2007年VOA标准英语-US Military Academy Home to Top Undergraduate P

By Kane Farabaugh
New York
13 April 2007
 
Watch West Point Training 

Each year hundreds of cadets become officers when they graduate from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.  Since 2003, many of the graduates have passed through the academy's Combating Terrorism Center. The Center represents a new way the U.S. military is trying to prepare its future combat leaders for a different kind of war.  VOA's Kane Farabaugh has more from New York.

Sometime after breakfast and before dinner during a typical day of classes at West Point, in between all the pomp and circumstance and situated¹ around the hallmarks of a higher education that includes math and grammar, you might find Cadet Tyler Quillico in a different kind of classroom.

"It's not like it's English class or physics or any of the required classes where it's just like 'learn this stuff', and maybe apply it to improve my thinking," he says.  "This is actually relevant to the task at hand."

 
Tyler Quillico, student at West Point
Tyler Quillico is a student at the Combating Terrorism Center, or CTC, in the Social Sciences Department of West Point.  It could be said that here, the pen is truly mightier² than the sword.

In one lesson, cadets take part in a discussion about the growing sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, a place many of them will serve less than a year after they graduate.

 
Joe Felter

Lieutenant³ Colonel Joe Felter is the director of the privately⁴ funded CTC, which he readily admits is a direct product of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The counterterrorism center opened in 2003 to fill a void in the U.S. military's understanding of its new global enemy -- the stateless terrorist.

"I think most of them expect to be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan in their first tour of duty, and they need to know who they are fighting," says Felter.  "They need to have this nuanced, sophisticated understanding of the threat, and they need it now."

Qiollico says things are different for today's soldiers. "My generation has to learn to fight warfare⁵ different than previous generations," he says.

Fighting a different war means using different means to achieve victory on the battlefield.  So the counterterrorism center brought in some of the best experts in the field, such as former CIA analyst⁶ Jarret Brachman.

Brachman prepares today's students for tomorrow's battles by using the enemy's playbook. "A colleague of mine and I wrote this article 'Stealing al-Qaida's Playbook,' in the sense that we found many of these top strategists put these thoughts online," says Brachman.

Online and in plain view for the world to see.  But Brachman says prior to the war in Iraq, many military leaders were not looking. "Generally there had not been a recognition that the terrorist violence we've been seeing on 9/11 and beforehand and afterward⁷ had been motivated by a coherent and thoughtful body of ideas," says Brachman. 

"And what we found through some in-depth study here and elsewhere around the world - other folks have come to this conclusion - is that al-Qaida and like-minded groups are motivated by a number of important scholars, who have written extensive books," continues Brachman. "Al-Qaida has a library of 3,000 books online. Anyone can access these books."

 
West Point students in the classroom
Brachman says that by using al-Qaida's online library, and by constantly staying on top of developments in both the real world and cyberspace⁸, cadets get a modern and unbiased assessment⁹ of the world they will soon face. The lessons in the classroom explore the religious and political problems in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the customs and history.

No topic here is off limits, no ideology¹⁰ left unexplored, and according to both the civilian¹¹ and military leaders who run the courses here, no political agenda served.

"They give us the information, and they give us a couple of different ideas.  For instance in this last lecture:  Are we winning?  Are we losing?  Is it a stalemate? And that type of thing," explains Quillico.  "They leave it up to us to decide for ourselves what our own conclusions are, and that's the value in it.  They don't push us in a direction."

Quillico will most likely go into combat soon after he graduates in 2008.

1 situated   

adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的

参考例句：

• The village is situated at the margin of a forest.村子位于森林的边缘。
• She is awkwardly situated.她的处境困难。

2 mightier   

adj. 强有力的，强大的，巨大的 adv. 很，极其

参考例句：

• But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. 但是，这种组织总是重新产生，并且一次比一次更强大，更坚固，更有力。 来自英汉非文学 - 共产党宣言
• Do you believe that the pen is mightier than the sword? 你相信笔杆的威力大于武力吗？

3 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。

4 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

5 warfare   

n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突

参考例句：

• He addressed the audience on the subject of atomic warfare.他向听众演讲有关原子战争的问题。
• Their struggle consists mainly in peasant guerrilla warfare.他们的斗争主要是农民游击战。

6 analyst   

n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家

参考例句：

• What can you contribute to the position of a market analyst?你有什么技能可有助于市场分析员的职务？
• The analyst is required to interpolate values between standards.分析人员需要在这些标准中插入一些值。

7 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。

8 cyberspace   

n.虚拟信息空间，网络空间，计算机化世界

参考例句：

• She travels in cyberspace by sending messages to friends around the world.她利用电子空间给世界各地的朋友们发送信件。
• The teens spend more time in cyberspace than in the real world of friends and family.青少年花费在电脑上的时间比他们和真正的朋友及家人在一起的时间要多。

9 assessment   

n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额

参考例句：

• This is a very perceptive assessment of the situation.这是一个对该情况的极富洞察力的评价。
• What is your assessment of the situation?你对时局的看法如何？

10 ideology   

n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识

参考例句：

• The ideology has great influence in the world.这种思想体系在世界上有很大的影响。
• The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration.我的理想是在意识思想和灵感鼓动之间找到一个折衷。

11 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。