fearful that could happen to your own country?’ | 04:51 |
| Super: | SUPER: CAROLINE MILLER, CADET: ‘Yes and no. That’s a hard question to answer. Again, you know, hindsight’s 20/20, but foresight you know…. I wish we had that gift but we don’t.’ | 04:57 |
| Soldier’s footage of rocket attack |
| 05:11 |
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| MAHER: Thousands of kilometres away from the secluded tranquillity of West Point, this is the reality cadet Miller will face in Afghanistan, a country now claiming more American lives than Iraq. | 05:20 |
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| While these rockets rained down on his firebase, another young West Point graduate was able to assess first hand how well the academy and the army had prepared him for the battlefield. CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘In my first fire fight | 05:45 |
| Mullaney. Super: | the first command I heard over the radio was that one of my soldiers had been killed in action… and I think that’s a shock, that would be a shock to anyone. | 06:01 |
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| Really…. the physical shock of seeing blood and viscera can be debilitating when you’re trying to move a soldier around a battlefield.’ | 06:11 |
| Cadet training exercise | MAHER: During their four years at the academy, cadets are put through a range of training scenarios. Despite that, Craig Mullaney says more needs to be done to prepare these young men and women for their inevitable exposure to death. | 06:30 |
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| CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘One thing is, as I look back on my experience in Afghanistan that I wish I’d seen as a cadet, was morality first hand | 06:50 |
| Mullaney | and I don’t think a lieutenant should see someone bleeding out or dying for the first time when they’re in a position to make decisions under pressure.’ | 07:00 |
| Mullaney graduation photos | Music | 07:11 |
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| MAHER: Craig Mullaney was a model West Point cadet. CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘I fell in love sort of at first sight. You see | 07:14 |
| Cadets on campus | these cadets walking by and they have this incredible sense of purpose. And everywhere you walk, you see these statues of leaders – General Macarthur and Eisenhower.’ | 07:23 |
| Graduation ceremony | Music | 07:36 |
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| MAHER: After graduating second in the Class of 2000, he honed | 07:39 |
| Mullaney Photos. Training | his soldiering skills in the infantry’s toughest combat program – Ranger School – before going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and then to Afghanistan as a platoon leader. | 07:43 |
| ‘Unforgiving Minute’ book cover | He’s now added best selling author to his resume, with a book which recounts his education at West Point. | 07:57 |
| Cadet training | CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘They know within a year of graduation they will likely be serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and their courage, knowing what’s in front of them, astounds me because it’s not something that I had to really grapple with.’ MAHER: ‘It’s not something many eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds have to grapple with in the United States, is it?’ | 08:07 |
| Mullaney | CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘No, no. The military is an increasingly isolated component of American society and there’s not the antagonism that once existed between civilian and military circles, but there’s certainly a gap between the two.’ | 08:26 |
| Coffins arriving on planes | MAHER: Until just recently, American civilians weren’t even allowed to see images like these. This month for the first time since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, the media was permitted to film the returning coffins of dead soldiers. The ban was put in place by President George W Bush who worried such images would further diminish support for his unpopular war in Iraq. | 08:47 |
| Iraq war footage | Barack Obama came to office with the view that American troops should never have been in Iraq in the first place. Close to five thousand deaths later, the military might be forgiven for sometimes questioning the judgment of its political masters. | 09:07 |
| Return to coffin off plane | COLONEL GIAN GENTILE: ‘When our President and our civilian masters say go do this, that is exactly what we go and so. | 09:38 |
| Gentile. Super: | W e do what we’re told in the American Army and if our political masters tell us to go build a new nation in Afghanistan, then that is exactly what we’ll do.’ | 09:43 |
| Cadets walk across courtyard | Music | 09:53 |
| Caroline Miller walks | MAHER: Cadet Caroline Miller’s relatives have been following orders for more than 160 years. She’s the seventh generation of her family to attend West Point. It’s the longest unbroken lineage in the Academy’s 207-year history. | 10:11 |
| Portraits inside hall. Caroline shows pictures and memorabilia | CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘Israel Carle Woodruff, he is the first graduate in our family. He is the class of 1836. He fought in the Civil War. He was responsible for the defences around Washington DC and then my Great Grandfather was Class of 1916. He fought in both World War I and World War II. He was friends with Bradley and Macarthur, you know a lot of the famous names that you hear.’ | 10:32 |
