West Point announces change to mission statement, school’s official ‘Duty Honor Country’ motto has been eliminated By Olivia Murray
On Sunday, the Armed Forces Press reported that West Point brass had made a recent decision to “update” the academy’s Mission Statement, which until that point, read as such:
To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.
With the approved revisions, West Point’s official mission now reads:
To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corp of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.
As you can see, the sacred and “hallowed” words, recognized as the official motto of the school since before even Douglas MacArthur graduated in 1903, have been jettisoned—into the Memory Hole “Duty Honor Country” goes!
John A. Lucas is a former special operations military member with more than 45 years experience as an attorney who now runs the Bravo Blue blog; and yesterday, Lucas reported that an officer to whom he spoke “emphasized that the change was the result of a regular review … to see if any changes were needed to ‘modernize’ the statement.” As someone pointed out in the comments:
Duty-Honor-Country: Well defined, succinct, timeless.
Army values: Amorphous, indefinite, depends on the whims of the social elite.
Unless the politicization of our armed forces is stopped, and soon, we’ll be singing ‘The East is Red’ as our national anthem in short order.
Yet, are you even surprised? Notions like duty, honor, and undying servitude to the people of your country are completely alien to the “modern” political chain of command, landscape, and players; let’s not forget, an American president isn’t just supposed to be some Washington D.C. fixture (especially one who’s not done much else besides jetset around the world on a pay-to-play tour collecting kickbacks), he is the top of the military chain of command too. And, it’s not like the D.C. government genuinely wants officers who believe in the duty, honor, and country in the traditional American sense.
So yes, the longstanding motto is apparently all too enduring, and not at all representative of the “modern” military structure of dereliction, dishonor, and treason—to be abundantly clear, this is specifically directed at the anti-American actors present in our armed forces.
Never has the “reject modernity, embrace tradition” quip been more apropos.
Image: Public domain.
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