The thing that sticks in our mind in respect of President Obama’s speech at West Point is that there was something specific that needed to be said. It had been billed as an address that would lay out the President’s foreign policy vision. Even the Times noted that his remarks did “not match the hype,” were “largely uninspiring,” and “lacked strategic sweep.” The president’s carping about how we got into the wars he is ending was unconscionable. The New York Post captured it in a headline: “The Long Gray Whine.”

But the most maddening thing was that there was something that needed to be addressed — the importance of a garrison army. Our Founders certainly feared standing armies, but there is a reason we’ll have one in this generation. Our enemies may have been scattered, but they have not surrendered. Our cadets didn’t need to hear about whether the president thought of himself as tough. They needed to hear from their constitutional commander that they are going to be needed now more than ever.

In January the New York Times had a terrific dispatch by Thom Shanker about the problem of the garrison army. From Fort Drum, New York, he wrote of how many soldiers “are struggling — like America’s ground forces over all — to find relevance in the face of an uncertain future.” He called their restlessness “a particular challenge for the Army, which sent 1.3 million troops to war after 9/11 and created the most combat-tested force in the nation’s history.”

“You have to ask yourself if you want to be that leader who is relegated to navigating garrison bureaucracy — submitting ammo requests, coordinating weapons ranges and conducting inventories,” Captain Brandon Archuleta, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and returned to Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, was quoted by the Times as saying. Captain Archuleta’s question was the one the president had to answer. He needed to let the Cadets, the Army, know how desperately they are still needed.

What a place to do it. The Plain at West Point, with its statues of such giants as General Patton, and the dining hall, lined with portraits of others of our greatest generals, are peopled with legendary figures who served in a garrison army. It was in the garrison years that they worked on new tactics, tested new weapons, reached out to potential allies, and tilled the soil of victory. Had the President addressed the cadets squarely on this head, he would have been met with relief and cheers. He would have led.

This is not disconnected from the crisis of the Veterans Administration, whose secretary, General Shinseki, resigned this morning. The catastrophe of the VA is not just the injustice to our veterans in need of care — though that would be enough — but the signal to the officers and men and women who are deciding whether to stick with our armed services. It is a signal duty and honor of any president to make clear to these magnificent Americans how much their service is needed, even in the garrison years.