Misplaced Honor: US bases named after rebel mediocrities

[jimmy olsen]

I agree, rename them all! 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/misplaced-honor.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1&

Misplaced Honor
By JAMIE MALANOWSKI
Published: May 25, 2013

IN the complex and not entirely complete process of reconciliation after the Civil War, honoring the dead with markers, tributes and ceremonies has played a crucial role. Some of these gestures, like Memorial Day, have been very successful. The practice of decorating the graves arose in many towns, north and south, some even before the war had ended. This humble idea quickly spread throughout the country, and the recognition of common loss helped reconcile North and South.

A series revisits America's most perilous period — using diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

But other gestures had a more a political edge. Equivalence of experience was stretched to impute an equivalence of legitimacy. The idea that "now, we are all Americans" served to whitewash the actions of the rebels. The most egregious example of this was the naming of United States Army bases after Confederate generals.

Today there are at least 10 of them. Yes — the United States Army maintains bases named after generals who led soldiers who fought and killed United States Army soldiers; indeed, who may have killed such soldiers themselves.

Only a couple of the officers are famous. Fort Lee, in Virginia, is of course named for Robert E. Lee, a man widely respected for his integrity and his military skills. Yet, as the documentarian Ken Burns has noted, he was responsible for the deaths of more Army soldiers than Hitler and Tojo. John Bell Hood, for whom Fort Hood, Tex., is named, led a hard-fighting brigade known for ferocious straight-on assaults. During these attacks, Hood lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga, but he delivered victories, at least for a while. Later, when the gallant but tactically inflexible Hood launched such assaults at Nashville and Franklin, Tenn., his armies were smashed.

Fort Benning in Georgia is named for Henry Benning, a State Supreme Court associate justice who became one of Lee's more effective subordinates. Before the war, this ardent secessionist inflamed fears of abolition, which he predicted would inevitably lead to black governors, juries, legislatures and more. "Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that?" Benning wrote. "We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination."

Another installation in Georgia, Fort Gordon, is named for John B. Gordon, one of Lee's most dependable commanders in the latter part of the war. Before Fort Sumter, Gordon, a lawyer, defended slavery as "the hand-maid of civil liberty." After the war, he became a United States senator, fought Reconstruction, and is generally thought to have headed the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. He "may not have condoned the violence employed by Klan members," says his biographer, Ralph Lowell Eckert, "but he did not question or oppose it when he felt it was justified."

Not all the honorees were even good generals; many were mediocrities or worse. Braxton Bragg, for whom Fort Bragg in North Carolina is named, was irascible, ineffective, argumentative with subordinates and superiors alike, and probably would have been replaced before inflicting half the damage that he caused had he and President Jefferson Davis not been close friends. Fort Polk in Louisiana is named after Rev. Leonidas Polk, who abandoned his military career after West Point for the clergy. He became an Episcopal bishop, owned a large plantation and several hundred slaves, and joined the Confederate Army when the war began. His frequently disastrous service ended when he was split open by a cannonball. Fort Pickett in Virginia is named after the flamboyant George Pickett, whose division was famously decimated at Gettysburg. Pickett was accused of war crimes for ordering the execution of 22 Union prisoners; his defense was that they had all deserted from the Confederate Army, and he was not tried.

Other Confederate namesakes include Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana. All these installations date from the buildups during the world wars, and naming them in honor of a local military figure was a simple choice. But that was a time when the Army was segregated and our views about race more ignorant. Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?

Changing the names of these bases would not mean that we can't still respect the service of those Confederate leaders; nor would it mean that we are imposing our notions of morality on people of a long-distant era. What it would mean is that we're upholding our own convictions. It's time to rename these bases. Surely we can find, in the 150 years since the Civil War, 10 soldiers whose exemplary service not only upheld our most important values, but was actually performed in the defense of the United States.

[CountDeMoney]

I concur.  Honoring Confederate generals have no place in today's Army, and has to be cleared away by the hand of God like the Jews of old.

And while they're at at: rename New Orleans as New Butler, and ATL as Sherman International Airport.

[The Brain]

Did they all formally resign from the US Army? Just checking.

[11B4V]

I agree, rename them all! 

  Shut up.

[Monoriu]

It is easy to get rid of names, but hard to agree on what should replace them.  Beware that the new names may be worse

[Viking]

tralala... Ft Sherman, Ft Sheridan, Ft Lincoln, Ft Grant (every confederate state needs a Ft Grant), Ft Meade....

When I think of it the proper response to the Republican goal of naming something in every state after Reagan is to name something in every state after the most loyal Republican of all time, Grant.

[The Brain]

OR you can just say that they are now named after other people with the same name. Gordon would be Chinese Gordon, Benning could be Annette (fuck spelling) etc etc. Problem solved.

[Viking]

OR you can just say that they are now named after other people with the same name. Gordon would be Chinese Gordon, Benning could be Annette (fuck spelling) etc etc. Problem solved.

Ft. King, Ft. Jackson, Ft. Shabaaz, Ft. Sharpton, Ft. Obama ?

[The Brain]

OR you can just say that they are now named after other people with the same name. Gordon would be Chinese Gordon, Benning could be Annette (fuck spelling) etc etc. Problem solved.

Ft. King, Ft. Jackson, Ft. Shabaaz, Ft. Sharpton, Ft. Obama ?

What's the pattern?

[Caliga]

Would we have a Fort Rommel?

[Viking]

but, on the topic of non-treasonous legitimate and even honourable opponents.

what about a Ft Pontiac or a Ft Tecumseh or a Ft Geronimo?

[CountDeMoney]

Ft. Michael, Ft. Randy, Ft. Jermaine, Ft. Tito, Ft. Marlon.

[CountDeMoney]

but, on the topic of non-treasonous legitimate and even honourable opponents.

what about a Ft Pontiac or a Ft Tecumseh or a Ft Geronimo?

Man, the Native American lobby still has kittens over military hardware referencing their tribal names.  You don't want to give them a place to demonstrate permanently.

[Agelastus]

What a joke of an article.

Many of the men at those bases are the descendants of the men who "killed United States soldiers"; why shouldn't the bases be named after the men who led their ancestors? Perhaps you can argue about the suitability of some of the names, but the principle (that the names of such people can be used) shouldn't be touched.

Would you say the same if citizens of the United States of Native American descent started a campaign to get Fort Custer and the rest of the bases named for "Indian Fighters" changed?

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And as an aside, I thought Bragg's reputation as a general had been largely rehabilitated over the last few years?

[Viking]

but, on the topic of non-treasonous legitimate and even honourable opponents.

what about a Ft Pontiac or a Ft Tecumseh or a Ft Geronimo?

Man, the Native American lobby still has kittens over military hardware referencing their tribal names.  You don't want to give them a place to demonstrate permanently.

and sports franchies and cars...

they are going to have to get over this.. Indian names are cool. Get over it.