Piestawa Peak sounds much better than Squaw Peak, with the alliteration and all. This in itself should be enough reason to change the name.
She died in the line of duty.
There are numerous memorials to police officers who died in the line of duty. Some of them died after making a routine traffic stop and getting shot down, or run over. Would you condemn the honors accorded to them by asking what did they “actually do besides get killed”?
There are many things named for people who didn’t do anything except have friends in government or pay to have their names put up, or they were just in the right place at the right time. Check the story behind the naming of Mount Rushmore.
My intent in starting this thread was to ask why anyone would exert time and energy opposing the name change? Why oppose it? What is there to defend in that fight? What makes it worth the fallout of making the Republicans look racist?
If Gov. Janet Napolitano is playing politics with this – and that is not hard to believe at all – what does the GOP have to gain by opposing it? The politically intelligent thing to do would be to co-opt Napolitano on the issue – take the issue, run with it. Accusing the governor of playing politics merely makes the GOP look racist.
There could always be a compromise – for example, erecting a memorial at the mountain with the names of all the others who died in this war.
As for not renaming things until after people have died, there are Reagan National Airport and a big office complex named after him in D.C. The CIA complex was renamed for the first president Bush. And IIRC, an Illinois town has a Reagan Memorial Bridge that has been up for decades even though you usually dedicate a memorial to someone no longer living.