VP Biden commencement speech to ‘9/11 generation’ at U.S. Military Academy
Here is the full text of the commencement speech that Vice President Joe Biden delived on Saturday to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., obtained from the Office of the Vice President:
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden hands a diploma to a cadet at West Point during the graduation ceremony. (ALLISON JOYCE - REUTERS)Before there was a military academy here on the Hudson, before even the United States was the United States of America, at the height of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington considered West Point so strategically vital he called it the “key to the continent.”
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) It’s a great honor to be here.
Distinguished guests; soldiers and officers, friends and family of those graduating today, academy faculty and staff and, most of all, cadets on the cusp of being commissioned in the United States Army, it is an honor -- it is an honor -- to be here on this magnificent campus whose graduates for more than two centuries have played a leading role in nearly every chapter of our nation’s history.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden hands a diploma to a cadet at West Point during the graduation ceremony. (ALLISON JOYCE - REUTERS)Before there was a military academy here on the Hudson, before even the United States was the United States of America, at the height of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington considered West Point so strategically vital he called it the “key to the continent.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I would respectfully stipulate that West Point is even more important to our nation today. The 1,032 cadets gathered here are the key -- the