There is an old saying, “So goes West Point, so goes the Army” (along with the rest of the military services). The United States Military Academy is the repository of not just Army, but all military values. The West Point motto of Duty, Honor, Country, is the linchpin that ties all of the services’ values together.
However, in yet another demonstration of the leftist long march through the institutions, the current Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, has decided that the West Point Motto will no longer be contained in the Academy’s Mission Statement.
Adopted in 1998, the previous Mission Statement was (emphasis mine):
“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.”
The new Mission Statement replaces Duty, Honor, Country, with “Army Values.” (Again, emphasis mine.)
To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps 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.
Here is the West Point Public Affairs Link.
Those of us who have more than a few gray hairs, may recall the American military situation immediately post Vietnam. We were bereft of funding for decent equipment and repair parts. Training dollars for ammunition, fuel and other supplies were rather stingy. Morale was low, as was the pay. Some troops were not immune to the siren song of drugs and race-based gangs. Our Military was not very well respected.
It was into that environment I stepped, July of 1976. I raised my right hand on the parade ground at West Point, symbolically writing that special check every Veteran has written. It was a tough time to be in the Army. Happily, starting with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Military rebuilt itself, inside and out. Once again, with hard work and a most importantly, a rededication to first principles, my beloved Army once again, was among America’s most respected institutions.
However, under President Bill Clinton, the erosion of basic standards began once more. Direct, public attacks on the military institution, coupled with pusillanimity from within, severely damaged the progress we had made. It diluted and ultimately destroyed major parts of the military’s culture of devotion to the Constitution, subservience to lawful civilian authority and service to the nation, both in war and in peace. The leftists had finally mastered the art of poisoning respected institutions by attacking the very foundations that made them strong. This insidious destruction of the Armed Forces of these United States continues today.
In today’s example, we have the West Point Superintendant, an Army Lieutenant General (3-Star) who is legally charged by Congress for the education, training, good order and discipline of the United States Corps of Cadets. LTG Steve Gilland finds himself attempting to convince senior officers, both active and retired that nothing has really changed and that the West Point motto still remains. His words, emphasis mine:
To the Long Gray Line and all USMA Supporters: Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto. It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point.
Here is an image of the entire statement.
Armed Forces Press put it this way.
I will state plainly what you all are thinking: The Army Values are meant well and are important to the US Army at large but are a lower standard than the West Point Values and tradition of Duty, Honor, Country. Like in many great institutions in the United States of America, progressive ideology is eroding away at West Point and doing so in a slow but methodical march, co-opting our good intentions through the specter of cultural marxism. Our adversaries are unscrupulous but sophisticated and very patient.
The writer points out the Superintendent has things backwards. He’s right. Army Values are not the source of West Point Values. Quite the opposite. The West Point Motto, Duty, Honor, Country, forms the foundation, the rock upon which all the service values are built. The West Point motto also has had impact on the development of other organizational values in both private and public service.
In short, the West Point Motto: Duty, Honor Country is the core value set that has and should continue to underpin organizations, both military, civilian, government or private, that hope to serve this great nation. The left knows exactly what it is doing by attempting to hide them as a subset of one organization’s mission.
The service academies, especially West Point, have long been targets for elimination by the Alinskyites. They ardently wish to undermine American institutions, and in this case, may soon chock up another win.
American taxpayers who once looked with high regard on West Point, will come to see it as just another institution of higher education. With no standards to uphold as a beacon to other organizations, no special cachet, they will rightly conclude that they are paying a lot of money for something not all that special. Then just like the statue and portrait of General Robert E. Lee, West Point will disappear, never again to see the light of day.
Colonel Mike Ford, U.S. Army Retired, is a 1980 graduate of West Point.
Editor’s Note, there is a companion article to this one written by another West Point Graduate. You can find it here.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
I can attest to the accuracy of the dismal Army you entered. I also raised my right hand in 1976 in a delayed enlistment and in June 1977 I entered the active duty Army as an enlisted Infantryman and assigned to Baumholder, Germany with the 8th Infantry Division. The barracks were filled with race fights, drunkeness, illicit drug use and more. There was no unity or cohesion, and morale was in the gutter, if it existed at all. Jimmy Carter had managed to rest what little was left of post Vietnam Army esprit de corps and crushed it into the dirt of liberalism. Joseph Robinette Biden and his henchmen have done far worse. Our military is now led by political generals and yes men nodding to the beat of their liberal masters. A sad day in our country. A sad day indeed.
My first boss when I was in Korea (88-89), Major Bubba Shaw, gave a few stories of the Army of the 70s. He got in as Vietnam ended, and he said, “Mike, a SDO did not go into the barracks unless he was armed or had an armed CQ escort. One oh my friends walked in on a drug deal, one of the “soldiers” grabbed for a 357 and the lieutenant had to shoot him. Another friend of mine was murdered by some soldiers who forced him into a wall locker, shot him several times and then threw it out of the 3rd story window.
The man who commissioned me entered in 76, and a story he shared was one of the greatest things we did to clean up the service was the piss test and zero tolerance. You piss hot, you’re gone. That got rid of a lot of problem children.
We could talk about how terrible it is that our military is becoming, again (yes, it is terrible and, yes, we have seen this before), part of society’s or political party’s or a single POTUS’ social experimentation and, in the process, become incapable of fulfilling the military’s primary mission of protecting this country. As deserving as they are of our concerns, we could lament the loss, or pending loss, of a prized institution like West Point or any of the other military academies or schools.
At the risk of oversimplification, the way I see it the reason for these episodes of institutional insanity in our armed forces is directly linked to the view that civilian control of the armed forces means that we must allow the president to act alone, or in concert with members of his party, to do whatever they want to do with the military, even if that means leaving the military incapable of protecting this nation from its enemies.
So, is it possible to, and if it is, how do we retain civilian control of the military while at the same time reduce or eliminate the ability of society or a political party or a single POTUS’, implementing social experimentation in our military?
Given that the existence of this nation rests with finding real solutions to that problem, that question seems like a worthy question to find an answer to.