Posted on 09/05/2025 2:40:56 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
When Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon executed an ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003, was it really pursuing American defence? All but a handful of unreconstructed Iraq hawks would disagree. So it’s welcome news that President Trump has restored the Defense Department’s original name, the Department of War.
Talk of renaming the DoD has roiled Republican circles for some time. During the 2024 GOP primary, Nikki Haley brainstormed about changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of Offense”. That was an unmistakable throwback to circa 2003 neoconservative blowhardery, and a good reminder of why the Haleys of the world are no longer at the helm of the conservative movement.
Trump’s choice of restored name for the department, by contrast, has a long and honourable pedigree. The Department of War was created by the first US Congress in 1789. The Cabinet-level leaders of this agency were known as secretaries of war.
The emphasis on “war” was a relic of an age that was more forthright about war-declaring and war-making. It wasn’t until after the Second World War, under the Truman administration, that the department came to be called the Department of Defense, following a brief interval when it was known as the National Military Establishment.
Far from restraining war, the renaming to do “DoD” coincided with the rise of a trigger-happy security state that increasingly sidestepped the legislative branch in determining whether America goes to war, as required by law. Congress, for its part, abdicated its constitutional power to declare war. Military interventions, whether just and necessary or otherwise, became something the executive branch launched and the legislature “authorised”.
Framed as “defence,” war was easier to swallow. Without a draft, Americans could no longer feel the gravity of war, and the imperative to avoid it, if...
(Excerpt) Read more at unherd.com ...
I’m surprised they kept “Department.” It sounds feminine. War Division sounds better to my ears.
War Department. That’s what it was called during WW2.
It sounds like something at Nieman Marcus. Totally inappropriate.
I guess it appeals to some.
I think it’s stupid. And it plays into Trump’s “Military School Persona” crap. I lived with those folks for four years. He never got over it. It was first evident in his love of Patton and the nick names of “his generals.” Listening to him, he fell in love with George C Scott and Mario Puzo.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
The good news is he isn’t spending a lot of money on the rebranding.
And doesn’t this require some Congressional action? I know the DOD was created in the Defense Act of 1947(?).
Much ado about nothing.
Now change the Air Force back to the Army Air Corps...which just sounded cool...and I will be on board. Until then, this makes some happy. Most everyone else just don’t care.
What did that old wind bag say To kill people and break things
So, since DOD is the result of the merger of the War Department and the Navy Department, does this mean the Navy Department will be returning to the cabinet?
1789.
Having parts of the Govt go back to anything with a date of 17something is as far away from a modern Deep State and Swamp as we can get.
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