None of them can be credibly inserted into your co
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Posted On: 06/13/2020 6:07:17 PM
None of them can be credibly inserted into your conspiracy theory crap.
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An Open Letter on Leadership to Graduating West Point Cadets
Louis Caldera
Follow
https://medium.com/@louiscaldera/an-open-lett...f7c81732f1
Jun 12 · 6 min read
As leaders from a new generation you have an opportunity to chart a new course for our country that rejects divisiveness.
Louis E. Caldera is a West Point graduate and served as the 17th Secretary of the Army.
Congratulations on completing West Point’s rigorous four-year course of study and military training. Welcome to the ranks of the Long Gray Line: the men and women who graduated in classes before you and entered the Army ready to fight and win our nation’s wars. For yours and other recent classes, serving in wartime with all the risks and hardships that entails is no abstraction.
As you assemble to graduate and receive your commissions as U.S. Army officers, consider this day an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned about leadership at West Point and what it means to be a leader of character. While you must stay above partisan politics, take a moment and use the critical thinking skills you have developed to assess whether the conduct, rhetoric and values of your graduation speaker, President Donald J. Trump, live up to the Academy’s motto of “Duty, Honor, Country” and the Army’s high expectations for leaders of American soldiers.
The Naval Academy and virtually every college and university in America reluctantly decided to cancel their spring in-person commencements in light of the Covid-19 risks. The president short-circuited the Military Academy’s assessment of whether an in-person graduation was advisable. Despite the health risks to you, your families, the West Point community, and the traveling public, the president declared he would indeed be your speaker — so he could see you in a “nice, tight formation” — unwilling to pass up the opportunity to link himself with a military he avoided serving in.
You were taught to “take care of your troops.” Is that what the president does today in taking unnecessary risks with your lives? The president’s disregard of the well-being of those who serve under him is not limited to you on this day. This president has destroyed the reputations and careers of countless public servants, ambassadors, military officers and civilian alike, demoralizing and depleting the ranks of government and reducing its effectiveness.
To use and abuse people in this narcissistic and unprincipled manner is the antithesis of leadership that inspires loyalty and devotion among those you are privileged to lead. Doing your “Duty” requires accomplishing the mission with integrity regardless of the cost to you.
It means putting the interests of your people before your own. Take better care of our nation’s sons and daughters whose lives will be in your hands, than the President’s example demonstrates. Put their welfare and needs before your own, and you will be better able to accomplish your mission.
You were taught the value of “Honor” and to respond with an unequivocal “No excuse, sir!” when your personal or your team’s performance was substandard. President Trump frequently takes the rhetorical position that everything that came before him was a failure since transformed into “the greatest.”
He also is quick to claim that whatever goes wrong on his watch is someone else’s fault for which he accepts “no responsibility,” even when these claims are plainly not true. These are not the values of the Cadet Honor Code. You will not succeed as a leader if you walk into your first unit as a braggart, excuse maker and liar. Accept responsibility and accountability cheerfully. Acknowledge when things go wrong and work to fix them. Develop a reputation for candor and honesty, and it will serve you well the rest of your life.
You were taught to put service to “Country” above all other purposes. Consider what upholding our Country and its ideals means at this moment when Americans across the nation are standing up to decades of oppression of African Americans with massive, nation-wide protests and civil unrest.
What does this moment require of those who hold the sacred trust of public leadership? The president’s initial response was silence; then he saw political advantage in responding with an authoritarian’s heavy fist to try to quash the protests. He recklessly risked the military’s standing and reputation among all Americans by deploying soldiers and attack helicopters to confront largely peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights.
It took the moral courage and leadership of senior retired military officers speaking out against the president’s misuse of our troops for him to pull them back.
True love of country requires adherence to our nation’s founding principles of equality, liberty and justice for all. President Trumps’ biggest failures as a leader have been in how he divides Americans. He disparages Americans of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, immigrant and other backgrounds. He excuses racist, sexist and homophobic behavior and language, including his own, and tears down anyone who disagrees with or criticizes him.
