Department of War name is on point — and unneeded

Reviving the Department of War, as demanded by President Donald Trump, could bring a bluntness and clarity that is rare in government bureaucratese. Like it or not, war is the true and lethal purpose of what’s now called the Department of Defense. Sugarcoating it with the more acceptable term “defense” does nothing for a public still sick of foreign wars after the horrors soldiers endured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972, was a highly decorated Army Air Corps pilot during World War II. As a critic of the Cold War, and of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, he wrote in Harper’s Magazine in 2011 that with the renaming of the War Department to the DOD in 1947 the military “became sacred, virtually untouchable. How could anyone vote to cut defense unless he or she is willing to face political defeat?”

It's still a relevant point — if not one that Trump is likely to embrace, since he likes to boast of his administration’s record-level military spending. So while the name change could be a refreshing, anti-Orwellian step toward brutally honest labeling, the rebranding will also cost unknown millions if not billions in taxpayer dollars.

The department, whatever it’s called, has more than 700,000 facilities around the world, according to the Government Accountability Office. Just imagine the superfluous tasks that altering all the insignia, websites, letterheads and titles will produce. "Government efficiency," it might not be.

It's an unfortunate time to focus on the most trivial trappings of war. U.S. efforts to promote "peace through strength" are failing this week. Poland described drones intruding on its airspace as Russian “provocation” while President Vladimir Putin’s forces launched attacks across Ukraine. Israel attacked Hamas targets in Qatar, drawing rare rebuke from the United States.

Another part of the backdrop here is that Trump, for promotional purposes, likes to toy with the very definition of war.

In a giddy social media posting Saturday, he said Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” as the city braced for an ICE crackdown on immigration, only for the White House to back off Wednesday. He has called migrant influxes a hostile “invasion.” And last week’s bombing of a boat in the Caribbean Sea, revealed on Wednesday as a drone strike, has drawn criticism as outside accepted rules of engagement.

Trump issued an executive order to get the name change underway. The action requires congressional approval, as did the post-World War II switch from Department of War to Department of Defense. Trump has Republican senators sponsoring the legislation.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) won’t be one of them. “I think it sends a bad signal to the world,” Paul said. “In a world with nuclear weapons, I think glorifying war ... is not something I’m in favor of.” Paul represents a populist MAGA constituency that for years has condemned foreign military interventions.

Hegseth, who in his previous role as a Fox News talker successfully lobbied Trump to pardon military personnel accused and convicted of war atrocities, invokes the “warrior ethos.” The renamed department, he said, would be about “maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct.”

Such slogans might make for interesting pep talks. But what useful changes do they augur? “Warrior ethos” alone cannot address China’s race to gain naval superiority in the South China Sea. Nor does it say if Trump’s costly “golden dome” missile proposal is needed.

Call them matters of war, or challenges to our national defense, they are more substantial than the reversal of an old rebranding can address.

Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.