On December 19, 2005, WMR reported on the annual use of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery by a group of neo-confederates who have been part of a right-wing network that has its roots in the Reagan and Bush I era that supported the Afghan mujaheddin and the apartheid regime of South Africa.
Although there has been much controversy over President Obama's decision to send a wreath to the Confederate memorial, the corporate media has failed to highlight the annual use in June of the memorial by extreme right-wing groups on the occassion of Confederate President Jefferson Davis's birthday. The goal of these groups is to keep alive the spirit not of the Confederacy but what replaced it: the segregationist Jim Crow South and institutionalized racism that existed well into the 1960s.
The Confederate memorial was dedicated in 1913 by President Woodrow Wilson, who was infamous for his segregationist policies. Obama, America's first African-American president, rejected a call by several historians who sent him a letter requesting that he not send a wreath to the memorial. Obama, instead, sent wreaths to the Confederate memorial and one in Washington, DC that is dedicated to African-American Union troops who died in battle against the Confederacy.
Contradictory wreaths from Obama honor the Confederate war dead (middle) and the African-American Union troops who helped to battle them (bottom).
