Bacevich Op-Ed Encourages Renaming Army Posts Named for Confederate Leaders
Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling on the United States Army to rename military installations that bear the names of Confederate generals.
In light of George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing nationwide protests, Bacevich and co-author Danny Sjursen, Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point, argue that the “Army should take the opportunity to end this offensive tradition and ensure the namesakes of Army installations express the courage, fidelity and moral awareness that Americans expect of their soldiers.” The two go on to offer ten names of figures from across military history whose names would be more fitting names for military installations.
An excerpt:
The United States must be the only nation in the world that names military posts after traitors. The police killing of George Floyd has brought renewed attention to this absurd practice, in which U.S. Army and Army National Guard installations across the South bear the names of secessionist generals, most of them West Pointers, who fought to uphold slavery during the Civil War.
The moment to end this practice has arrived…Far better to honor those who while serving modeled virtues that can inspire current and future soldiers.
The full op-ed can be found here.
Andrew Bacevich’s essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and general interest publications including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs,Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers. In 2004, Bacevich was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. You can read more about him here.