Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, March 14, 2024
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s famous “Duty, Honor, Country” has been removed from the mission statement of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Critics say that action is part of the woke, globalist agenda of forces running the Biden White House. That agenda they say has weakened the U.S military and opened wide a window of opportunity for America’s enemies.
WorldTribune.com reported on Wednesday that Team Biden vowed to cut military spending just days after U.S. Strategic Command Commander Gen. Anthony Cotton told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) likely has achieved superiority over the U.S. in theater nuclear weapons and is now developing its next generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Some of MacArthur’s most memorable quotes followed his dispute with President Harry Truman during the Korean War over MacArthur’s position that the United States must defeat both the North Korean and Chinese forces.
In his farewell address to Congress on April 19, 1951 after being fired by Truman, MacArthur said:
War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.
There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China.
They are blind to history’s clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.
Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, West Point’s superintendent, said in a statement that West Point must “assess ourselves regularly,” and has worked with leaders in the academy and external stakeholders over the last year and a half to revise its mission statement.
Related: If MacArthur had prevailed over Truman: ‘No North Korea today, no nuclear threat …’ , June 21, 2016
Gilland added that the “Duty, Honor, Country” phrase is “foundational” to the academy’s culture and despite the change in mission statement, it will “always remain our motto.”
The new mission statement is: “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.”
WorldTribune.com columnist Jeffrey Kuhner, host of “The Kuhner Report” podcast, posted online that West Point is “going woke.” He added: “We’re watching the slow death of our country” and said “Gen. MacArthur is rolling in his grave.”
Army Col. Terence M. Kelley, an academy spokesman, declined to specify why the three words were taken out of the mission statement other than to note that it was part of an effort for an “evolving” statement.
In a post on X, Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host of “Fox and Friends,” said West Point has gone “fully globalist” and criticized the academy for “purposely tanking recruitment of young Americans to make room for the illegal mercenaries.”
Meaghan Mobbs, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, told The Washington Times that the new mission statement is “a warning sign that should make everyone sit up and take notice.”
The statement is an example of the “watering down of the West Point experience,” said Mobbs, who has worked with veterans organizations and other nonprofits since leaving the military.
“They are saying the quiet part out loud. West Point is losing its comparative advantage,” she said. “The federal service academies must distinguish themselves from the senior military colleges and broader ROTC. I believe this is also indicative of the broader challenges facing recruitment and retention within our military.”
MacArthur said in his farewell address at West Point on May 12, 1962 that “duty, honor, country” should be revered values for the Army’s future leaders:
“Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be,” he said. “They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
“The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase,” MacArthur said. “Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.”