Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody recently took to YouTube to explain the Air Force core values “matter.”

The video is interesting, but even more interesting is the way the official Air Force Facebook page intro’d the video [emphasis added]:

When you voluntarily raised your right hand and took the oath of enlistment to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against enemies foreign and domestic — you purposely gave up a piece of yourself. You were remolded and given a new set of core values, which are integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do.

That statement seems to presuppose that men and women enter the Air Force without values of integrity, service, or excellence. While that is absolutely true in some cases — some join not out of service but for “benefits,” others don’t survive basic because they do not strive for excellence — it is absolutely not true in many (if not most) cases.

In fact, the concept of service before self — the idea of serving and prioritizing something greater than oneself — is one reason that so many Christians join the military.  Such service is a value they already uphold. In other words, they join the military because its values align with theirs, not to learn new values.

While the core values can be “trained” to some degree, it is ridiculous to imply Airmen only value integrity, service, and excellence because the Air Force “gave” them a “new set” of values when they enlisted.  Its unlikely that’s what the official Air Force statement intended to mean, but it is what they said.

The fact that people join the military because its values align with theirs is not an insignificant point. It naturally follows that some will not join the military if its values — as demonstrated, not merely stated — fail to align with the values they hold dear.

This potential misalignment of values wasn’t missed by a few commenters on this very video, who questioned where such core values are when ‘all associations with God are being removed from the Air Force.’

General Welsh posted the video to his page with a comment of support:

It’s an honor to serve alongside each of you, to believe that you have my back and to know I’ll always have yours. r/ mark

ADVERTISEMENT