Name Change Nonsense

Change is in the air – and some Republicans are trying to fight the wind. A number of US Army bases are, oddly enough, named after Confederate generals. Yet all too many Republicans in Congress aren’t particularly interested in altering the present state of affairs.

In fact, President Trump has even threatened to veto a defense spending bill if it mandates that certain military installations receive new names. Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana has taken the opposite tact: he wants to rename all army bases; Senator Kennedy wants to honor service members who earned the medal of honor, and hopes to avoid singling out the south. A service-wide naming adventure is quite unnecessary, and would also prove to be more than a little expensive.

Conservatives who oppose renaming army bases for historical and cultural reasons are missing the boat; it is time for most (and probably all) of the Confederate names to be retired. In a diverse society it is inappropriate to have bases named after individuals who were unable to recognize the humanity of all Americans.

But before an imaginative progressive even makes the daft suggestion, the new base names should not be politically correct alpha-numeric reference numbers. US military history is replete with the names of good men and women that deserve to have an army base (or a navy ship) named after them. Here are three suggestions that deserve serious consideration.

• Rename Fort Lee (Virginia) after the first African American to earn the medal of honor, William Carney.
• Rename Fort Hood (Texas) after Hiroshi Miyamura, a Korean War medal of honor recipient.
• Rename Fort Benning (Georgia) after medal of honor recipient George T. Sakato (World War II).

To paraphrase a remarkable professor’s amusing expression, it doesn’t take the brain of a duck to see that times change. It is now time for Republicans and conservatives to grow up a little – and vote for the future that is already here. President Trump can join them, or not. A myopic presidential veto would surely be theatrical – and probably drive the final nail into his political coffin.