{"id":14122,"date":"2011-11-18T02:00:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=14122"},"modified":"2011-11-17T22:25:34","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T03:25:34","slug":"general-mark-welsh-inspires-usafa-cadets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/general-mark-welsh-inspires-usafa-cadets\/","title":{"rendered":"General Mark Welsh Inspires USAFA Cadets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>General Mark Welsh is currently the commanding General of US Air Forces in Europe.\u00a0 (He previously sent out a message on the <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/09\/the-dear-boss-letter-2009-version\/\">problem of retaining fighter pilots<\/a>.)\u00a0 General Welsh is also a former Commandant of Cadets at USAFA, as well as an A-10 and F-16 fighter pilot.<\/p>\n<p>On November 1st he visited USAFA and delivered an inspirational message to the cadets:\u00a0 You&#8217;ll make a difference.\u00a0 Be ready.\u00a0 One particularly salient quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Leadership is a gift.\u00a0 Its given by those who follow.<\/p>\n<p>But you have to be worthy of it.\u00a0 The men and women <!--more-->that you are going to be responsible for are the greatest people on the planet.\u00a0 You better be getting ready to lead&#8217;em.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re not, rededicate yourself to the effort.<\/p>\n<p>Try your leadership skills here [at USAFA].\u00a0 If you fail, learn and move on.\u00a0 Try again.\u00a0 That&#8217;s what this environment is for.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re still saying this place sucks, leave.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t need you.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t want you.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t have time for you.<\/p>\n<p>Because when you leave this place, and I put you in command and supervision of people like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/home\/features\/2008\/0908_wwd\/index_slaydon.html\">Matt Slaydon<\/a>, if you let them down, I will track you down, and I will hurt you.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s going to be really embarassing considering how old I am.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>USAFA published the 50-minute <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usafa.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123279442\">presentation online<\/a>; it is available at <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/wRgNVpCi6rY\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Set some time aside this weekend to watch it.\u00a0 It&#8217;s well worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>General Mark Welsh is currently the commanding General of US Air Forces in Europe.\u00a0 (He previously sent out a message on the problem of retaining fighter pilots.)\u00a0 General Welsh is also a former Commandant of Cadets at USAFA, as well as an A-10 and F-16 fighter pilot. On November 1st he visited USAFA and delivered an inspirational message to the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[332,186,5285,2284,2440,2,65,2285],"class_list":["post-14122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-academies","tag-a-10","tag-f-16","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-mark-welsh","tag-matt-slaydon","tag-military","tag-usafa","tag-usafe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}