Rumsfeld voices confidence in academy graduating class

  • Published
  • By Butch Wehry
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFPN) --  Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told the 879 second lieutenants who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy today that their challenge will be to go beyond a simple change of process.

“Our country did not survive and become great through timid responses or aversion to risk,” he said. “Ours is a nation born of ideas and raised on improbability. Your charge will be to challenge inherited assumptions and cherished habits, and seek out better approaches. I urge you to make that the bedrock of your career.”

Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley joined the thousands of family members and other visitors for the commencement.

Secretary Rumsfeld told the graduating class of 2006 to be proud of what they have achieved.

“Many of you already know the harsh environment of working in 110 degrees in Southwest Asia from summer training,” the defense secretary said.

“Today our country faces threats unlike any we’ve known," Secretary Rumsfeld said. "Violent extremists are trying to terrorize and intimidate free people into submitting to their will. Their war is more than a contest between opposing sides or opposing societies. These extremists are waging a war against society itself. They have in mind only two outcomes: to control it, or to destroy it.”

The secretary spoke about this moment in history and the graduates’ role in it.

“Just before Christmas of 2001, I traveled to Afghanistan and neighboring countries and visited with special operations forces that were operating in truly remarkable ways,” he said. “In preparation for performing a mission the month before, they had asked for the usual supplies but one item stood out; they asked for horse feed. From the moment they landed in Afghanistan, our forces began adapting to the circumstances on the ground. They ended up riding horses that had been conditioned to machine gun fire.

“They used pack mules to transport equipment across some of the toughest terrain in the world, riding in the darkness along narrow trails with sheer drops. Some of those forces operating in Afghanistan were combat controllers from the U.S. Air Force.

“Those Airmen likely thought they would have found themselves riding jet aircraft rather than horses. But they joined the American tradition of daring and ingenuity,” the secretary said.

It was Secretary Rumsfeld’s second visit to the Air Force Academy in this role. He last spoke at the academy graduation ceremony in 2002.

“The process of transforming is an enormous challenge, but revolutions have always been challenged and resisted. Folks fought the end of the horse cavalry. There were doubters who objected to the concept of a separate air service -- the service that today we call the U.S. Air Force,” he told the Academy’s first class to spend four years here during wartime in decades.

Most would prefer to live when times are calm, when we might peacefully go about our lives, he told the graduates and guests.

“But it is in the difficult times, when the tasks taken on and the challenges overcome have the greatest significance,” he said. “In this long war, American forces have accomplished what few have before, indeed, what few have ever even tried before. Our country has sent its finest young men and women in defense of the ideal that people, when faced with paths leading to either tyranny or freedom, will forever choose freedom.”