Don’t blame Trump for what the Naming Commission did
Stars and Stripes has announced that thanks to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the Reconciliation (a.k.a. Confederate) Monument that was callously removed from the Arlington National Cemetery in 2024 will be returned to its pedestal by 2027. Although stored at a secure Defense Department facility in Virginia, its return won’t be immediate because it needs about a $10 million refurbishment due to rough handling during its removal.
The statue’s removal was ordered by the “Naming Commission” proposed by Congress in 2021 to strip military bases of Confederate leader names. The monument in Arlington National Cemetery was the committee’s last casualty, and its removal was approved in their third and final report issued September 19, 2022. It was removed despite earlier political promises that monuments in cemeteries would not be disturbed.
It is ironic that Arlington in northern Virginia belonged to Robert E. Lee, yet Stars and Stripes noted that “Confederate soldiers were barred from interment... until Congress passed a bill in 1900 designating a special area for their remains. In 1906, the United Daughters of the Confederacy began the effort to erect a memorial in the Confederate section.” The monument was endorsed by no less than three U.S. presidents and finally installed in 1914. It is located in the center of Section 16, surrounded by nearly 500 Confederate soldiers, sailors, and civilians including its internationally renowned sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, himself a Confederate veteran.
I was raised in a career…
Looters and moochers, mostly mutants and idiotic spiteful white women.