The LuLac Edition #4,334, June 24th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Our “Write On Wednesday” logo.

This week we give you an opinion on the renaming of military bases in the country from Times Shamrock.

IT'S TIME TO RENAME MILITARY BASES

George Floyd’s murder while in Minneapolis police custody has ignited a national movement for police reforms and long overdue national introspection of the nation’s racist history and culture.
In many Southern cities, public officials finally are removing monuments to Confederate figure who attempted to expand slavery, killing hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
The Navy and Marine Corps have announced that Confederate battle flags and other paraphernalia glorifying the Confederacy no longer will be allowed on bases and ships.
The Army, however, has said it has no plans to rename 10 Southern posts that were named for Confederate generals, invoking the fantasy that the names are in the cause of reconciliation.
How does the naming of a Virginia National Guard base for Confederate Gen. George Pickett — who lost more than half of his soldiers at Gettysburg and hanged 22 Union soldiers in North Carolina — constitute reconciliation?
The base namings were part of a broad movement after the failure of Reconstruction and the dominance of the Jim Crow era to glorify the Confederacy and its warped values.
Today, 17% of male military personnel and 30% of women are African-Americans; another 17.3% of men and 20.5% of women in the military are Hispanic. Assigning minority members to bases named for Confederate traitors is bizarre and demeaning.
Congress shouldn’t wait for the Army. It should mandate renaming Fort Pickett and:
n Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of Airborne and special operations forces and one of the world’s largest military bases; named for Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, a training base named for Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill.
Fort Lee, Virginia, named for Robert E. Lee, whose name also should be removed from Lee Barracks at West Point.
Fort Gordon, Georgia, home of the Army Cyber Command and Signal Corps, named for Confederate Gen. John Brown Gordon.
Fort Benning, Georgia, named for Confederate Gen. Henry Benning.
Fort Rucker, Alabama, named for Confederate Col. Edmund Rucker.
Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, named for Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.
Fort Polk, Louisiana, named for Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk.
Fort Hood, Texas, the Army’s largest base for armored units, named for Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood.