Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to restore the name of the U.S. Army’s special forces base near Fayetteville, N.C., to Fort Bragg would be amusing if it weren’t a waste of tax dollars and, ultimately, destructive to the military’s mission.
Hegseth and his boss in the White House argue the base’s name should never have been changed to Fort Liberty three years ago. That came as part of a Pentagon initiative to strip divisive references to Confederate generals from military bases around the country.
“I never called it Fort Liberty because it wasn’t Fort Liberty,” Hegseth said. “It’s Fort Bragg.”
Even for an administration (first iteration and second) packed with people sorely lacking in self-awareness, this call-it-what-it’s-always-been declaration is rather astounding.
It’s President Donald Trump, after all, who insists on changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, even though it’s been the Gulf of Mexico since at least the 16th century.