Harry Targ
A Washington
Post editorial correctly asserted that the old name, The Department of War,
more accurately describes what the agency of the US government does than the
cold war euphemism, the Department of Defense, a renaming in 1947. The editorial
points out that our use of words becomes embedded in our collective
consciousness such that we begin to incorporate ideology in our thinking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/05/war-department-defense-trump-rebrand/
However,
President Trump’s dicta to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of
War has a deeper meaning as well. The same week he unilaterally renamed the
instrumentality of US imperialism to clearly call it “war,” he ordered an
attack on a Venezuelan ship, killing those on board, claiming with no evidence that the vessel was
shipping drugs to the United States. This attack was supported by the “Defense
Department’s” placing of other ships in the Caribbean and implicit military
threats against the government of Venezuela. And, of course, the
United States has been arming and funding “war” in the Middle East. And we know
that in the name of “defense” the United States has placed some 900 bases
around the world and has authorized almost a trillion dollars for more
“defense,” or more accurately “war,” in the future.
But along
with peace movement reminders of the escalating US war-making capacity, and
naming it as such, attention must also be addressed to war-making at home. Agents
of the US government, along with the FBI, such as ICE and the National Guard, have
begun to make war on the American people. ICE agents and soldiers have occupied
and attacked communities within the United States such as in Los Angeles, and
as we reflect, threaten to send military troops to Chicago, Baltimore, New
Orleans and elsewhere. Most of the war-makers are being sent to locations in
which majorities of voters are Democrats, and the mayor of these cities
are African American.
In short,
the United States government is making war on targets outside the continental
United States and against people within the United States.
If ever in
US history there is a need for the forces of peace and justice to unite it is
now. The renaming of the Department of Defense, as the Post admits, is a frank
admission of what the project and vision of the Trump administration is, to
make war on people everywhere.
And we in
peace and justice movements to the contrary should remember Che Guevara’s humanistic alternative perspective:
