On the Atlantic, David Petraeus signs a piece titled Rename the Rebel Forts.
He talks in favor of the idea of renaming the bases named for the confederate generals. It seems that for someone who had his whole career in the military and had learned a great deal of military history, it took a long time to get to this:
It would be years before I reflected on the individuals for whom these posts were named. While on active duty, in fact, I never thought much about these men—about the nature of their service during the Civil War, their postwar activities (which in John Brown Gordon’s case likely included a leadership role in the first Ku Klux Klan), the reasons they were honored, or the timing of the various forts’ dedications. Nor did I think about the messages those names sent to the many African Americans serving on these installations—messages that should have been noted by all of us. Like many aspects of the military, the forts themselves were so shrouded in tradition that everything about them seemed rock solid, time tested, immortal. Their names had taken on new layers of meaning that allowed us to ignore the individuals for whom they were named.
BOLD mine
I have never been in the military. I came to this country as an adult. I live in GA, site of Stone Mountain. So I came here with very little knowledge of the US history especially the civil war. “Gone with the wind” was my most likely impression of the war. However it did not take me my whole life to understand that rebel generals were traitors.
But if the Generals who NEVER thought about what these men represented are ready to open their minds and publicly acknowledge the sad irony of naming the army bases after traitors, I guess later is better than never.