Woke West Point Purges ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ From Its Mission

ANALYSIS – Woke or just stupid? The U.S. Military Academy at West point, one the world’s finest military officer training grounds, under the woke leadership of Joe Biden and his leftist cabal couldn’t leave well enough alone.

They, likely led by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth (who never served in uniform), just deleted the famous and inspiring phrase, “duty, honor, country” from the academy’s mission statement.

The question is why?

While West Point went to great pains to emphasize that the academy’s motto still remained “duty, honor, country,” it had a very hard time justifying the change to the mission statement.

In the 1962 speech at the academy, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur said, ‘”The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.”

But now those three words have been replaced by the far more generic and malleable term “Army values.”

Those two bland words are then broken down into seven, far less pithy, values which are currently described as “Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage.” While “Duty” and “Honor” are repeated in these “Army values,” notably absent is the value of “country” (or patriotism).

The academy tries to get around that glaring omission by claiming that the fact that “Army Values include Duty and Honor and Country is reflected in Loyalty, bearing true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other Soldiers.”

Well, sorry, but they don’t. Love of country and patriotism are distinct from allegiance to the Constitution. Why do these Army leftists now find the mere mention of  the word “country” so objectionable that it must be removed.

The academy’s Superintendent, Lt. General, Steve Gilland, also tried very hard to put lipstick on a pig with his letter attached to the school’s press release, repeating several times that “Duty, Honor Country” was still the West Point motto. He even signed off with that phrase.

But the motto can be changed later.

Meanwhile, the Army press release notes that: “In the past century, West Point’s mission has changed nine times. Many graduates will recall the mission statement they learned as new cadets did not include the motto, as Duty, Honor, Country was first added to the mission statement in 1998.”

And that is a valid point, but it was added in 1998 because many believed that it needed to be added in the age of then-president, draft-dodging, military-disdaining, Bill Clinton, where it wasn’t as obvious anymore.

Even so, Clinton couldn’t keep from emphasizing those three words.

In his 2000 West Point Commencement speech, he said:  “You now inherit the great legacy of West Point, as guardians of Duty, Honor, Country. I know you will lead with strength, with bravery, and with a tireless will to defend the land you love.”

But it didn’t end there. ‘Never proud of her country’ Michelle Obama, in her 2011:Remarks at the Academy Graduation Family Banquet, said:“You learn that duty, honor, and country are not simply words, but guideposts.  They dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.”

And then in 2009 Barack Obama, in his remarks at Presentation of the Medal of Honor to Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti, repeated the same phrase, before adding a few of his own as well. 

He said: “Duty. Honor. Country. Service. Sacrifice. Heroism. These are words of weight. But as people … we invoke them lightly. We toss them around freely. But do we really grasp the meaning of these values? Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues?”

Well, apparently the current woke Army leadership doesn’t grasp or understand.

And our cadets won’t either, now that the entire phrase has been removed from the Mission Statement, and the word “country” removed from everything, including the “Army Values.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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