The Department of War?

When the past is prologue

Photo by Filip Andrejevic on Unsplash

Just a few days ago, Donald Trump made what many considered a bold move. He decided to rename the Department of Defense and call it “The Department of War.” His supporters, as they always do, cheered the announcement. His opponents, predictably, reacted with concern about where this was headed and what kind of message he was sending to the rest of the world.

Me? I rolled my eyes and moved on to something else.

Any student of American history is already aware that one of the first cabinet positions that was created under President George Washington was the Department of War, headed by the Secretary of War, Henry Knox. This department continued under that name until 1949, when it was renamed “The Department of Defense” as a result of the National Security Act of 1947. Incidentally, this was the same act that created the CIA.

This change could be called, at best, a euphemism and at the worst, an outright lie. Following WWII and the escalation of tensions between the United States, Russia, and China, the United States conducted secret wars throughout the world in an effort to stop what it saw as the spread of communism. As such, the United States used the CIA and the military to undermine legitimate governments around the world it saw as being under the influence of the Soviet Union or…