Gen. Douglas MacArthur, speaking to cadets at West Point in 1962, said: “[Y]our mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars.” MacArthur continued:

All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; 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.

Sixty years later, the U.S. Army War College’s flagship journal, Parameters, features a section on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” the U.S. Navy uses a video to instruct its members to use proper pronouns and create “safe spaces” for all naval personnel, and now the U.S. Air Force reportedly hosted a drag queen show at the Joint Base Langley-Eustis as part of its summer festival on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” It appears that “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” has replaced “Duty, Honor, Country.”

According to Military News, “Joshua Kelley aka ‘Harpy Daniels – The Navy Drag Queen’” performed for adults and children at the festival.

Col. Gregory Beaulieu, the commander of the 633rd Air Base Wing, approved the drag queen show and the use of taxpayer resources for the event. The Daily Wire reports that the festival was “advertised as a family-friendly event” that “celebrat[ed] differences” and was designed to ensure that “every Airman, Soldier and civilian feels valued.” (Perhaps the spokesperson who said that forgot that the word “Airman” is not “diverse.”) The drag queen performer reportedly explained, “Doing drag allows me to embrace my feminine side and allows me to bring my diversity and creativity out.”

One can only imagine what MacArthur, who fought and led American forces heroically in Mexico, France (in World War I — seven Silver Stars), the southwest Pacific, and Korea, and whose biographer William Manchester called the greatest soldier in our nation’s history, would think about drag queen shows, pronoun usage, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. MacArthur told the cadets 60 years ago that if ever the “Long Gray Line” failed the nation in its hour of need, “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.”

Edward Gibbon, in his six-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, noted the “decay and corruption” of Rome’s armed forces caused by the ruling elite’s introduction of “a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire.” Gibbon pointed to the collapse of “public courage,” the diminished “sense of national honour,” and the evaporation of the “military spirit” that had infected Rome. He wrote that a “degeneracy” had set in among Roman elites that “debased” the citizenry, “enervated their courage, and depressed their talents.”

There are no “safe spaces” on an aircraft carrier or in a submarine. Drag queens who want to embrace their feminine side are no substitute for the warriors “in olive drab” or “in brown khaki.” And above all, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is no substitute for “Duty, Honor, Country.”