Duty, honor, what?: U.S. in chaos, turmoil amid erosion of principles
April 25 (UPI) -- This week was the first time in many years that I missed filing my Wednesday UPI column. One reason was that my gallbladder exceeded its sell-by date. I had an unexpectedly short but successful hospital stay. The other was more substantial. I simply did not understand how and why from virtually every perspective, the U.S. appeared to be in chaos and turmoil.
The two likely presidential nominees are showing on a daily basis why most Americans do not want either to occupy the Oval Office. Congress is in disarray despite the House of Representatives congratulating itself on finally passing aid bills for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. These should have been approved long ago.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is being touted as a "profile in courage" for doing the right thing. That it took months to convince Johnson of the severity of the military crisis in Ukraine over the critical absence of weapons to fend off the Russian army raised this question. What is Johnson doing in Congress if he does not understand the ABCs of foreign and defense policy? And he had been cowed by Marjorie Taylor Greene and the threat of being vacated as speaker.
A profile in courage would have not tolerated Greene's threat and moved to neutralize her. However, in today's pernicious and poisonous political environment, such a display of backbone might have unlocked a reprimand from Donald Trump, collapsing support for the speaker. So, today, Johnson deserves a gold medal for ultimately doing the right thing.
Concurrently, riots and protests broke out across some of the most prestigious American colleges and universities in strong support of Hamas and in furious opposition to Israel. The safety and security of Jewish students are at grave risk. Anti-Semitism has become a political COVID in its ability to infect students, many who are wearing masks to prevent identification. Some might call that cowardice.
And make no mistake. Foreign interference is at work to exacerbate the intensity of the protests, riots and violence.
What is most distressing is the ignorance that many of these young protestors display over basic issues. Does no one know that the aim of Hamas is to eradicate the Jewish state and Zionism? The inhuman savagery of Oct. 7, when 1,200 Jews were slaughtered, raped or tortured has been dismissed.
Instead, Israel's offensive into Gaza that has led to about 35,000 Palestinian deaths is perceived as genocide. Calls for the destruction of Israel exemplify what is absolute hatred toward the Jewish state without any reasons or rationale for that animosity being presented. Chants of "from the river to the sea" are made without knowing the names of the river or the sea that are referenced. This ignorance may be unprecedented.
My experience with student protests dates to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Beyond civil rights, the cause celebre was Vietnam. As the war escalated and more American body bags came home, protests intensified. The Tet Offensive of Jan. 31, 1968, forced Lyndon Johnson to forego a second term. Walter Cronkite, one of the most trusted of American journalists, turned against the war.
The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago; the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the Kent State killings of students by National Guardsman; the so-called secret war in Cambodia; and the My Lai massacres in Vietnam all intensified the protests and riots. But the causes were obvious and dispassionately could be understood as to why the intensity increased.
Is today different? Beginning with the Vietnam War, the government gradually lost its credibility and trustworthiness with the public. Concurrently, what would become a dramatic decline in so-called values and standards of behavior and the increase in vulgarity occurred. Truth and fact became the victims. When truth and fact are discounted, the consequences are obvious.
A relatively unnoticed but very significant reference point makes this case. Founded in 1802, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point had as its compass, three words: duty, honor and country. Despite promises that nothing has changed, as of this March, West Point'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 the Nation."
Duty, honor and country have been replaced by bureaucratic gobbledygook. Tragically, this erosion is not limited merely to West Point. How we got here is less important than what we will or can do to return to the principles on which this nation was based. And does anyone know what those are?
Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
