You’re right. The confederate statues did cross my mind when I was typing my post, and I do think destroying them would be a shame.
Even watching statues of such dispecable people as Stalin or Saddam being torn down always made me feel kind of a dread.
While trying to rationalize the feeling I came up with few ideas.
One does not destroy art. It’s like burning books. Unexcusable.
What if they forget, how even the artists has been manipulated to celebrate monsters? -If someone is willing to show such violence towards a symbol today, what stops them from mowing people left and right tomorrow?
What’s even more fucked up in case of el salvador, is that the statue was there to commemorate the end of the war. If a person has no respect towards a symbol of peace, however ugly it might subjectively be, how much respect does he have towards the peace itself?