What’s so long? Rename these Confederate bases

In this second month of the black history of Joe Biden’s presidency, the commander-in-chief must do what he has long promised his constituents: correct the mistake by renaming American military bases named after Confederate soldiers.

What kind of obstacle? A year has passed since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called their participants in the discussion to the mandate commission to rename the base. Almost six months have passed since the commission The public asked for new base name ideas. Having received thousands of suggestions on base names, a source close to the decision told me this week that the commission is likely to make its recommendations in a few more months.

Meanwhile, this moment passes by the Pentagon. Statues erected across the country in honor of white people who enslaved their loved ones for profit force or decreetheir names have been removed from buildings, streets and schools built at a time when white Americans tried very hard create a fake story serves its purposes.

Angry Americans who want to show their children the famous statue of Robert E. Lee, which for decades guarded the heart of Richmond, Virginia, still able to do so–In the city Museum of Black History. They can then visit the monstrous Tennessee statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, now removed from the state capital and sent to his museum.

What has taken the Pentagon so long?

One of the reasons is ridiculously twisted righteousness on the committee process created by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress. The 2021 defense bill gave Biden three years to make a decision. But there is hope that Biden’s team is not pulling and holding on because of blatantly guerrilla and racist political hype about fake polemics of “critical race theory” or complaints from the right to teach racism in the ranks.

This week, Senate Republican Chief of Staff Jim Inhoff of Oklahoma complained about all the hours spent “promoting his left-wing social program in the military.” Inhoff’s office issued a statement saying the Pentagon at Biden had spent 5,889,082 man-hours, or 672 years, on a total of “training” on things like extremism and climate change. This is a good job, because in fact, the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Millie, has responded. in his letter to Inhof that the 5,359,311 hours spent on extremism alone “averages just over 2 hours per serviceman totaling 2.46 million members and is comparable to other requirements for the recurrent training of the Joint Forces”.

The Republicans’ open attacks on the military for teaching racism and extremism were unpleasant, but they turned out to be toothless. Fox-faced presenters Fox and far-right tweeters pulled out an old book, trying to accuse the left of forcing the military to evolve. But the fact is that there is no real dispute over the names of the bases of the Confederacy more. It’s just a matter of time.

The last rename request is a fairly simple example. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., suggested change the name of Fort Benning in Georgia to honor the sergeant. 1st grade Alvin Cash. In December, Biden posthumously awarded Cash the Medal of Honor. Benning was a Confederate brigadier general who fought to assassinate American soldiers in hopes of keeping slavery in the south. Cash rescued his teammates from a burning Bradley combat vehicle in Iraq, his own uniform tanned, receiving burns that died three weeks later.

Murphy sent her appeal to the official renaming commission, which was set up after Biden took office. Former President Donald Trump, of course, was against renaming the base. This was a sensitive issue that came to the fore in the year of the Black Lives Matter protests, and so the Democrats waited and under Biden’s leadership set up a commission, panel laying with like-minded scholars, including respected names in conservative politics. It was a move similar to how the Obama administration first commissioned a Pentagon study that found that hardly any of the military feared repealing a “don’t ask, don’t talk” policy against US gay troops. This research and the time it took helped cool our heads, reach consensus and create a fait accompli.

The basic names of the Confederation already exist executed‘ed.

At this point, the administration is unnecessarily involved in the performance of the political theater. If this commission was just a rubber stamp designed to create the brilliance of bipartisanship and science, just keep doing it. If it’s a serious panel, we think it’s great, but keep going. With these monuments and memorials, the long-dead racists and traitors of the country had to live long enough.

Another view: the defense ministers are eventually leaving their posts, and this may be the last year in office for Lloyd Austin. He probably won’t be the last black American to hold the post, but he may be the last in a long time. And on the part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are several high-ranking black officers available for the post of chairman.

Military independent newspaper Stars and stripes reported this month what to do. “The Army facilities in question, all in the former Confederate states, were named in the 1910s and 1940s during the Jim Crow era in the south. These are Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort AP Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rocker in Alabama and Fort Hood in Texas.

In Black History Month 2022, Biden must honor America’s true history by erasing the long-established revisionist, racist one. Change the names at U.S. military bases to honor men and women who represent what the military stands for: We, the people.