His language and tweets appeal to the worst in human nature and incite his supporters to hatred and violent threats toward those he perceives as his enemies. To be clear: there are no, as the president has said, “real Americans,” more deserving of the right to be called Americans or of the solicitude of their government. Nor are there “very good people on both sides,” when one side is proclaiming white superiority. In pitting Americans against each other for political expediency, the president puts self above country.
As leaders from a new generation you have an opportunity to chart a new course for our country that rejects such divisiveness. Upholding the values of equality, dignity and respect for all in our Armed Forces is a forceful example to the rest of the world, but it begins boots on the ground, with leaders like you. Your soldiers hail from all backgrounds and deserve your best equally and individually. They deserve not only equal treatment and equal opportunity to advance according to their merit — that’s a given. They also need you to police and root out racist, sexist, white nationalist and any other form of intolerant behavior and bias that limits their ability to do their best.
The soldiers you will lead reflect one of our nation’s greatest strengths: its diversity. African Americans and Latinos make up 43% of enlisted personnel. Women make up 14% of the active Army and 25% of those in the reserves. Forty thousand immigrants serve today, thousands of whom are not yet citizens.
And LGBT people are now able to serve openly (though the president has threatened to ban transgender service members). All these soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines love our country and are willing to die to defend it. They did not come into our military to be racially or sexually harassed or assaulted, or to have their loyalty questioned because of their country of origin, heritage, race or ethnicity.
Engaging in or tolerating such behavior will be toxic to your unit’s esprit and success. You cannot successfully lead today’s soldiers, if you do not treat each with equal dignity and respect. Help them make the most of their talents just as you hope others will do for you.
President Trump does not measure up to the high expectations West Point has fixed in the core of your being about the kind of leader you should aspire to be. He instead offers a lesson in the kind of leader not to be, no matter what rank, office or reward it might lead to.
You might better look to patriots the president disparages like the late Senator John McCain, Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, and LTC Alexander Vindman, for models of leaders of integrity who lived up to the motto “Duty, Honor, Country.”
Regardless of the circumstances that brought you back to West Point for your graduation, know that you have the best wishes and support of a grateful nation for your patriotism, courage and service. We are counting on you to be the caring, genuine and authentic leaders our military, our country, and especially the soldiers you will lead, need you to be.
Enjoy this guy's comments, I know I did.
An Open Letter on Leadership to Graduating West Point Cadets
Louis Caldera
Follow
https://medium.com/@louiscaldera/an-open-lett...f7c81732f1
Jun 12 · 6 min read
As leaders from a new generation you have an opportunity to chart a new course for our country that rejects divisiveness.
Louis E. Caldera is a West Point graduate and served as the 17th Secretary of the Army.
Congratulations on completing West Point’s rigorous four-year course of study and military training. Welcome to the ranks of the Long Gray Line: the men and women who graduated in classes before you and entered the Army ready to fight and win our nation’s wars. For yours and other recent classes, serving in wartime with all the risks and hardships that entails is no abstraction.
As you assemble to graduate and receive your commissions as U.S. Army officers, consider this day an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned about leadership at West Point and what it means to be a leader of character. While you must stay above partisan politics, take a moment and use the critical thinking skills you have developed to assess whether the conduct, rhetoric and values of your graduation speaker, President Donald J. Trump, live up to the Academy’s motto of “Duty, Honor, Country” and the Army’s high expectations for leaders of American soldiers.
The Naval Academy and virtually every college and university in America reluctantly decided to cancel their spring in-person commencements in light of the Covid-19 risks. The president short-circuited the Military Academy’s assessment of whether an in-person graduation was advisable. Despite the health risks to you, your families, the West Point community, and the traveling public, the president declared he would indeed be your speaker — so he could see you in a “nice, tight formation” — unwilling to pass up the opportunity to link himself with a military he avoided serving in.
You were taught to “take care of your troops.” Is that what the president does today in taking unnecessary risks with your lives? The president’s disregard of the well-being of those who serve under him is not limited to you on this day. This president has destroyed the reputations and careers of countless public servants, ambassadors, military officers and civilian alike, demoralizing and depleting the ranks of government and reducing its effectiveness.
To use and abuse people in this narcissistic and unprincipled manner is the antithesis of leadership that inspires loyalty and devotion among those you are privileged to lead. Doing your “Duty” requires accomplishing the mission with integrity regardless of the cost to you.
