Despite objections from Congressional Republicans, the US Army will remove a monument to Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetary next week, another move in its continuing effort to rid honors for secessionists from its ranks, the Washington Post reports.
According to the cemetery’s website, the Confederate Monument, in Section 16, was erected in 1914 in an area designated for Confederate veterans who were reinterred there after President William McKinley called a “Peace Jubilee” in the days after the end of the Spanish-American War. (The website’s description of the monument has an explanation for those of you wondering about why Arlington, placed on the site of Lee’s former plantation in an act of spite against the Confederate general, has a monument to Confederates.)
The memorial’s removal comes as the Army scrubs the names of Confederate leaders from its posts and bans displays of the Confederate flags within its ranks. Last week, more than 40 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin telling him, the first Black man to hold that post, “Who do you think you are?” that he did not have the authority to remove the memorial from the cemetery managed by the Pentagon. Human-sloth hybrid Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill in the House protects from removal any memorial or statue to a Confederate on federal land.