Renaming Defense Dept. War Dept. wrong but accurately describes deranged US perpetual war policy

7 September 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/renaming-defense-dept-war-dept-wrong-but-accurately-describes-deranged-us-perpetual-war-policy/

President Trump’s Executive Order renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War disgraces and dishonours everything America should stand for in the community of nations.

What is that? Most importantly, peace and tranquility in our dealings with the other 192 UN states.

Early on Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams set the tone for this wise governing agenda.

Washington, in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796 warned against foreign entanglements and alliances that could lead to war and jeopardise American independence and prosperity.

Before he was President, then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams advised on July 4, 1821 that America:

“… goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force… She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

Washington and Adams both spoke when America had a Department of War, but not a Military Industrial Complex such as the one that arose following WWII to wage perpetual war. Tho the US embarked on 80 years of senseless wars and regime change operations worldwide, it sugarcoated its belligerence by renaming the War Department, Defense. The only connection to defense was America’s willingness to intervene, even make war, wherever, whenever it suited America’s ‘defense’ of its unipolar world dominance.

So when Trump decreed it’s no longer defense but war at the Pentagon, he truly reflects our foreign policy enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza, destroying Ukraine to weaken, isolate Russia, preparing for war with China over Taiwan, obliterating a Venezuelan ship to “send a massage”, repeatedly bombing imagined bad guys in Somalia… and on and on.

If America doesn’t succeed in triggering nuclear war first, it would be wise to seek a third name change for the folks working at the Pentagon, CIA and a myriad of other perpetual war facilities. How about a Department of Peace? Then make peace, not war, its governing mission.