West Point Military Academy:

Sometimes commanders in chief come here to talk of war, sometimes to grant amnesty for unmade beds, missed formations and public displays of affection.

Either way, cadets at the U.S. Military Academy "always love to see the president," says Conrad Crane, class of 1974.

Tuesday evening, Barack Obama became the latest American leader to visit this windswept old river fortress in a time of crisis. He told the 4,400 assembled cadets in Eisenhower Hall that he will send 30,000 more U.S. servicemembers to Afghanistan.

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He followed George Washington, who transferred his wartime headquarters here in 1779; Abraham Lincoln, who came in 1862 for military advice in the darkest days of the Civil War; and George W. Bush, who in a 2002 graduation speech enunciated his doctrine of pre-emptive strikes that anticipated the invasion of Iraq.

"There's a palpable buzz," says Peter Miller, the local police chief. "People are excited the president's going to be so close."

At the West Point museum just outside the academy's gate Tuesday, Jean and George Benthien of San Diego were excited to find that Obama's visit coincided with their trip to the academy. "Icing on the cake," says Jean, whose nephew graduated from West Point 15 years ago. "It's such an historic sight when you think of all the people that have gone off from here to defend our nation."

Like any president who speaks here, Obama could count on a rapt audience.

Hearing a president describe a policy that might change your career or your life "focuses your attention," says Crane, director of the Army Military History Institute. "You listen very closely."

Although "eager" might not be the best word to describe cadets' attitude toward serving in Afghanistan, it probably comes close. "You go to West Point because you want to be a soldier, and you hope that you get a chance to lead soldiers the way that you've been trained for four years," says Bill Murphy Jr., author of In a Time of War, a book about the first West Point class to graduate after the 9/11 attacks.

"They'd feel a bit let down if they didn't get that opportunity. ... No one at the academy wants to be part of the first class in a generation to not go to war."

This year's seniors ("firsties" as they're called here) entered the academy during the most chaotic period of the Iraq war and "knew what they were getting into," says Morten Ender, a military sociologist who teaches at the academy. "Most of them know they're going (to war). They knew that before the speech."

On the other hand, the cadets are also college kids with other things on their minds — a test or a game Wednesday, a boyfriend or girlfriend somewhere.

"In some ways, Afghanistan is very far from West Point," Murphy says.

Presidents come to West Point every four years to deliver the commencement address. They often use those speeches, and others at the academy, to talk about war.

In 1939, with World War II looming, Franklin Roosevelt predicted the mechanization of warfare. In 1962, John Kennedy, with an eye on the need for a counterinsurgency force in Vietnam, said some cadets would play "less traditional roles" and risk their lives not necessarily as battlefield commanders "but as instructors or advisers."


Why do presidents choose West Point in particular?

•The imposing setting. The nation's oldest continuously occupied military post offers stately gray granite neo-Gothic buildings, broad lawns, expansive slate courtyards and sweeping views of the Hudson River Valley. "There's a lot of gravitas," Crane says.

•The cadets. Obama spoke to a roomful of future platoon leaders, "the people who will carry out the order," Murphy says. According to the West Point Association of Graduates, 72 alumni have died in what the government calls the global war on terrorism, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The top-ranked senior cadet announces every alumni war death at mealtime from a balcony in the cavernous dining room of Washington Hall. Many of the fallen are buried in the cemetery on a bluff overlooking the river.

Col. Ty Seidule, who teaches an academy course on West Point history, says presidents and cadets are connected by a sense of mission. When Roosevelt visited in 1939, for instance, he greeted the cadets as "colleagues in service of the United States. ... You will find that service never ends."

There's another reason cadets like to see the president come to campus: his power to forgive minor violations of the academy's many rules.

Cadets who earn demerits spend hours marching back and forth, while wearing a dress uniform and carrying a rifle, in the middle of campus. A president has the authority to wipe out such assignments, which can stretch for months.

During a visit as president, Dwight Eisenhower, class of 1915 and a notorious punishment marcher, saw a cadet kissing a girl and wrote him up. "A deficiency report from the commander in chief?" Crane says. "That couldn't have gone over well with his tactical officer."












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