WEST POINT, N.Y. – The US Military Academy at West Point has decided to remove the “Duty, Honor, Country” motto from its mission statement. The controversial deletion was approved by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Army Chief of Staff Randy George, according to West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland.
Meanwhile, critics say the change is the US military and West Point’s latest move to push “woke” policies, the New York Post reported.
Gilland sent a letter to students and supporters on Monday saying the phrase, which was first added to the mission statement in 1998, would be replaced with the words, “Army Values.”
“Our responsibility to produce leaders to fight and win our nation’s wars requires us to assess ourselves regularly,” Gilland wrote in the letter. “Thus, over the past year and a half, working with leaders from across West Point and external stakeholders, we reviewed our vision, mission, and strategy to serve this purpose.”
He continued: “As a result of this assessment, we recommended the following mission statement to our senior Army leadership: ‘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.’”
“Sadly, ‘Army values’ has been a moving target as it inches closer to social engineering than being combat ready,” said a former member of the military.
Gilland said the new mission statement, which has been altered nine times over the past 100 years, “binds the Academy to the Army.” He clarified that the patriotic phrase would “always” remain the school’s motto.
“Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto,” Gilland wrote.
“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point. These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”
So that begs the question, why remove them?
