West Point’s ‘Class of 9/11′ Graduates

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West Point’s ‘Class of 9/11′ Graduates

James Joyner | Sunday, May 29, 2005

This year’s crop of Service Academy graduates are the first since the Vietnam era to serve essentially their entire cadetships during wartime. Even more so than the other academies, the West Point Class of 2005–dubbed thee “Class of 9/11″– has been living with the fact that, upon graduation, serving in a combat zone was a near certainty.

West Point’s ‘Class of 9/11′ Graduates (AP)

Graduating U.S. Military Academy cadets â who came here just weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks â were told Saturday they were a special group forged by historic events. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the class “one of the few since the early days of the Vietnam War who came to West Point in peace time, saw the nation transition to war and chose to stay, knowing you would raise your right hand and take an oath and swear to defend the constitution of a nation that was still at war.”

The Class of 2005 is nicknamed the “Class of 9/11″ and, coincidentally, the number of graduates was 911.

The class spent almost all of the past four years drilling and studying under what West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. William Lennox called “the shadow of war.” About seven in 10 of the new second lieutenants who threw their caps in the air are expected to be in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan within a year.

Congratulatons, lieutenants. And godspeed.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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