It’s indisputable that Alwyn Cashe deserves the Medal of Honor.
His heroism is extraordinary.
An Army platoon leader, he wasn’t injured in the initial explosion of a roadside bomb in Iraq that damaged a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but he repeatedly dived into the burning vehicle to pull out trapped soldiers, saving six of them, and died of burns twenty-two days later.
He was awarded a lesser medal, and it has taken years for the push to upgrade his military honors to wend its way through the Pentagon bureaucracy and Congress. I wrote about him in 2014 here. The Secretary of Defense endorsed awarding Cashe the Medal of Honor, and the House of Representatives passed an authorizing bill in September 2020, but Senate approval is still needed.
That’s likely to happen, and it now looks like Cashe will get the medal he deserves. (Read update here.) But there’s more. This spring and summer brought a new civil rights movement that includes a push to decommission Confederate statues and rename 10 military bases named for Confederate military figures, including Fort Benning, Georgia.
Fort Benning, home of infantry and parachute training, is one of the Army’s iconic bases. Established in October 1918, it’s named for a Confederate general who was an important secessionist politician, and a major slaveowner, to pacify pro-Confederacy groups. Trump has blocked the renaming of these bases for now, but he won’t be president forever.
There’s a proposal to rename Fort Benning for Cashe. (Read about it here.) It’s fitting. Many Army heroes have come from there, but Cashe is a giant in the pantheon of heroes. Naming the Army’s infantry training center for one of the Army infantry’s greatest heroes is fitting, and also would remove the stain of Benning’s legacy from its name. This is something readers of this blog, and all patriotic Americans, should support.
Let me say a couple things in closing. Respecting our military, and honoring our military heroes, isn’t glorifying war or being a warmonger. No one dislikes war more than those who fight it and are exposed to its horrors. Military service, done right, is an honorable calling. A capable military helps preserve peace by deterring aggression. And while Cashe fought and died in a controversial war, the right approach for dissenters is to disagree with the policy while respecting the soldiers and heroes who have no say about the policy and make the sacrifices.
For a long time, the Medal of Honor was reserved for white service members. No black soldier received it in the world wars. (That was rectified by belated awards, decades later; President Obama bestowed some of them.) Of course Cashe should because he merits it, not because he’s black; and Fort Benning should be renamed for him because of what he did, not because he’s black. But in an era when our country relies heavily on minorities to fill its military ranks, naming a major Army base for a black man being honored for sacrificing himself to save his men would not go unnoticed in the ranks. It’s what the military calls a morale booster. It would demonstrate that African-Americans have reached full equality in our military culture, even if they haven’t in civilian society. And change in military culture can be a catalyst for change in civilian society. So change Fort Benning’s name to Fort Alwyn Cashe. Realistically, that will have to wait for a new president who isn’t a white supremacist. But we can wait.
Update (11/10/20): The U.S. Senate passed a bill that will allow Cashe to receive the Medal of Honor, which now only needs the president’s signature and approval. (Read story here.)
Updated (2/8/22): The idea of renaming Fort Benning for Cashe is being pursued in Congress by a Florida congresswoman. (Read story here.)