[tomder55]

The Naming Commission was tasked to identify traces of commemorations of the Confederacy at military bases and scrub them like the Taliban did to the Buddha statues in Bamyan .


The Death of the Buddhas of Bamiyan | Middle East Institute (mei.edu)

Final Report (Part II): U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Naval Academy

A casualty of the commission is West Point's Reconciliation Plaza
It was the idea of the West Point Class of 1961 . The goal was to celebrate the reconciliation between the North and South.

THE CLASS OF 1961 PRESENTS THIS MEMORIAL TO THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY ON THE OCCASION OF ITS 40TH REUNION AND ONE HUNDRED FORTY YEARS AFTER THE GRADUATION OF THE CLASSES OF MAY AND JUNE 1861. WE COMMEMORATE THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH AND DEDICATE THIS MEMORIAL TO OUR CLASSMATES WHO DIED IN SERVICE TO OUR NATION.

The Memorial Day Foundation - WEST POINT RECONCILIATION PLAZA MEMORIAL

The intent was traditional at military schools and was non-controversial....until now when the woke PC crowd is trying to purge history .

The markers ,as noted by the Commission, depicted “acts and events between 1861 and 1913 to serve as examples of reconciliation.”

“Marker 4 portrays a Confederate soldier providing water to a U.S. Soldier wounded by Confederate guns”; and,
“Marker 6 commemorates Confederate [Major General] Stephen Ramseur and two U.S. Army classmates from West Point who comforted him as he lay dying after a surprise attack by Ramseur’s army failed.”

Ramseur, was mortally wounded at the 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek.At 27,he was the youngest West Point graduate to be promoted to major general .He had 2 horses shot out from under him before he was struck in the lungs. , Learning of his condition and subsequent capture by Union forces, several of Ramseur’s friends from West Point “came to his side to give him comfort and water. Among them was his close friend, George Armstrong Custer. Ramseur, whose first wedding anniversary was days away, had just learned of the birth of his daughter.

The Commission determined that giving a dying soldier water and comfort were 2 inappropriate demonstration of reconciliation .

Anyway you look at it . The memorial at West Point was NOT commemorating the Confederacy.


]"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

(George Orwell. '1984')

[jlisenbe]

It's unfortunate that we now have so many people who cannot distinguish between the personal acts of valor and compassion in the Civil War versus the political and social aspects of the conflict. It is possible to despise slavery and the Confederacy while still honoring the fighting spirit of the Confederate soldiers. We could learn some things from the Robert E. Lees of history.

[tomder55]

More woke comes to the military news

Recruiting of whites is way down. Historically (well since WWII anyway)the demographics of the military reflected the population of the country.

The Army's recruiting of white soldiers has dropped significantly in the last half decade, according to internal data reviewed by Military.com, a decline that accounts for much of the service's historic recruitment slump that has become the subject of increasing concern for Army leadership and Capitol Hill.
The shift in demographics for incoming recruits would be irrelevant to war planners, except it coincides with an overall shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the Army in 2023 as the service missed its target of 65,000 new soldiers.

Army Sees Sharp Decline in White Recruits | Military.com

Internally, some Army planners are alarmed over the data trends, but see it as a minefield to navigate given increasing partisan attacks against the military for its efforts to recruit and support a diverse force, according to interviews with several service officials.

Yeah that's the ticket

Has nothing to do with this

Army Equity and Inclusion Agency.

The reality is that white men do not want to participate in a woke institution that has policies to openly discriminate against them while at the same time asking them to risk their lives .

And when they seek advice ;parents and other family members ,coaches ,veterans ,and even pastors are advising them not to join .

The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join - WSJ

Military kids traditionally are the majority of recruits, but America's military misadventures the past two decades have left veterans not very enthusiastic about their mission.

On top of that Clueless Joe and the war party are hell bent on getting us into more shooting wars. What white kid wants to go to war for a civilian leadership that thinks white are an oppressor class ;and the top civilian chain of command is mentally incompetent and on perpetual vacation or otherwise MIA ? And as a society we p*ss on Vets when their service is finished .

