The mission statement of West Point will no longer include the words “duty, honor, country,” as the over 220-year-old military academy choses to adopt a new mission statement based on “Army Values.”
The military academy announced the proposed change on Monday, saying that the edits to the decades-old mission statement have already been approved by the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff. West Point will still retain “duty, honor, country,” as the academy’s motto, saying that the changes to the mission statement came after a year and a half long assessment.
West Point’s new mission statement will be: “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.”
The academy explained the change by saying that it was part of routine examination of the mission of the institution.
“Our responsibility to produce leaders to fight and win our nation’s wars requires us to assess ourselves regularly,” West Point said. “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. We believe our mission binds the Academy to the Army — the Army in which our cadets will serve.”
The mission statement has been changed nine times before and the lines “duty, honor, country,” were added in 1998.
“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point,” the statement said. “These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”
The news that West Point was changing its mission statement was criticized by some conservatives who said it was another example of the military’s mission drift.
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“The elimination of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from West Point’s mission statement is a direct reflection of undesirable shifts in our service academies,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said. “The values that have led generations should not be erased to appeal to the cultural moment.”
“Wow! #WestPoint announcing they’ve gone full globalist,” commentator Rachel Campos Duff posted on X. “Purposely tanking recruitment of young Americans patriots to make room for the illegal mercenaries.”
“West Point has dropped ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from its mission statement and replaced it with the more generic ‘Army Values,’” conservative think tank Center for Renewing America said. “Is allegiance to country no longer a requirement for U.S. military service?”
