ANNAPOLIS, Md. — President Obama used a commencement speech before Naval Academy graduates on Friday to urge them to follow an “inner compass” and to warn that rising numbers of sexual assaults in the military threatened to erode America’s faith in the armed forces.
The president praised the military as the nation’s “most trusted institution,” but took note of the recent cases in which service members have been charged with sexual assault. He said those people “threaten the trust and discipline which makes our military strong.”
“We need your honor, that inner compass that guides you,” the president said, essentially using the platform at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium to scold those who have strayed from that direction recently. “Even more than physical courage, we need your moral courage — the strength to do what’s right, even when it’s unpopular.”
Mr. Obama delivered his remarks under cloudy, drizzly skies to 1,047 graduates, most of whom will receive commissions as officers in the Navy, the Marine Corps or the Air Force. Before the president spoke, Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, said jokingly that the graduates had completed a journey “you began once you turned down your acceptance to West Point.”
It was the second time Mr. Obama had addressed the graduates of the academy, and he was welcomed with enthusiastic cheers as he congratulated them on becoming the military’s latest officers. He echoed his remarks from a day earlier, telling the graduates that they enter the services at a time of transition in the war against terrorism.
“We still need to conduct precise, targeted strikes against terrorists before they kill our citizens,” he said, noting the end of the Iraq war and next year’s expected end of the American role in Afghanistan. But he said, “we need to stay ready for the whole range of threats.”
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