Thanks to a bipartisan measure included in the 2020 National Defense
Authorization Act, all iconography glorifying the Confederacy at
military installations in the U.S.

Defenders of Confederate symbols distort history to sow division

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By Rivka Maizlish   Read the full piece here

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Thanks to a bipartisan measure included in the 2020 National Defense
Authorization Act, all iconography glorifying the Confederacy at
military installations in the U.S. - memorials, statues,
building names and other symbols - must be removed by Jan. 1.

This requirement is federal law.

The military has already made progress toward its goal, changing the
names of bases that honored traitors and recently planning to remove
the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Now opponents of these changes are attempting to distort and
misrepresent history, using propaganda that pro-Confederates have
employed since the end of the Civil War. The most prominent and
dangerous Confederate propaganda erases slavery as the Confederate
cause and promotes the idea that the Confederacy somehow stands for
"unity" in American memory.

In a recent Wall Street Journal commentary

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, Jim Webb, a former U.S. senator from Virginia and also a former U.S.
Navy secretary, pulled out both tricks in his defense of
Arlington's Confederate memorial.

We must correct the historical record and reflect on the real sources
of unity and division in our country.

False Unity

According to Webb, the memorial at Arlington was part of President
William McKinley's project of national unity, something he
began, Webb claims, by appointing former Confederate Gen. Joseph
Wheeler in the Spanish-American War. 

It is true that McKinley appointed Wheeler. It is also true that
during the war, while leading troops into battle, Wheeler -
apparently forgetting where he was - cried

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, "Let's go, boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the
run again."

So much for unity.

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