| Maher and Miller | MAHER: ‘What do you think some of your relatives would think about a woman being at West Point?’ | 10:52 |
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| CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘I think they’d be a little surprised, some of the older ones, you know, coming from a more traditional background, but I think they would be proud of us. I really do.’ | 10:57 |
| Photos. Patton | Music | 11:06 |
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| MAHER: In popular culture General George Patton from West Point’s class of 1909 is held up as the epitome of the hard charging American officer. One suspects old blood and guts wouldn’t have approved of women in the corps. | 11:11 |
| Samet lectures | But as well as turning out warriors, West Point now markets itself to young men and women as one of the country’s leading universities. ELIZABETH SAMET: I think Patton is always a favourite because | 11:34 |
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| of the passion he had for things, because of the rhetoric I think. Whenever we read Henry V I show them the parallels between where Patton stole his best stuff.’ | 11:47 |
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| MAHER: In General Patton’s day West Point only graduated engineers, but wars in foreign and complex lands like Iraq and Afghanistan have underlined the importance of cadets receiving a liberal education as well. | 12:01 |
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| ELIZABETH SAMET: ‘So many of Shakespeare’s plays are about in one way or another, power, it’s uses and abuses. And of course my students will go on | 12:14 |
| Samet | to careers in which they have to manage power and authority in very difficult places.’ | 12:21 |
| Cadets in class |
| 12:28 |
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| MAHER: ‘What about your thoughts as a teacher here and an individual that cadets obviously look up to, your students will be going out shortly and in all likelihood will be put in harms way.’ SAMET: ‘At the beginning of the war | 12:40 |
| Samet. Super: | it was extremely difficult and distracting, because in the classroom I would think about that all the time really, and I would think about what it means to teach during war time and how--- what is one responsible, what is one responsible for?’ | 12:53 |
| Cadets on first day | MAHER: Ultimately, West Point is responsible for turning fresh-faced cadets into disciplined officers, capable of leading troops in some of the harshest and most hostile conditions on earth. | 13:18 |
| Cadets’ rooms | Music | 13:31 |
| Kubu shows uniforms. Super: | KUBU: ‘As you see the uniforms are all lined up. Hangers are equally spaced apart. You have the full dress uniform, dress grey. It looks nice, but it’s also attention to detail, which is very important and it starts here, you know, with the uniforms, with you know, the beds nice and neat.’ | 13:42 |
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| MAHER: ‘What if you’re not a disciplined or regimented person?’ | 14:07 |
| Caroline Miller | CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘Like me?’ MAHER: ‘Can West Point make you into one, or do you have to have that at the beginning?’ | 14:10 |
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| CADET CAROLINE MILLER: ‘I think West Point can make you into one, sir. I think I’m an example of that.’ | 14:16 |
| Cadets on campus | MAHER: But at least 20% of the cadets which Kubu and Caroline Miller started out with haven’t made it through to senior year. COLONEL GIAN GENTILE: ‘We do it by, in a positive way, by treating them rough here. I mean war is a kind of condition that creates | 14:19 |
| Gentile. Super: | the best opportunities for creativity and change. It also creates other conditions that work against being creative, like fear and danger and death and violence. | 14:38 |
| Cadets train | The trick is to be able to maintain that creativity, that ability to adapt while persevering and enduring these other conditions that are thrown up against it.’ | 14:54 |
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| MAHER: ‘When you were serving on the ground in Afghanistan as an officer, did you feel that you were adequately equipped to do what you needed to do?’ | 15:06 |
| Mullaney. Super: | CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘We didn’t know who we were fighting, and if you don’t know who you’re fighting, it’s hard to win. It’s hard to find your enemy without much intelligence, and you don’t get the intelligence unless you have close relationships with the population. We couldn’t have relationships with the local population because we didn’t have the ability to communicate. We didn’t have translators. | 15:17 |
| Photo. Mullaney in Afghanistan | On most of our missions we went out, and I managed to communicate in the pidgin Urdu that I had learned as a graduate student, but absent that | 15:43 |
| Mullaney | sort of translation by charades, we were flying blind.’ | 15:54 |
