Editorial: Restoring old names to military installations does more harm than good

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press Editorial Board, The Virginian-Pilot on Feb 27, 2025

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to restore the name of the U.S. Army’s special forces base near Fayetteville, N.C., to Fort Bragg would be amusing if it weren’t a waste of tax dollars and, ultimately, destructive to the military’s mission.

Hegseth and his boss in the White House argue the base’s name should never have been changed to Fort Liberty three years ago. That came as part of a Pentagon initiative to strip divisive references to Confederate generals from military bases around the country.

“I never called it Fort Liberty because it wasn’t Fort Liberty,” Hegseth said. “It’s Fort Bragg.”

Even for an administration (first iteration and second) packed with people sorely lacking in self-awareness, this call-it-what-it’s-always-been declaration is rather astounding.

It’s President Donald Trump, after all, who insists on changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, even though it’s been the Gulf of Mexico since at least the 16th century. He even barred an Associated Press reporter from covering some White House events because the news organization is justifiably sticking with the Gulf of Mexico.

Just as renaming the gulf is a gibe at Trump’s perceived archenemy Mexico, reverting to Fort Bragg looks a lot like retaliation against one of his critics, his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who led a push for Congress to shed “manifestations or symbols of racism, bias or discrimination” in names of military installations. (This, at least, is less dangerous than Trump’s recent decision to pull security detail for Milley, despite Iran’s threats to harm the general.)

The removal of Confederate names from nine Army bases, finalized under the Biden administration, included three in Virginia — Fort Lee near Petersburg, Fort A.P. Hill near Bowling Green, and Fort Pickett near Blackstone — and also encompassed five Army landing craft vessels, including two in Hampton Roads. The cost of all the renaming was about $65 million.

Changing Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg will cost an estimated $6 million, admittedly a fraction of the Pentagon budget, and restoring the old names of the other bases — as Hegseth and Trump have indicated they will do — may not cost much more.

But it’s an unnecessary expense at a time with Elon Musk and his team are ransacking government computers and claiming to be making massive spending cuts that even include programs that distributes food and medical supplies (and American goodwill) to war-torn and impoverished countries vulnerable to Russia, China and others hostile to the United States.

Moreover, the damage to the military’s reputation and its ability to carry out its mission can’t be calculated so easily in monetary terms.

As Milley and many other military leaders have pointed out, the names are divisive and send an unwelcoming message to Black service members and veterans and to all people of color in our armed forces.

The original names— honoring traitors and slave-holders — were from the start a direct insult to the Black soldiers who risked their lives for a society that discriminated against them. When the bases were created during World Wars I and II, the government turned to rural open land in the South and, in deference to Jim Crow laws of that era, accepted requests by local leaders to honor Confederates.

Hegseth says this version of Fort Bragg, however, doesn’t pay homage to Gen. Braxton Bragg but Pfc. 1st Class Roland L. Bragg, who stole a Nazi ambulance during WWII and raced four wounded men through enemy fire to an allied hospital. He was later awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for exceptional courage.

Roland Bragg, unlike the previous honoree, was inarguably a hero whose memory deserves recognition. But raising his name now — to serve in a wasteful and destructive culture war long after his death — is a deeply cynical move unbefitting the presidency and the Defense Department.

He fought for liberty and the fort’s name should have continued to honor that principle.

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