Secretary of Defense Accepts All of Naming Commission's Recommendations
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has accepted all of the Naming Commission’s recommendations related to military assets that honor/commemorate individuals who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The recommendations include everything from the changing of names of military bases to the removal of the Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The secretary had this to say in his memorandum:
The installations and facilities that our Department operated are more than vital national security assets. They are also powerful symbols of our military, and of course, they are the places where our Service members and their families work and live. The names of these installations and facilities should inspire all those who call them home, fully reflect the history and the values of the United States, and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect….
The Commission has chosen names that echo with honor, patriotism, and history—names that will inspire generations of Service members to defend our democracy and our Constitution.
Despite suggestions to the contrary, the members of the Commission are not radical Left-wing activists. All of them have served this nation honorably. If anything, the implementation of these recommendations reflects the direction that the nation has taken over the past decades regarding public displays that honor the Confederacy.
It is is important to remember that these changes are a response to the decisions made by political and military leaders decades after the war to honor Confederate military leaders. They reflect the values and political agendas of generations of Americans that had no living memory of the Civil War.
In other words, this has nothing to do with erasing history. The question, as the secretary noted in his memo, is about how we choose to remember the past and who we choose to honor.
The Commission’s work raised a very straighforward question: Should our military assets honor individuals who fought to defend our Constitution or those who fought against it?
I know where I stand.
Thanks. I know where I stand, too.
"There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party." - Ulysses S Grant
When I was in basic training in the Army many years ago, I was issued the Initial Entry Training handbook. In among the chapters on rifle marksmanship and land navigation was a brief overview of Army history. This history included dead in every US war. I distinctly remember that they made a point of specifying US dead, and not including Confederate in the total for the Civil War.
This seemed incongruous when I went to my MOS school, which was named after a rebel. I’d taken basic at Ft. Knox, which was named after Washington’s chief of artillery and the first Secretary of War. It made perfect sense that he had a base named after him. My MOS training was done at Ft. Lee, named for Robert E. Lee. It didn’t make sense to me that they’d name this and so many other posts after those who fought against their country and who disavowed their oaths as officers of the US Army.
I’m happy these bases are getting renamed. The Army has many more worthy heroes for these posts and I laud their selections. I just wish George Thomas got one of the Virginia forts. Now, I’d like to see the Kentucky National Guard would adjust its lineage from John Hunt Morgan to a lineage from Union regiments.