Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Arlington Virginia, September 29, 2023

 

“Today is not about anyone up here on this stage…. It’s about something much larger than all of us. It’s about our democracy. It’s about our republic…. It’s about the ideas and values that make up this great experiment in liberty. Those values and ideas are contained within the Constitution of the United States of America, which is the moral North Star for all of us who have the privilege of wearing the cloth of our nation. 

“It is that document…that gives purpose to our service. It is that document that gives purpose to our lives. It is that document that all of us in uniform swear to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

“That has been true across generations, and we in uniform are willing to die to pass that document off to the next generation. So it is that document that gives ultimate purpose to our death. The motto of our country is ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ from the many, come one. We are one nation under God. We are indivisible, with liberty for all. And the motto of our army, for over 200 years…has been ‘This We’ll Defend,’ and the ‘this’ refers to the Constitution….

“You see, we in uniform are unique…among the world's armies. We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. 

“We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.…

“Those who sacrificed themselves on the altar of freedom in the last two and a half centuries of this country must not have done so in vain. The millions wounded in our nation’s wars did not sacrifice their limbs and shed their blood to see this great experiment in democracy perish from this earth. No. We the United States military will always be true to those that came before us. We will never, under any circumstances, turn our back on our duty….

“From the earliest days, before we were even a nation, our military stood…in the breach, has suffered the crucible of combat, and has stood the watch and defended liberty for all Americans. Each of us signs a blank check to this country to protect our freedom. The blood we spill pays for our freedom of speech. Our blood pays for the right to assemble, our due process, our freedom of the press, our right to vote, and all the other rights and privileges that come with being an American…. 

“We the American people, we the American military, must never turn our back on those that came before us. And we will never turn our back on the Constitution. That is our North Star, that is who we are, and that is why we fight.”

-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Arlington, Virginia, September 29, 2023