WASHINGTON, DC, July 10 – The Chief of the General Staff, General Mark Milley, publicly argued this Thursday, July 9, for a change of name of the American military bases honoring Confederate generals, an idea to which President Donald Trump opposed.
Military bases in the United States are named after Confederate Generals.
Ten army bases, all located in the south of the country, are named after former southerners of the American Civil War, which tore the United States apart from 1861 to 1865 mainly around the issue of slavery.
After the death of George Floyd, a black man killed during his arrest by a white police officer, voices were raised to rename these bases.
These were “political” decisions that led to the baptism of these military bases and political decisions will have to be made again to rename them, General Milley noted before a committee of the Congress.
“What concerns the army is the divisive nature” of these names, he added, recalling that the American army is one of the institutions where minorities are most represented.
In the army, to which all these bases belong, the proportion of black soldiers is more than 20%, even 30% in certain units, underlined General Milley.
Look At Confederate Symbols
“These young soldiers who go to a base like Fort Hood, Fort Bragg or other can remember that this general fought “for a system” which could hold one of their ancestors in slavery”, he said.
“We have to look seriously at the symbols; the Confederate flags, the statues, and the bases,” added the general, who had very harsh words for the southern generals.
The Civil War “was an act of rebellion, it was an act of betrayal against the Union and against the American flag, against the Constitution,” he said. “These officers have betrayed”.
The country’s largest military base, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is named after a former general of the secessionist army, Braxton Bragg, who is best known for losing the Great Battle of Chattanooga in 1863.
That of Fort Hood, Texas, was named in honor of General John Bell Hood, known for having suffered multiple defeats on the battlefield, for which, according to historians, he tended to accuse his subordinates.
When Pentagon chief Mark Esper said in early June that he was “open” to the idea of renaming these bases, Donald Trump stressed that these bases were now part of the “American heritage” and insisted that his government would not study “Not even” this possibility.
