Colonel Allen West: West Point Graduates Did Not Stand for Obama

Colonel Allen West told Stephen K. Bannon that the reception President Obama received for his commencement speech last week at the United States Military Academy at West Point was “almost nonexistent.”

West was speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans and took time to interview with the Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Radio channel 125. The colonel lamented that it was unfortunate that the Commander in Chief of the future leaders and future warriors of the United States Military gave a commencement speech and “people didn’t even stand up. That is very telling.”

Moreover, the Colonel asserted that after being treated with disregard, Obama gave a very weak and ineffective speech that did not focus on “rousing them,” nor did he talk about “leadership or about the American fighting spirit.” West said that Obama should have been more inspirational: “He should have been saying that they still have enemies to face and I will do anything that I have to do as Commander in Chief to make sure you have all the resources and proper objectives and guidance to defeat this enemy… it was a horrible speech.”

Bannon asked West, “As a man who has led other men in combat, how would that speech be taken by soldiers in the field?” West quickly replied, “They would tune it out. That speech that he gave had nothing to do with reality.” Colonel West thinks that the cadets did not buy Obama’s pitch that he has been successful. “The Ukraine, success in dealing with Vladimir Putin? You got to be kidding me,” West chided.

West also scolded Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in the interview, charging him with decimating the United States Army by reducing it to pre-WW II levels. He excoriated Hagel for eliminating the A-10 Warthog weapons platform, an air-to-earth “tank-killing” weapon, especially since we heard later in the same week that Putin had crossed over into the Ukraine and taken over the Crimea. West thinks that it is not surprising that America doesn’t “have respect and regard, we don’t have credibility on the global stage.”