Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense as the ‘Department of War,’ reverting to a title it held until after World War Two when officials sought to emphasize the Pentagon's role in preventing conflict…
“‘It's a very important change, because it's an attitude,’ Trump said as he signed the executive order at a ceremony in the Oval Office. ‘It's really about winning.’ The move would instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.” Reuters
The left is critical of the name change and Trump’s uses of military force.
“The switch in 1949 wasn’t made because the armed forces went ‘wokey’ and stopped winning wars, as Trump alleged. The old Department of War had been solely in charge of the Army. The new name was for an expanded agency that also included the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force…
“But while renaming the Defense Department is pointless and wasteful — new signage could cost millions of dollars — it is not nearly as troubling as the uses to which Trump puts the military. The president is employing the armed forces ostensibly to fight crime at home and drug smuggling abroad. In the process, however, he is pushing military personnel into dangerous and uncharted legal waters — and, ironically, moving them further away from fighting actual wars.”
Max Boot, Washington Post
“This is the same president who habitually confuses aggressor and victim in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Who keeps alienating America’s brothers-in-arms, most recently by ending training programs in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, NATO’s front line facing Russia. Who drives a potential ally, India, into the arms of America’s likeliest adversary, China. Who lacks any observable notion of grand strategy…
“The Department of War, Hegseth said, is henceforth about ‘maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.’… America didn’t lose in Iraq and Afghanistan because it was insufficiently lethal — ‘because it didn’t kill enough Iraqis and Afghans,’ as [Christopher] Preble puts it — but because it lacked a strategy that was well considered, realistic and attainable.”
Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg
“One might argue that ‘Department of War’ at least has a ring of honesty about it. OK. But one might also argue that the title will be cited to confirm the view—and thus bolster our adversaries’ propaganda—that the United States is a militaristic nation hell-bent on inflaming the planet in war. Trump and Hegseth might think that’s a good image to put forth, but really it isn’t.”
Fred Kaplan, Slate
Some note, “Out of nearly 250 years of history, [the US] has been at peace for less than 20. The label ‘defense’ was a useful mask for this reality. It allowed liberal internationalists to frame American power as humanitarian, rules-based, and stabilizing, even as Washington propped up dictators and armed death squads and funneled trillions into weapons production…
“Euphemism has long been a tool of empire. We don’t torture. We use ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ We don’t wage wars of aggression. We ‘make the world safe for democracy.’ We don’t bomb villages. We carry out ‘precision strikes.’ The language dulls the violence, drains it of meaning, and makes it palatable to the public… The ‘Department of War’ is the most honest thing Trump has ever done.”
Indigo Olivier, New Republic
The right supports the name change, arguing that the new name is more accurate.
The right supports the name change, arguing that the new name is more accurate.
“The Department of Homeland Security, established in the wake of 9/11, carries out many of the functions of territorial defense of the nation. It polices our borders, enforces immigration and criminal law, and patrols the waters of our near-abroad, safeguarding our coasts. As such, the Defense Department is not engaged primarily in homeland defense; it fights wars… Warfighting is indeed what the military is for. We should not shy away from that reality; our adversaries surely do not…
“America faces the gravest geopolitical situation that we have seen since at least 1991, if not 1945… No longer are we in the stable, post-Cold War era, where non-state actors posed the largest challenge to America. We are in the rough-and-tumble age of great-power rivalry. Our adversaries understand this. It is time we do as well.”
Mike Coté, Spectator World
“‘If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.’ That’s Confucius. Mr. Trump probably hasn’t read the ‘Analects,’ yet somehow he’s absorbed the lesson. Too many things in American society are mislabeled, often deliberately and for political purposes…
“The list of unrectified names is as tiresome as it is long: unhoused, undocumented, justice-involved individuals, birthing people. An exhausted nation cries ‘Enough already!’ Let things be called what they are… President Obama changed Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015, prompting mostly shrugs. There was little fuss when President Biden turned Fort Bragg, N.C., into Fort Liberty in 2023. But Mr. Trump—who has reverted to both McKinley and Bragg—never gets by so easily.”
Matthew Hennessey, Wall Street Journal
“In the 78 years in which the United States has had a ‘Department of Defense,’ we never declared war a single time, but that didn’t stop thousands upon thousands of American soldiers from sacrificing their lives in Korea, Vietnam, and later, the Middle East. During this time, the United States widely became known as the world’s policeman. Without actually declaring wars, we played a violent game of Twister across the globe, our Defense Department dipping its toes into conflicts across continents…
“Too often, the role of our soldiers was not to kill the enemy, but to maintain order… There is a fundamental and important difference between war and policing. Wars can be won, policing cannot. Policing is a never-ending struggle, and that is exactly what America’s military interventions felt like under the reign of the Department of Defense. ‘I want offense too,’ Trump has quipped… But what he really means is that he wants wars we can win, not endless nation-building boondoggles.”
David Marcus, Fox News
A New, ‘Adorable’ Deep-Sea Fish Swims Into View.
New York Times
