Posted on 11/20/2021 2:40:46 AM PST by Kaslin
Military codes of conduct that prescribe honorable behavior date back thousands of years and are essential for maintaining trust, camaraderie, and discipline within the armed forces. Yet over the past fifty years, cadets at the Air Force Academy have demonstrated a diminishing respect for the Honor Code, which has fallen victim to the moral relativism that blurs the distinction between ethical and unethical behaviors and contributed to a precipitous drop in retention rates and overall military readiness.
The Air Force Academy Honor Code is concise and unambiguous: “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” The oath begins with “We” rather than “I” to signify it is a code of conduct shared among the members of the Cadet Wing. It embodies an intimate trust between fellow cadets that is not based on fear or intimidation but mutual respect. Lying, cheating, stealing, or tolerating breaks this trust, diminishes the achievements of fellow cadets and fosters a climate of disunity. Under real world military conditions, trust is an essential requirement, not a debatable philosophical principle.
Professor Shannon French, a former instructor at USNA, points out in Code of the Warrior that from the time of Homer, warrior codes developed from within the ranks and were based on the Aristotelian precept to embody certain virtues in order to identify oneself as honorable. These codes protect the warrior from moral injury, help maintain their humanity, and set a minimum standard of ethical behavior.
Since its inception in 1955, the Academy has experienced a series of Honor Code scandals, resulting in the adaptation of eight increasingly lenient, legally entangled, and philosophically abstract honor code remediation programs. In 2014 the degradation of the Honor Code led to a full-scale breakdown of morality that involved sexual assault, drug abuse, and cheating.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
It’s not the code that is the problem, it is the people.
No code, no consitution, no law, can withstand assult by the dishonest or weak.
Yes, the code is dead. Lost to Woke generals and somnolent Cavuto Republicans.
“We will not lie, “
Feminist PC made lying as a rule SOP fifty years ago-
An honor code is pointless in any institution that has lost its purpose.
“We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write ‘F#&%’ on their airplanes … because it’s obscene!” LOL.
Is the Air Force Academy Honor Code Dead?
—
Was it ever alive?
Apocalypse Now is on my classic, re-watch list for this winter. I’m waiting until I’m in that perfect mix of depressed/drunk.
Not only USAFA but the entire USAF no longer strives to follow the honor code but primarily, that starts from the top down.
It certainly was in the early ‘70s.
The Air Force Honor Code was dead, when the then Supe ranted at the entire Corps for nearly an hour about “racism” after a Cadet at USAFA Prep reported “racist graffiti” on his Barracks door. When it was discovered to be a hoax, the cowardly Superintendent didn’t call the Corps back into formation to apologize and acknowledge the hoax, he simply ignored it.
It was Clinton that got the “give China everything” ball really rolling during his 8 years in office. Very little happened during the 70s when China had just been opened up by Noxious Nixon in ‘71.
My son is a USAF pilot, and is trying to be honorable. I am sure I would have problems today, trying to serve under what Col Hackworth called, these woke perfumed princes
You nailed it. Top down leadership is everything. When I was on active duty almost all the “brass” were WW 2 vets and we revered these men. They were virtually our fathers and we acted and served accordingly. And they were NOT “woke”...it was not even a thing!!
I feel the same about my Army
Thanks for your service and raising a child willing to serve
Thanks for your service too bro. 😀
The real difference between honor and operations has been created by the cold war. It was after WW 2 that we no longer fought “wars” to protect our country. We fought wars to protect someone’s interest. And not often our own.
Prior to 9/11 we had no immediate threat on the horizon. North Korea didn’t attack Alaska, Vietnam didn’t hit Hawaii. And the list of conflicts we were involved in like Lebanon, Granada, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia were not a threat to our soil. However the threat of our technology acted like the big brother we had to hold others at bay.
So our military became just as corrupt as their leaders, no longer military, but political. And the emphasis of our military became push button for the politicians and that appearance was filtered over into the populous (voters) to appear to be a successful formula to peace. And when our wars became money and not protection, we stopped being a country and magically turned into a financial police force while trying to represent ourselves as the good cowboys riding in to save poor Nell from the villain but not riding off into the sunset, staying to use our funds and resources to rebuild their little ranch to control them.
Unfortunately today’s politicians fail to understand what being resourceful actually means like we were in 1789 when we had a real country to protect and were willing to do it. And that’s why we fail now both politically, morally, and theologically.
The only real promise is that someone has to be the villain, the wrong to spotlight the right. And when you run out of foreign villains, they have to be created domestic. And someone has to be the foil to the good politicians that have spawned from the past and found the business profitable whether in money or power, pick your poison.
So they can’t blame the voters or the media (like Trump did), they need them. So they ostracized a part of their organization that they really don’t need any more...the military. The politicians created them and changed them to what they need so they now need them to be evil. Until you need them again not to be. But will they be there? Besides changing the mission, look what they are doing to the police. That might be a hint. The inmates are running the asylum.
wy69
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