Trump quashes possibility of renaming US bases honouring Confederates

US military bases honouring Civil War Confederate leaders will not be renamed, US President Donald Trump said Wednesday, pushing back on pressure to rid public places of monuments glorifying the once pro-slavery south.

"These monumental and very powerful bases have become part of a great American heritage and a history of winning, victory and freedom," Trump said in a tweet.

"My administration will not even consider renaming these magnificent and fabled military installations. Our history as the greatest nation in the world will not be tampered with," he wrote.

'Absolute non-starter' for Trump

The importance given by Trump to keeping installations like Fort Bragg in North Carolina –– America's largest military base –– as they are was underlined by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany reading out the tweet and giving printed copies of it to reporters.

She called the push for change an "absolute non-starter".

Demands to rename such installations have gathered momentum in the wake of mass protests across the US against police brutality and racism against back Americans that were sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody.

Bases and statues

Ten bases honouring generals from the secessionist south, which lost the civil war and its struggle to preserve slavery, are in the spotlight. 

Other sites include Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Benning in Georgia.

Anger from anti-racism protesters has also focused on statues of southern civil war heroes, the Confederate flag and statues of explorer Christopher Columbus, who opened the Americas to European settlement.

A statue of the navigator was beheaded in Boston, police said Wednesday. Another was toppled in Virginia.

And late Wednesday, footage from NBS affiliate WWBT showed a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis lying in the street in Richmond, Virginia after it was torn down from its pedestal.

Similar attacks on statues of historical figures seen by activists as celebrating racism and slavery have taken place in Britain and Belgium.

On Wednesday, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said 11 statues of Confederate soldiers or officials should be removed from US Capitol.

"Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals" of American democracy and freedom, the top Democrat in Congress wrote to a bipartisan committee.

Defence Secretary Mark Esper had indicated earlier this week that he'd be at least open to a "bipartisan discussion" on base renaming. 

Heroes?

The Navy, meanwhile, said that it was outlawing Confederate flags, still popular in southern states, aboard all its ships and other facilities.

"The order is meant to ensure unit cohesion, preserve good order and discipline, and uphold the Navy's core values of honour, courage and commitment," Admiral Michael Gilday said. 

On Wednesday, stock-car racing company NASCAR announced it too was banning Confederate flags because they run "contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment".

Winners or losers?

The logic to Trump's declaration that the southern generals' names represent US "winning" habits has been questioned, given that Confederate leaders were defeated in their devastating war of rebellion against the country that today's military serves.

Retired army general and former CIA director David Petraeus, who himself trained several times at Fort Bragg, called the generals "traitors."

"The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the US, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable," he wrote in a piece published in The Atlantic magazine on Tuesday.

In addition, "most of the Confederate generals for whom our bases are named were undistinguished, if not incompetent, battlefield commanders", he said.

Who else gets banned?

McEnany said that Trump sees the issue as part of a broader conservative complaint against efforts to challenge long unquestioned views of American history, including the painful legacy of slavery.

"Where do you draw the line here?" she asked, listing revered early US presidents who were slave owners – though long before the civil war was fought to decide whether the practice should continue or not.

"Should George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison be erased from history?" she asked, also bringing up the decision of HBO Max to temporarily remove the 1939 civil war romance "Gone with the Wind" from its streaming site.

According to McEnany, renaming bases would be unpatriotic given that they have been staging grounds for many US army deployments and wars.

"To suggest that these forts were somehow inherently racist and their name needs to be changed is a complete disrespect to the men and women" who deployed, she said.