Duty, Honor, Nothing
20th March 2024
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.