Putting money on the table that at West Point tomorrow, Trump will revive

[no_hypocrisy]

the push to strip West Point of Robert E. Lee. It was initiated in 2017.

He'll reimage Lee as a true Army officer, a true patriot, a true American.

-snip-

Who was Lee? Among other things, he was a brilliant engineer, finished second in his West Point class while not earning a single demerit in four years. He served in the US Army for 32 years, including combat in the Mexican American War. In 1861, he resigned his US Army commission and fought for the Confederacy, eventually becoming General in Chief of Confederate Forces. In 1975, Congress passed a resolution reinstating Lee’s full rights as a U.S. citizen. In the resolution, Congress noted that “in order to further the goal of reunion of this country,” Lee had applied to the President in 1865 for amnesty, a pardon and restoration of his rights as a citizen and that General Ulysses S. Grant supported it. In signing that legislation, President Gerald Ford quoted from a letter Lee wrote to a former Confederate soldier concerning his signing the Oath of Allegiance: “‘This war, being at an end, the Southern States having laid down their arms, and the questions at issue between them and the Northern States having been decided, I believe it to be the duty of everyone to unite in the restoration of the country and the reestablishment of peace and harmony.’” That is just part of Lee’s story and what he brought to the U.S. military. It is obviously mixed with his decision to command the Confederate army in the first place in the South’s quest to save slavery.

-more-

https://www.justsecurity.org/44479/tangled-history-confederate-generals-west-point-army-robert-e-lee/

This article discusses removing names of places named after Confederate generals.

[raging moderate]

1. Yes, Lee was True Blue (sarcasm).

Oh, no. Wait a moment. Lee was NOT True Blue. That was Ulysses S. Grant. Also True Blue: George S. Barnes, a 16 year old Union drummer boy who was slowly tortured to death in a Reb POW camp. Also True Blue: a bunch of other young caucasians who fought in the Union army, and died to free the slaves. Also True Blue: a bunch of fine young Black Union army men who also fought, who were also tortured to death, or shot on sight, for having the temerity to try to rescue little children (etc.) from the horror that was slavery.

[sop]

2. Had all this moldy Civil War paraphernalia not been adopted by a bunch of racist, white nationalist,

nazi thugs as their rallying symbols, monuments to Lee and other confederate figures could have been mostly forgotten, consigned to the dustbin of history, viewed as part of a painful era in America's past. However, when modern-day racists and white nationalists revere and proudly display symbols of shitty, awful things like the Confederacy, slavery, Jim Crow and the klan, opponents will react strongly.

It's gotten to the point one can’t imagine a context in which the term “southern heritage” doesn't conjure up images of white hoods and slaver flags, and those who claim Civil War symbols are simply "southern heritage" are increasingly seen as white supremacists. If certain conservatives are sincere these symbols are "just part of our southern heritage," they should stop waving them around in places where racists and nazis gather, like Charlottesville's Unite the Right riot and Trump's Nuremberg rallies.

[Laelth]

4. Hear! Hear!

I don’t object to the monuments, themselves. I object to the ideology of the people who currently rally around them.

-Laelth

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Benedict Arnold had an excellent record as businessman and military leader until...

he ran afoul of Horatio Gates, who stole full credit for Saratoga.

Should we honor Arnold for his contributions before that one really, really bad decision?