| Gentile | MAHER: ‘In terms of Afghanistan for instance, when the United States first when in there, you know, a lot of officers really weren’t prepared to operate in that terrain…’. COLONEL GIAN GENTILE: “Yeah I don’t agree with that, Michael. I don’t buy that. I think that’s a trope that’s been thrown around a lot. I think actually the American Army that went in to Afghanistan and then later into Iraq, because of the way it was trained and educated, that is exactly the kind of army we need to be able to adjust to different kinds of circumstances and missions.’ | 16:01 |
| Mist covered campus | MAHER: What isn’t in dispute is that until just a short time ago, Iraq not Afghanistan, was America’s priority. CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘In any operation it’s uncomfortable to be the | 16:33 |
| Mullaney | second priority and we felt the effects on the ground. We didn’t have the equipment we needed, we didn’t have the weapons we needed and over the course of seven years we lost ground in Afghanistan and we’re now in a very difficult place where it’s a lot harder to win. | 16:45 |
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| When you’re fighting a counter insurgency, the importance of getting the politics right, of getting the governance issues right and giving the Afghan people a government worth fighting for, you know, that’s something we had to work very hard to accomplish in Afghanistan.’ | 17:09 |
| Mullaney at Vietnam memorial in Washington | MAHER: Craig Mullaney now has a chance to help right some of the wrongs he sees in America’s approach to Afghanistan. After leaving the military, he served as an advisor on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and is about to take up a senior position at the Pentagon in Washington DC. | 17:22 |
| Visitors to memorial | In a capital with many monuments to foreign wars, the one that perhaps speaks directly to the high cost of war is the Vietnam memorial. The names of more than 58,000 fallen Americans are engraved on this wall. | 17:43 |
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| CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘I believe the stakes in Afghanistan are much higher than they ever were in Vietnam. The parallel to Vietnam that troubles me the most is I’m not sure how long you can sustain a broad consensus in the American public for the resources that are necessary to have success.’ | 18:02 |
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| MAHER: ‘Do you think President Obama, you’ve worked closely with him, understands that?’ | 18:23 |
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| CRAIG MULLANEY: ‘I know he does. Something that I emphasised to him when I told him of my own experience was that the price that comes with a salute of not spending your men’s lives cheaply.’ | 18:27 |
| Cadets in courtyard, then to dining hall | US PRESIDENT OBAMA: ‘Many people in the United States and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much, the have a simple question? What is our purpose in Afghanistan? After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there? And they deserve a straightforward answer. So let me be clear. Al Qaeda and its allies, | 18:45 |
| Obama | the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks are in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.’ | 19:07 |
| Cadets in dining hall | MAHER: As the Class of 2009 prepares to join the officer corps, more than 60 West Point graduates have already died in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s here in the mess hall that the cadets first learn the fate of those who not so long ago sat at these same tables. | 19:20 |
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| LEO MARIN: ‘It’s usually delivered in the mornings at breakfast so it’s both in a figurative and a literal sense | 19:42 |
| Marin. Super: | a wake up call, when we have that moment of silence and you know you ask yourself, could that be me?’ | 19:49 |
| Kubu dresses in uniform | CADET RICH KUBU: ‘You join the military with the understanding that you could go to war, that is the point of you know the militaries – to fight and defend the United States. There’s more danger, yes, but it really didn’t sway me in any way against, you know, joining up and being part of the military.’ | 20:20 |
| Miller. Super: | CAROLINE MILLER: ‘You know, it’s a little more worrisome. You know, you can get caught up, and that’s the other thing, you can get caught up in these thoughts of, you know, what if I die, what if I give my life you know over there? But we all know that’s what we sign up for.’ | 20:21 |
| West Point cemetery | MAHER: Since its founding more than two centuries ago, West Point’s officers have been duty bound to follow the orders of their political masters and to stay the course no matter the odds. The critical question now is how much longer the American public they’re charged with protecting is prepared to stay the course, in a war where victory may never be declared. | 20:40 |
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| CRAIG MULLANEY: The Achilles heel of the United States is impatience | 21:10 |
| Mullaney | and I hope that we have the patience now. It’s going to take a lot of work to regain the initiative and regain momentum, and it may get bloodier before it gets better.’ | 21:13 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Michael Maher Camera: Tim Murray Editor: Woody Landay | 21:32 |