Harry Targ
(Watching Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, January 14, 2026 reminded me of the US wars on people abroad and at home: https://www.democracynow.org/2026/1/14/saint_paul_city_council_ice )
A Washington Post editorial in September correctly asserted that President Trump's renaming of the Department of Defense, the Department of War, more accurately describes what that agency of the US government does than the cold war euphemism, the Department of Defense. 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. By implication this renaming was a more accurate reflection of what the US government was doing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/05/war-department-defense-trump-rebrand/
President Trump’s renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War has a deeper meaning then he intended. The same week he unilaterally renamed the instrumentality of US imperialism to clearly call it “war,” he ordered attacks on Venezuelan boats that led to the killing over 100 people, claiming with no evidence that they were shipping drugs to the United States. On January 3 the US military attacked Venezuela, bombing and killing at least 100 people and kidnapping the President of Venezuela and his wife. Along with the war on Venezuela, he bombed targets in Nigeria, and threatened wars on Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Iran. 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. Ad the President announced that he would request an additional $500 billion for war in next year's budget.
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 has sent ICE troops to Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Minneapolis. Most recently an ICE agent murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis. Most of the war-makers are being sent to locations in which majorities of voters are Democrats, and the mayor of these cities and many of their citizens are African American and other people of color.
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:
