He added: “It’s not entirely finished because of threats domestically and internationally. Nothing will stop the way we think about the ticker-tape parades for some of our other conflicts.
Yet, as with Afghanistan’s last soldiers, this year’s seniors are the first to graduate in 20 years without the expectation that they will be sent to war.
The idea was surely to enter the minds of some of the nearly 25 recruits who stood on the sidelines on Saturday watching the army warmly. Middletown, NJ defensive end Jack Latour, who is also considering Rutgers, said he didn’t care much when the war ended. His father, Dan, who played at Rutgers, said he liked the academics offered by West Point, “whether it was wartime or not.”
Dan McCarthy, a deputy athletic director, said that one in five cadets in recent years went to a war zone within five years of graduation. Still, he said, “the parents of the child we are recruiting will ask: Is my son or daughter going to Afghanistan and Iraq?”
When Eric Smith, a senior linebacker in Bowie, MD, was a high school senior in 2016, there were high hopes that he would go to Afghanistan. Although his grandfather had served in Korea and Vietnam, and his father was in the Coast Guard, he said: “There was nothing to worry about. We considered the risk factor. It’s not as much of a risk factor now as it was then.”
Saturday saw some signs of the dark sides of the 20 Years’ War.
It marked the culmination of an eventful week. It was branch week at the Academy, when various branches – infantry, cyber, air defense or transport, for example – recruit cadets into their programs. And on Friday a statue was unveiled in memory of the buffalo soldiers. Smith, who is black, said the statue is an important step in recognizing “we are part of the foundation of what we are doing here”.
Much of the pomp and circumstance was reserved for Saturday: paratroopers parachuted onto the field, helicopters staged a flyover, and fire trucks and police cars lined Black Knight Alley outside the stadium.