Army bases aren’t defined by their Confederate namesakes

President Trump on Wednesday ruled out renaming U.S. Army bases such as Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, and Fort Hood, which are named after Confederate generals. Trumps says this because those bases have a…

Although I wish the president would show more sensitivity for the legitimate moral debate here, I’m in broad agreement. These bases are no longer defined by those they were named after.

That matters, because these bases are not named after soldiers who stand as markers of our best.

Yes, John Hood (Fort Hood) was a great battlefield commander, but he served on the wrong side. Braxton Bragg was neither a good commander nor a servant of the Union. And Henry Benning of Fort Benning fame?

Well, addressing the Virginia Convention in February 1861, Benning warned that the abolition of slavery would mean “we will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa. … Suppose they elevated Fred Douglass, your escaped slave, to the presidency? And there are hundreds of thousands at the North who would do this for the purpose of humiliating and insulting the South. What would be your position in such an event? I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that.”

As it turned out, President Barack Obama came to be, and pestilence and famine did not follow. So too have many black Americans worn the Army’s uniform and served the nation Benning instead chose to fight.

Black Americans such as William Thompson, whose Medal of Honor citation for service in Korea records how “although hit repeatedly by grenade fragments and small-arms fire, he resisted all efforts of his comrades to induce him to withdraw, steadfastly remained at his machine gun and continued to deliver deadly, accurate fire until mortally wounded by an enemy grenade.”

Black Americans such as Riley Pitts, who was awarded the Medal of Honor after jumping on a grenade, which failed to detonate, but was then killed after leading his men in an assault under withering Viet Cong fire.

These are great Americans. Ones worthy of having their names put to new forts in the future. Perhaps in Poland?

But the ultimate point holds. These bases are no longer known for those they were named after but rather for their places as the homes of great fighting units.

Fort Bragg stands for units such as Delta Force and the 82nd Airborne Division, elements of the U.S. Army that serve as the nation’s tip of the spear across the world. Their recent service includes Afghanistan and Iraq, where each unit has lost many personnel in the face of the enemy. In turn, Fort Bragg is a place to be revered. A place where families have chosen to have their loved ones rest in peace, including Glenn English, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam.

Fort Hood, similarly, stands for units such as the gloried 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Cavalry Regiment. And Fort Benning is home to the Army Rangers and schools the nation’s newest soldiers in the art of infantry, airborne, and armored assault. If America is forced to fight another major land war, it will be thanks to those who serve on these bases that we prevail.

In that sense, these places aren’t just bases for operational units, they are testaments to America at its best: the willingness of young soldiers and veterans, such as my 95-year-old grandfather (who served at both Fort Benning and Fort Bragg), to answer the nation’s call. And if necessary, give their life, limb, or minds to the nation’s cause.

So, yes, Benning was a racist idiot. But then there are Americans like Ruppert Sargent. Sargent, a black American, elected to serve his nation and passed out of Fort Benning’s Officer Candidate School as a second lieutenant. Not even 30 years old, Sargent was killed in action in Vietnam after jumping on a grenade to save two of his men.

Today, it is men and women like Sargent who define Fort Benning, not Henry Benning.