THE RENAMING OF MILITARY BASES - WHAT IS PAST IS NOT PROLOGUE
Articles
Mon, 10/17/2022 - 11:00am
The Renaming of Military Bases - What is Past is Not Prologue
By Hy Rothstein
“What is past is prologue" is a quotation by William Shakespeare from his play The Tempest. In contemporary use the phrase means that history sets the context for the present. This phrase does not apply to the decision to rename U.S. military bases. While Congressional and military leaders may have good reasons to take these actions today, we are very fortunate that the leaders of the post-Civil War period did not think like today’s leaders. If they did, it is very likely that the country would have been racked by insurgency and the Union would have not survived after winning the war.
Calls to rename military bases and other military assets began in earnest after the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the ensuing national reckoning on racial injustice. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act called for a commission to identify military assets that commemorate the Confederacy. As a result of the commission’s report to Congress, the services are moving to rename nine Army posts, two Navy ships, and remove or modify a host of monuments and tributes to the Confederacy.
History means more than simply what happened in the past. The full story behind the history reveals the truth. Equally as important, understanding past decisions requires one to walk in the shoes of those decision makers, to think in time. What we know and feel today about slavery is very different than what people knew and felt in 1860. Ignoring the story behind what was done more than a century ago and holding past leaders to contemporary standards is mistaken. Today’s standards will likely not hold in the next century either.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/renaming-military-bases-what-past-not-prologue
