Issue date: 10/30/07 Section: A&E

Media Credit: Steve Berry Gen. Barry McCaffrey speaks with a group of SIUE ROTC cadets Saturday night in the green room prior to his Arts and Issues speech.

Behind the thick maroon velvet curtain flanking the stage, 12 Reerve Officer Training Corps cadets from SIUE gathered in the Meridian Ballroom's Green Room Saturday to talk with the most highly decorated four-star general at the time of his retirement.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who is now an adjunct professor of International Affairs at West Point, set aside half an hour before his presentation on the Iraq War to answer any questions the SIUE cadets had.

Despite having been warned about the "intellectual vigor" he would encounter, McCaffrey, who also serves as a national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News and writes a column on national security issues for the Armed Forces Journal, expressed his surprised at the questions the SIUE cadets asked.

"They had a pretty elevated tone of questioning," McCaffrey said. "Normally, the questions are very practical, like 'Should I buy my own boots?'" but they wanted to talk about the world they would encounter."

For instance, Ryan Bull, a senior political science major who hopes to join the infantry upon completing the ROTC program, asked the general's opinion on the Iraq War.

"Do you believe we were right or wrong to go into the Iraq War?" Bull asked.

The general's response was emphatic.

"Right," McCaffrey said. "My logic was Saddam was about to beat the oil embargo … five years down the road, we would have had to take him on, and then he might have had a nuke, which would have complicated things."

Although he agrees the war was necessary, McCaffrey said he did not agree with the way it was handled.

"We screwed it up," McCaffrey said. "The execution was just horrible. There was too much arrogance, misjudgment."

The cadets asked the general several other questions about changes he expected to see in the world, his opinion on how long the United Nations would last and even his opinion on the presidential campaign.

Bull said he appreciated how the general answered frankly and honestly.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools