“I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical.” – from W.S. Gilbert’s and Arthur Sullivan’s musical “The Pirates of Penzance”

Our U.S. armed forces have been involved in battles that have echoed throughout world history.

A quick glance through your high school history book can conjure up memories of victories like Yorktown, New Orleans, Gettysburg and Normandy.

In the last several years, however, the most high-profile American military battles have tended not to involve weapons, troop movements and foxholes. They are more in the vein of turf wars over new facilities and political culture wars.

Alabama happens to be in the thick of these firefights on a couple of fronts. One front has our national political leaders engaging in an weird version of the name game with our military bases.

In 2023 we saw Fort Rucker – named in honor of Confederate States of America colonel and Birmingham industry magnate Edmund Rucker – renamed as Fort Novosel in honor of Army pilot and Medal of Honor recipient Michael Novosel.

This happened as part of a wave of renaming nine military forts from names connected to Confederate military figures to names associated with U.S. military figures.

I can understand the pride many Southerners feel toward the military heroes of the Confederacy and might see this as an example of political correctness run amok. Yet, it always struck me as odd the U.S. government would name military installations after people against whom the same military shed blood to fight.

Other than the inconvenience of trying to remember a new name for the place I called Fort Rucker my whole life, it makes sense to drop Rucker’s name, though, to be clear, I am not one to insist everything in the world with any connection to the Confederacy has to be renamed. From what little I know about Novosel, he seems to be worthy of the honor.

Now on the other battlefront, Alabama is stuck in a tug of war with Colorado over a military headquarters without a permanent home. Both states want to be the location of the U.S. Space Command headquarters, and political leaders in both states have already gone to the mat to try to wrestle away this prize for keeps.

Space Command is in charge of coordinating any military operations outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. A 2021 Air Force study recommended locating Space Command at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal facility.

In what was probably an unwise political move, President Donald Trump claimed credit for the report’s recommendation that the facility should be located in Alabama right before he left office after his first term.

This provided oxygen to claims of Trump influencing the results of the study by Colorado Congress members who then demanded an investigation of the study itself. Colorado currently houses what is considered the temporary Space Command headquarters.

It has been a wild back and forth between the two states since the Air Force study became public. Early in the President Joe Biden’s term, his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, backed the veracity of the Air Force study’s recommendation to locate in Alabama.

Later in Biden’s term, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Auburn, roiled the Biden administration for several months by consistently using his position in the Senate to slow down military appointments.

Tuberville was protesting a Pentagon policy providing female service members travel allowances and leave without penalty in order to access a facility that provides abortions when the service member is stationed in a state that limits or bans abortions.

In what was seen by many as retaliation against Tuberville’s actions, Biden announced Space Command would remain in Colorado, at least for the time being.

Of course, Biden officials claim the decision was made to avoid any military disruption and maintain preparedness, but it was then the Alabama Congressional delegation’s turn to decry how politics has poisoned the decision process.

Now that Trump again resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Alabama’s Congressional delegation is bullish on Huntsville’s chances to land the facility on a permanent basis. Senate hearings for Air Force leadership positions took place last week, and those leaders will be in charge of pushing forward a decision on a location.

As Americans, we should always support decisions that put our military in the best possible position to defend us, andwe should also allow the military to operate without unproductive scrutiny. If these decisions benefit Alabama, then it is a win-win.

I just hope attempts by both sides of the political aisle to outflank each other in battles over Space Command and military base names do not reach a point where they could be a real detriment to the readiness of our military to do battle when it actually counts.