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Obviously ‘You Can’t Fight in Here, This Is the Defense Room’ Never Sat Right with Trump
Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian:
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a callback to the department’s original name used from 1789 to 1947.
I said “war”
Huh, good god, y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again.
Trump is quoted as saying of the old name:
[…] we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense.
The name was changed in 1949 under notoriously woke President—checks notes—Harry S. Truman.
Rebecca Kheel at Military.com throws a bit of high heat:
The change aligns with the administration’s fixation on “lethality” and a “warrior ethos,” and exemplifies the more aggressive military posture it has been taking, such as its legally questionable military strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and deployment of troops to U.S. cities.
Erica L. Green at The New York Times (under one of its customarily wishy-washy headlines) writes:
Mr. Trump, who was granted five deferments from being drafted to fight in Vietnam, including for a diagnosis of bone spurs, said that the country had “never fought to win” a war after World War II, when Congress renamed the Department of War the Department of Defense.
(For the Times, this also counts as “high heat.”)
Continuing:
Critics say the rebranding exposed the hypocrisy behind Mr. Trump’s promises to bring peace.
“He ran as the supposed antiwar candidate, but has proved to be just the opposite,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the liberal Center for International Policy. “This stunt underscores that Trump is more interested in belligerent chest-thumping than genuine peacemaking—with dangerous consequences for American security, global standing and the safety of our armed services.”
The Times also notes, almost in passing:
Only Congress can change department names, so the title is ceremonial until it is codified into law.
In other words, it’s a meaningless and peacockish exercise that could cost billions of dollars. Political theater at its most absurd.
(Will any of those contracts go to Trump cronies? Of course they will.)
The Times ends with this:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already begun transitioning his office and department with new signs.
And here I thought Hegseth was against transitioning.