Frankly, anyone who doesn't join the military because they can't stand bases named after Americans with moral difference to present-day thought is a positive--they obviously lack the mental flexibility necessary to learn tactical and strategic (or political) lessons from historical figures or fights which contain in them people or arguments which differ from a modern-day perspective.
uh.
Civilians that have any say on US military policies are often high-level ones that served. The majority of rules and regulations the military has been made by and approved by the military chain. No civilians are in it unless specific ones, or representing a specific high ranking person. Not civies.
Okay. So there are roughly 500K Active Duty US Army personal. How many do you think actually care about the history of the base names? How many actually care about some of the questionable history of the military? I would say, if you wanna be generous. 5%.
As for recruiting civies. DO you know how many actually care when they join? Honestly none. Either they have always wanted to, a recruiter made it seem worthwhile. Wanted student loan forgiveness, or wanted free college, or anywhere in between.
If a base name offends you, don't join. If something about the militaries past offends you. Dont join. Simple as that.
People have a choice, they aren'tbeing forced to join. If they were, you would have a point
A base renaming committee/review board is already being undertaken, and frankly the base renaming issue might have been part of what turned Milley against Trump. Being against renaming the bases certainly didn't help his polling, either; it was an 'easy win' issue Trump could have used to undercut the Left, but because of the GOP being hesitant to say anything negative about the Confederacy or anything the hurts 'Southern Pride', he didn't.
It's not usually Dems who wave the Stars and Bars at NASCAR events, is it?
Milley had reported talking to a black soldier at Bragg, IIRC, who said he felt uncomfortable and conflicted about being stationed at a military base of named after a man who enslaved his ancestors.
People keep forgetting that the descendants of those slaves have not forgotten who enslaved, or kept as slaves, thier great grandfathers/grandmothers, down to specific names kept in family records. IT IS NOT SOME DISTANT EVENT TO THEM, IT IS FAMILY HISTORY.
Also, civies control the overall high level polices and goal sets of the military via our Civilian government, which the military is subordinate too, and the military's PR directly effects how many are willing to join. The military's PR and budget is also a direct outgrowth of the larger US cultural situation, something they cannot control, because Congress and by extension civies have the purse strings.
If civies, even ones who aren't interested in joining, think the base names should change, and get our elected reps on board with it, there is nothing the leadership of the military or the military culture can do to stop them. The renaming commission or whatever is already a thing doing work, so it's not even a hypothetical I'm speaking of anymore.
Those base names are going to be changing, unless Trump gets back in in 2024, however they may change the names before he could get back in.
The only real question now is what names will they be changed to; I'd prefer escaped slaves and Southern Unionists, so that at least the South can take pride in the base names, for the right reasons this time.
Now to bring this back to the point I was trying to make when I used this as an example.
The US military establishment needs to start doing some serious soul searching about it's image/history, it's relationship with certain demographics, it's place in the US civil society, how it's internal cultural mythos has given it an inflated sence of it's own righteousness and moral authority compared to it's historical record, and what it means to protect the Constitution (not just the DC gov, chain of command, or military's image) over anything else.
The post-WW2 honeymoon wore off during Vietnam, and the post-9/11 period has now seen as a waste of 20 years and thousands of lives for...very little beside killing Bin Laden and enriching the military-industrial complex.
We have wasted a lot of soldiers lives for no real geopolitical or security gain, in multiple wars, because people keep defending the status quo in the military and Washington.