America's neglected veterans: 1.7 million who served have no health coverage - PubMed (nih.gov)

Veterans struggle to find work after military: "We still want to give the best of ourselves" - CBS News

Veterans Facing Shortage in Affordable Housing - NAMVETS of America (namvetsamerica.org)

[jlisenbe]

The whole issue of diversity is the most unsupported idea I can imagine. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that a diverse anything is more effective than one that is not. Even worse, there are many arguments to suggest that diversity is a negative. I don't know of any organization that must fight for success which has discovered some magic of hiring non-qualified people in order to look right, and then having that appearance lead them to success.

[tomder55]

Recruitment is a huge problem ;not only for us ;but for other western allies stuck in this woke way of thinking. Remember I mentioned how the Brits would have a difficult time defending the Falklands ? Last week the Royal Navy said they had to decommission 2 warships for lack of sailors .

HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll were allegedly retired so their crews could transfer to the service's new Type 26 frigates. The news comes as UK sailors were sent to the Red Sea to protect merchant vessels from Houthi rebels.
The retirement of HMS Westminster is controversial as it underwent expensive repairs in 2017 and only recently returned to service.

Royal Navy has so few sailors it has been 'forced to decommission' two warships so its new frigates won't go unmanned | Daily Mail Online

This comes as their armed forces are being called on to accept more missions . Not only are they active in the Red Sea pirate hunting; but their Sec State for Defense Grant Shapps said they are going to forward deploy 20,000 personnel to the frontiers of Russia to participate in war games that stretch from Germany and Poland into all the Baltic States.

“We are in a new era and we must be prepared to deter our enemies, prepared to lead our allies and prepared to defend our nation whenever the call comes.
“Today our adversaries are busily rebuilding their barriers. Old enemies are reanimated. Battle lines are being redrawn. The tanks are literally on Ukraine’s lawn. And the foundations of the world order are being shaken to their core. We stand at a crossroads.
“I can announce today that UK will be sending some 20,000 personnel to take part in one of NATO’s largest deployments since the end of the Cold War. Exercise Steadfast Defender.
“It will see our military joining forces with counterparts from 30 NATO countries plus Sweden, providing vital reassurance against the Putin menace.”

Exercise Steadfast Defender 24: NATO to practice war against Putin's Russia - https://eutoday.net


They need more troops . But what is their concern ? How to recruit more women and minorities .

British Armed Forces in crisis as Grant Shapps calls for more women to join | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

Meanwhile white applicants are called "useless".

Applicants seeking to join RAF described as 'useless white male pilots' in bid to hit 'impossible' diversity targets | UK News | Sky News

[jlisenbe]

How to recruit more women and minorities .

It's a national insanity. One need only read Romans chapter 1 to understand this.

The whole diversity delusion has no real goal other than to make some people feel better about their existence. There is not one shred of evidence that a military composed of large numbers of females will do a better job of fighting a war.

[tomder55]

West Point is going further down the woke DEI die hole

For more than a century the motto of the academy was 'Duty Honor Country'

But apparently that is going to be cancelled .

Officials at the 222-year-old military academy 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of New York City recently reworked the one-sentence mission statement, which is updated periodically, usually with little fanfare........

The new version declares that the academy’s mission 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.”

word salad gobbledygook

But perhaps the purpose is to update the mission of the Army from defenders of the United States to their role of being a global mercenary force.


I guess we can assign MacArthur's address to the Academy to the dust bowl of history too.

…Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: 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.They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a temperament of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.…Your mission remains fixed, determined, unchanging. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but a corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.…You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the call to war sounds.The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.I bid you farewell

DouglasMacArthurDutyHonorCountryExcerpts.pdf (academyatthelakes.org)

[jlisenbe]

Is there a difference between the motto and the mission statement?

[tomder55]

yes the motto did not change . The mission statement did


Here is the relevant part of the original

....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."
2019_Developing_Leaders_of_Character.pdf

[jlisenbe]

Back in my school principal days, we went through a period of great emphasis on mission statements. Everyone was supposed to spend a significant amount of time in developing on of them. After that, it was posted around the school and promptly ignored.