Donald Trump and maga Republicans want to support a terrible name change for Department of Defense

In the responses to the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025,  in Orem, Utah, the preponderance of messages calls for bringing down the heaated political rhetoric in American's political discourse.  This bipartisan call gives us even more reasons for Republicans to stand up for something....anything❗...and oppose changing the name of the Department of Defense, to include the word "war", as proposed by Donald Trump. Makes no sense to wail about the intensity of brutal political attacks occuring too frequently in America, while putting he word "war" into our national Department of Defense. 💜😥

Echo opinion letter published in The Chronicle, a Washington State newspaper:  In an act that is bizarre even by the standards of this incompetent presidency, Donald Trump has announced that he intends to rename the Department of Defense, which was created in its current form by President Harry Truman, 78 years ago.

The new moniker would be that which until 1947, applied to the Department of the Army alone, the Department of War.

Truman's decision, of course, was issued in the immediate aftermath of World War II. America and its allies had emerged triumphant in this most destructive of armed conflicts, and were determined that no such horror would happen again.

A part of this determination was simply to alter the nomenclature. War was awful and unmentionable. Defense was acceptable.

It appears that every other nation on the planet has adopted this usage. France dropped its Ministry of War in 1947, and Britain relabeled its War Office in 1964. A quick Google search of over 100 nations reveals that while all have a defense ministry, none use the word "war" in the title.

Were Trump's plans to be realized, this country would be even more of a pariah than it has been since the Donald took office. The symbolic damage to our international image would be devastating.

It is significant that our president faked an affliction of bone spurs to dodge the military draft in his youth, and that he hasdodge the military draft in his youth, and that he has spent his entire adult life publicly bragging about his supposed prowess with women. This Department of War nonsense, "a message of strength," suggesting "maximum lethality," in Trump's words, is just another manifestation of his inadequacy and narcissism.

One wonders, furthermore, whether other government offices might be retitled. As reformulated in the Trump era, should the Department of State be the Department of Hate? How about the Department of Health as the Department of Disease? And why not the Department of Justice as the Department of Just ICE❓😟

Trump's deployments of National Guard and U.S. Marine units in various cities are all about trying to steal next year's congressional elections. If his health permits, he will try to steal a third term in 2028, and to hell with the Constitution.

From Joseph Tipler in Centralia