We all know it’s true, but it’s good to be reminded: Words have meaning. Just one word can make a big difference. And the change of just one word can send a powerful message.
That’s President Trump’s goal. He wants to send a message by changing the name of the Pentagon from the Department of Defense to the Department of War. In this, he has succeeded. By signing an executive order changing the name, he is sending a powerful message, all right. The problem is that the message he’s sending is wrong and dangerous.
Shortly after the Revolution, George Washington urged Congress to create a standing army to defend the U.S. with its own federal agency, which was called the “Department of War.” That name stuck from 1789 — through the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II — until 1949, when President Harry Truman changed it to the “Department of Defense.”
It was only a change of one word, but Truman knew it made all the difference in the world. It did then, and it still does today.
The Department of Defense means what it says: that we are a peace-loving people. That we have a standing military — by far the largest and best-armed on the planet — which we maintain, not for the purpose of waging war, and certainly not for starting wars, but solely for the purpose of defending our country from enemy attack and, by extension, assisting in the defense of our democratic allies who come under attack. The Department of Defense is the physical manifestation of our motto: “Peace through strength.”
The Department of War means just the opposite. It says that we are a war-loving, war-seeking people: eager for war and looking for opportunities to flex our military muscle. We have a big army and we intend to use it. No more hesitancy, no more holding back, no more giving diplomacy a chance. Or, as Secretary of Defense (or of War?) Pete Hegseth puts it, we need to bring “lethality” and a “warrior ethos” back to the Pentagon. Bomb first, ask questions later.
That may be how the Trump administration views the mission of the military, but that’s not the rubric we’ve lived under for the last 75 years. And it’s the exact opposite of the message we’ve projected to the rest of the world.
Even though Congress has not (and probably never will) make the name-change “official,” the administration already considers it a “fait accompli.” Hegseth, whom Trump calls the “secretary of War,” has ordered signage changed from “defense” to “war” at all military installations. Trump ordered the military to bomb a small boat suspected of smuggling drugs into the U.S., which Vice President Vance praised as “the highest and best use of our military.” And Trump, looking for the next city to send federal troops into, all but declared war on Chicago by posting on Truth Social: “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
In the end, it’s not the name change alone that should alarm Americans. It’s the way Trump defends it. Why go back from Department of Defense to Department of War? Because, Trump charged, the military “never fought to win” any war since World War II and the original name change.
“We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to go woke,” he told reporters while signing the executive order on Sept. 6. He added: We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.”
Yes, you heard it right. What an outrage. According to Commander-in-Chief Trump, every war America has been involved in since World War II — the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War — was not fought hard enough. The Army was too “woke.” The Pentagon was too “politically correct.”
That is nothing but a slap in the face to every brave man and woman who put on the uniform since 1 949, to family members who supported them, and to leaders like Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks. It’s especially galling coming from a man who never served in the military, allegedly because of bone spurs. We owe our gratitude and admiration to those who served in the military during the last 75 years, not cheap political insults.
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”
