Anonymous wrote:The reason eliminating efforts to create a qualified, smart, diverse class there are stupid is that the graduates are supposed to be smart, strong, charismatic people who can persuade other people to risk their lives for what might or might not be important causes.
The soldiers and sailors will be diverse. They might, in a lot of causes, be poor people who will be fighting to protect other, richer people’s wealth and safety.
The soldiers and officers need to look at the officers and have enough respect for them and faith in the fundamental fairness of the military to get their jobs done.
If having a diverse group of officers makes the officer corps and the military more effective, the military needs to have diverse leaders, even if that means picking some officers who have lower stats than the people not picked for those roles.
I think you’ve lost sight of the original question. The service academies produce only about 20% of the military’s officers. The vast majority of officers are commissioned through ROTC or OSC. The service academies don’t need to use affirmative action to keep the military diverse. They are elite academic institutions and should keep strong admissions criteria without regard to race. Most colleges campuses from basic state universities that admit nearly everyone to Ivy colleges, have ROTC.