By: Colonel Richard H. Black (USA Ret.)
Critical race theory has become a dominant feature of American political life, and history is squarely in its crosshairs. Anarchist mobs angrily demolished monuments which, for generations, fostered quiet reflection. BLM, Antifa and their fellow travelers seek to expunge all vestiges of our complex history, supplanting them with simplistic Marxist ideology.
Democrats drafted the National Defense Authorization Act to require that military installations be stripped of the names of men associated with the confederacy. DoD is implementing that disgraceful policy now.
The measure was an attempt to placate those committing racial violence. Its passage reveals how little regard some in Congress have for the men and women whose service began on those posts and whose personal histories are inexorably tied to them.
Millions trained at places like Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and Ft. Benning. Hundreds of thousands left these bases to fight and die overseas.
Fort Bragg is home to the famed 82nd Airborne Division that fought in the Meuse-Argonne, at Sicily, at Normandy, in the Battle of the Bulge, the Tet Offensive and in wars across the Middle East.
General Bragg does not define Ft. Bragg; the 82d Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps do. The name �Ft. Bragg� personifies those illustrious units and the courage and fortitude they exemplify. For a hundred years, descendants of elite paratroopers have regaled their offspring with hair-raising tales of battlefield bravery that began at Ft. Bragg.
Renaming military bases dims the memory of soldiers who served there. It rewards leftist hate, looting, arson, and murder. Until the racial dust up, few soldiers knew anything about General Bragg. I served for 32 years without knowing he was a civil war figure. But I knew one thing for certain: the name �Ft. Bragg� embodied courage, valor, and self-sacrifice.
The names of all of these bases are woven into the personal histories of America�s veterans. Their removal is an act of hatred toward veterans. The left erases language it dislikes, and it doesn�t stop with renaming bases.� It permeates things from football teams to pancake syrup, even redefining what boys and girls are.
Today, the Biden administration demands that veteran yield their personal legacies to the very Marxists they once fought in battle. They intend to purge the names Fort Hood, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort Benning, Fort Gordon, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee, and Fort Pickett.�
Millions trained at those bases and left to die or be crippled in battle. They asked only a shred of remembrance in return. But now, Democrats intend to rip away that pittance of recollection in order to pander to woke mobs that helped elect them.
How shameful that American veterans are cast aside so that anti-patriots can rewrite history. Republicans must pledge to reverse this abhorrent decision when they retake Congress in November and restore the names of our military bases.
