Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Saturday
America's Youth Reacts to News of Possible Deployment of U.S. Troops
Aired September 22, 2001 - 14:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. We're going to check in now on young people across the country. Each year, thousands of America's brightest men and women attend the Military Service Academies.
For many though, the prospect of actually seeing combat firsthand has been pretty slim, that is until now.
CNN's John Vause has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): West Point, for almost 200 years, training America's military leaders: Douglas McArthur, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower. Today's cadets preparing for a war no one has ever fought before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the Taliban sees that, arguably they might think that that threat is therefore more credible.
VAUSE: Suddenly, war has gone from textbook to reality, and on this campus, rich in military tradition, the mood has changed, for most, a greater sense of purpose.
JONATHAN TIPTON, WEST POINT CADET: A war is always a possibility. Certainly, you never can predict the scope or the location of it. It comes with part of being here, sir.
VAUSE: This year, 900 cadets will graduate, about a quarter of the Army's new Lieutenants. In any conflict, many will see battle.
MAJ. MIKE GEORGE, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES: You know, it's entirely possible that I'm teaching people now who, you know, in the next five years might end up being killed or wounded.
VAUSE: They train for four years to lead soldiers into combat, but the officers who passed through here before never confronted this new, faceless enemy.
(on camera): Here, at West Point, they say, they've been preparing cadets for this new kind of war for the past 10 years, since the end of the Cold War. BRIG. GEN. DANIEL KAUFMAN, DEAN OF ACADEMICS: And so, the notion that terrorism exists is hardly new, and that the United States is going to have to come to grips with this phenomenon in some substantial way is not new either. And so frankly, this is business as usual for us.
VAUSE (voice-over): The school's motto, "Duty, Honor, Country," words to live by, and to some words to die by as well.
John Vause, CNN, West Point.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WOODRUFF: And from the American Military Academies and want to go to the other end of the spectrum -- as some college students are preparing for war, others are actually trying to eradicate it. Our Jason Bellini spoke to some university students in New York. These students want to see a peaceful solution in America's fight against terrorism.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So many people showed up, which is awesome and incredible and uplifting, but also a fire hazard.
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The turnout was unexpected, nearly uncontrollable. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) at New York University brought anti-war voices out of isolation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have every right, as they drive, as they beat the drums in a war hysteria to ask questions of our government if we're expected to not only support this war ...
BELLINI: Large, loud, and together in one room, the student organizers of the new peace movement know how unheard, unseen, and unwanted they are right now by the U.S. at large. They've seen the polls supporting military action.
Most consider war inevitable and wrong. That the target is terrorism makes it no better.
(on camera): Who are these peace activists? Are they the same young people who draw messages of peace and love on makeshift memorials? Some, yes, but most I spoke to say, they're not neo- hippies. They come from a new school of protests.
(voice-over): The anti-globalist school. They're applying to America's new war a philosophy expressed in Seattle and around the world in protest against the IMF and the World Bank. They believe global alliances, like the one President Bush is forming to fight terrorism internationally, makes victims of the poorest and weakest members of the world community.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like the move for like a globalizatoin of a police state.
BELLINI: During President Bush's speech to Congress, a small gathering of NYU students reacted with disgust.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Scary. He said we're going to go to war and you're either going to be with us or against us.
BELLINI: The thing Americans need to look at, they believe, are the reasons why terrorists would hate us.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is an attack on like our domination of the economic exploitation of the entire world.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What many people like us want is just justice, but what our government's going after is punishment.
BELLINI: All in the room agreed that something needs to be done. What that something is, they could not articulate. And where they, while sharing a pacifist philosophy, butt heads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be meaningful, like say something that has some merit to it, something that you wish he should have said, because I don't know what I wish he should have said.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To take a pro-peace stance, does that mean being against any type of armed retaliation?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think to be pro-peace is, to me anyway, to be for the smallest amount of loss of life possible. You know that, you know, someone close to me died. I mean, like I understand that. But that doesn't mean that we should go out and like declare this gigantic ...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I totally agree, I totally agree.
BELLINI: But as peace activists struggle to offer alternatives and educate the public on what they consider the root causes of terrorism, they feel peace is rapidly slipping away.
Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
