Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a four-star general who served under former President George W. Bush, said Sunday he supports the push to rename Army bases named after Confederate leaders.
“I would rename the bases. We really hadn’t that about it a few years ago, now with Black Lives Matter and all the issues that are before us I think it’s a good idea to rename the 10 bases in the U.S. Army that are named after Confederates,” Powell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Powell said he did his training at Fort Benning in Georgia, named after a Confederate figure, and it never struck him to consider renaming the base or the others, but he said he supports Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s comments that the military should consider renaming the bases.
{mosads}“I fully support what Gen. Milley is doing. I hope he doesn’t get any difficulty with it with the rest of the administration, but I think this is something we should do and we should do it as quickly as we can,” Powell added.
Last week Milley said young African American soldiers at Army bases named after Confederates “can be reminded that that general fought for an institution of slavery that may have enslaved one of their ancestors.”
President Trump on Sunday said he “might” veto a defense spending bill because it includes a provision to remove the names of Confederate leaders from Army bases.
“I might,” Trump told Fox News’s Chris Wallace during an interview that aired Sunday morning. “Yeah, I might.”