It means putting the interests of your people before your own. Take better care of our nation’s sons and daughters whose lives will be in your hands, than the President’s example demonstrates. Put their welfare and needs before your own, and you will be better able to accomplish your mission.
You were taught the value of “Honor” and to respond with an unequivocal “No excuse, sir!” when your personal or your team’s performance was substandard. President Trump frequently takes the rhetorical position that everything that came before him was a failure since transformed into “the greatest.”
He also is quick to claim that whatever goes wrong on his watch is someone else’s fault for which he accepts “no responsibility,” even when these claims are plainly not true. These are not the values of the Cadet Honor Code. You will not succeed as a leader if you walk into your first unit as a braggart, excuse maker and liar. Accept responsibility and accountability cheerfully. Acknowledge when things go wrong and work to fix them. Develop a reputation for candor and honesty, and it will serve you well the rest of your life.
You were taught to put service to “Country” above all other purposes. Consider what upholding our Country and its ideals means at this moment when Americans across the nation are standing up to decades of oppression of African Americans with massive, nation-wide protests and civil unrest.
What does this moment require of those who hold the sacred trust of public leadership? The president’s initial response was silence; then he saw political advantage in responding with an authoritarian’s heavy fist to try to quash the protests. He recklessly risked the military’s standing and reputation among all Americans by deploying soldiers and attack helicopters to confront largely peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights.
It took the moral courage and leadership of senior retired military officers speaking out against the president’s misuse of our troops for him to pull them back.
True love of country requires adherence to our nation’s founding principles of equality, liberty and justice for all. President Trumps’ biggest failures as a leader have been in how he divides Americans. He disparages Americans of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, immigrant and other backgrounds. He excuses racist, sexist and homophobic behavior and language, including his own, and tears down anyone who disagrees with or criticizes him.
His language and tweets appeal to the worst in human nature and incite his supporters to hatred and violent threats toward those he perceives as his enemies. To be clear: there are no, as the president has said, “real Americans,” more deserving of the right to be called Americans or of the solicitude of their government. Nor are there “very good people on both sides,” when one side is proclaiming white superiority. In pitting Americans against each other for political expediency, the president puts self above country.
As leaders from a new generation you have an opportunity to chart a new course for our country that rejects such divisiveness. Upholding the values of equality, dignity and respect for all in our Armed Forces is a forceful example to the rest of the world, but it begins boots on the ground, with leaders like you. Your soldiers hail from all backgrounds and deserve your best equally and individually. They deserve not only equal treatment and equal opportunity to advance according to their merit — that’s a given. They also need you to police and root out racist, sexist, white nationalist and any other form of intolerant behavior and bias that limits their ability to do their best.
The soldiers you will lead reflect one of our nation’s greatest strengths: its diversity. African Americans and Latinos make up 43% of enlisted personnel. Women make up 14% of the active Army and 25% of those in the reserves. Forty thousand immigrants serve today, thousands of whom are not yet citizens.
And LGBT people are now able to serve openly (though the president has threatened to ban transgender service members). All these soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines love our country and are willing to die to defend it. They did not come into our military to be racially or sexually harassed or assaulted, or to have their loyalty questioned because of their country of origin, heritage, race or ethnicity.
Engaging in or tolerating such behavior will be toxic to your unit’s esprit and success. You cannot successfully lead today’s soldiers, if you do not treat each with equal dignity and respect. Help them make the most of their talents just as you hope others will do for you.
President Trump does not measure up to the high expectations West Point has fixed in the core of your being about the kind of leader you should aspire to be. He instead offers a lesson in the kind of leader not to be, no matter what rank, office or reward it might lead to.
You might better look to patriots the president disparages like the late Senator John McCain, Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, and LTC Alexander Vindman, for models of leaders of integrity who lived up to the motto “Duty, Honor, Country.”
Regardless of the circumstances that brought you back to West Point for your graduation, know that you have the best wishes and support of a grateful nation for your patriotism, courage and service. We are counting on you to be the caring, genuine and authentic leaders our military, our country, and especially the soldiers you will lead, need you to be.
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