By Citizen Soldier
My father remembers a trip with my grandfather to the U.S. Military Academy in the early 1960s to watch a baseball game. They loved the game, but what struck my grandfather, who served in the Pacific during World War II, was something else.
“Watch how they sprint on and off the field,” he said. “Every inning. The best player and the worst. Whatever the score.”
I don’t know whether the boys at West Point still sprint on and off the athletic fields. I bet they do. Their generals and the politicians, however, are running in the wrong direction.
West Point is dropping “Duty, Honor, Country” from its mission statement, to be replaced with the nebulous phrase, “Army Values.” Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said “Duty, Honor, Country” would remain West Point’s “motto.”
But “motto” is not mission, which declares what a unit is and does. Troops live and die for the mission. No “motto” could ever mean so much.
West Point leadership wants us not to be alarmed. Just trust the process, they say. The “process” – apparently of erasure and reinvention – began two years ago with removal of plaques and images of Robert E. Lee in favor of “appropriate language and images,” as Gilland described them.
So here we are, further stripping away the tradition and rigor that defined West Point.
In contemporary America, life in power seems dedicated not to responsibility but self-interest. Authority figures and thought leaders specialize in manipulating opinions, bullying us into using certain words, canceling history, placing certain ideas above others. Their eyes are big, their minds addled by attention and praise, their demands absolute.
Such a culture is contemptuous of and disdains tradition. So-called leaders are energized by tearing down tradition, making more room for monuments to their own era and outsized egos.
Tweak the colors.
Change the fonts.
Replace time-honored words for something new, something soft, something “appropriate.”
This is not to say I doubt the patriotism of Lt. Gen. Gilland, and others like him. Gilland has given more than 40 years of service to the Army. He and many other soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are the best of us.
Which is why we urge him to pick his head up and look around, remember that leading is more than just keeping your head down as you navigate the career minefield, hoping to survive, praying that playing along will secure the next rank.
To those at the top, I say this:
Words gain their meaning through generations of commitment, sacrifice and faith.
Duty.
Honor.
Country.
These are the words that define us—throw them away at our own peril.
Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
First published on Real Clear Defense
Some comments on the article:
“The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghost in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.” Douglas McArthur, General of the Army. Farewell Speech. Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point May 12, 1962″
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” George Orwell. The slow morph of our country away from a constitutional republic to a state-controlled dictatorship is frightening. Free speech can get you fired. Public hearings are controlled and dissenters can be imprisoned. The media filters what they want us to hear. It is time to remove woke ideology and the ideologists from the military. The military’s purpose is to defend the constitution. To kill our enemies. To defend our country. Duty, Honor, Country.”
“I didn’t attend West Point but I proudly served my country in the US Army. Sadly, it is a country I barely recognize any more. The left is destroying it by what the Chinese calls, “death from a thousand cuts”. Those cuts are pulling down our statues and monuments, renaming our military bases, renaming public schools, disrespecting our veterans by kneeling during the national anthem, creating an alternative national anthem for one race, destroying children’s lives with sexual mutilation, cheating in women’s sports by allowing men to compete against them, putting men in girl’s bathrooms and shower rooms, arresting people for calling people by the correct biological pronoun, keeping people in prison for 3 years without charges for the simple act of standing where they werEn’t supposed to stand, and more. The America I love and served to protect may never return and that is a bad thing for the entire world.”
“He and many other soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are the best of us.” I’m not convinced of this at all. Actions speak louder than words. Too many in the services have skated by on the assumption that simply by serving they’re better than anyone else. In fact, every military force has had time servers, politicians in uniform, moral cowards and incompetents. Granting the military collectively a pass on accountability simply by virtue of service empowers such people and does no one, military or civilian, any good. It’s worth noting that Rome’s Praetorian Guard were in fact elite soldiers, and under the good emperors, served valiantly and honorably. But as soon as circumstances empowered them to behave otherwise, they did. This was also true of the legions more generally.”
“They’re drifting into West pointless. The rebranded mission is less successful than New Coke, or the Bud Light fiasco.”
“Can’t disagree with citizen soldier on this. I hate what the left is doing to our country.”
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