Milley calls for ‘hard look’ at renaming bases

WASHINGTON >> The top military official in the United States called Thursday for taking “a hard look” at changing the names of Army bases honoring Confederate officers who had fought against the Union during the Civil War, disagreeing with President Donald Trump and further exposing a divide between the military and the president.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Trump’s senior military adviser, told a House hearing that the base names had become an issue of “divisiveness.”

Ten Army bases that honor Confederate generals who fought to defend the slaveholding South have been the focus of a growing movement for change.

“There is no place in our armed forces for manifestations or symbols of racism, bias or discrimination,” Milley Milley said.

“The Confederacy, the American Civil War, was fought, and it was an act of rebellion,” he said. “It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution. Those officers turned their back on their oath.”

Milley had warned White House officials this month that he planned to give his unvarnished opinion to Congress if the base issue came up, an administration official said. But his assessment was nonetheless likely to anger the president, who has made clear his disdain for both the waves of demonstrations for racial justice that swept the country last month and the calls to rename the Confederate bases.

The 10 bases named after Confederate generals are all in the South: Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Lee in Virginia, Camp Beauregard and Fort Polk in Louisiana and Fort Rucker in Alabama.