Dear President Obama: Please Don't Honor the Arlington Confederate Monument

[IndianaGreen]

Reagan's obscene visit to an SS cemetery in 1985, prompted by the likes of Pat Buchanan, is on a par with the racist tradition of honoring the enemies of the United States at a Confederate cemetery.

Text of Letter to President Obama

Scolars Ask President to Rethink Sending Wreath to Confederate Monument

May 23, 2009

Dear President Obama: Please Don't Honor the Arlington Confederate Monument By Edward Sebesta and James Loewen

This letter was written by Edward Sebesta and James Loewen and signed by the scholars listed below.

May 18, 2009

President Barack H. Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

Since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, presidents have sent annually a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument. Prior to the administration of George H. W. Bush, this was done on or near the birthday of Jefferson Davis. Starting with George H.W. Bush, it has been done on Memorial Day.

We ask you to not send a wreath or some other commemorative token to the Arlington Confederate Monument during your administration or after.

There are several reasons as to why this monument, a product of the Nadir in American race relations, should not be honored, and we list and explain them in this letter.

The monument was intended to legitimize secession and the principles of the Confederacy and glorify the Confederacy. It isn't just a remembrance of the dead. The speeches at its ground-breaking and dedication defended and held up as glorious the Confederacy and the ideas behind it and stated that the monument was to these ideals as well as the dead. It was also intended as a symbol of white nationalism, portrayed in opposition to the multiracial democracy of Reconstruction, and a celebration of the re-establishment of white supremacy in the former slave states by former Confederate soldiers. In its design it also tells wrong history, boasting fourteen shields with the coat of arms of fourteen states. Thus it claims that Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland were part of the Confederacy. They weren't.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=7658404&page=1

[jody]

1. The story should also explain why Moses Ezekiel included a black Confederate soldier on the monument

[jefferson_dem]

2. It's too late.

Thankfully, the President has more grace and worldly dignity than this group of narrow-minded "scholars" project. His solution - a wreath on both the Confederate and African-American memorials - perfectly reflects his character and vision for America.

[NYC_SKP]

3. I read that letter. They make good points that do not matter to most Americans.

And, since the laying of the wreath is no longer timed with Jefferson Davis's birthday, the ceremony is clearly more about recognizing the soldiers, the war dead, our fellow Americans, than in condoning the viewpoints of those who erected it, the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Nice job, Mr. President.

We now have a new tradition, the laying of the wreath at the African Americans' monument and don't have to witness the drama that would surely have ensued had you not respected the dead Americans who fought for the Confederacy.

:patriot:

[cali]

4. They are wrong. Obama's solution to this contretemps

is an act of transformation and healing. they're idiotic suggestion would simply serve to revive hate and hateful ideology.

[Kaleva]

5. President Obama did it right.