TOI correspondent from Washington: A president who came to office as peacemaker pledging no more wars will rebrand the US department of defence as the department of war on Friday.
In yet another of his quixotic acts, MAGA supremo Donald Trump maintained that department of war has a "stronger sound" and the change would reflect offensive capability that is missing in the name being eclipsed. "As you know, we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too, if we have to be," he told reporters in a brief preview of the makeover.
The announcement, which had been in the works for weeks, came 48 hours after China rolled out a spectacular military parade showcasing impressive advances in hardware that clearly rattled Washington. Trump maintained that the US was still ahead of China in its capabilities, but the renaming was necessary because "defence is too defensive".
Trump's defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who will consequently be called war secretary, said the department had already re-established a "warrior ethos", asserting the name change would refocus the military on its core mission of "warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards and readiness" and away from what he has described as "woke culture" and social issues. There was instant smackdown of the renaming from critics, some of whom saw it as a wasteful distraction from more pressing matters.
The renaming is expected to cost millions of dollars as everything from signboards to seals to stationery and publications will need to be changed.
Trump was also taunted for insisting on a change because of his sketchy military record. "Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the department of defence to the department of war," said Mark Kelly, Democratic Senator from Arizona and a former Naval officer and retired astronaut, referring to Trump's bailing out on service citing bone spurs. "Nothing says Nobel Peace prize quite like the changing the name of the department of defence to the department of war," another social media critic noted.
The DoD, informally called the Pentagon because it is headquartered in a building in that shape, was originally called the war department going back to the days of the first President George Washington. A 1949 amendment changed it to the department of defence.
The rationale behind the renaming evoked a scabrous commentary by the insightful comedian George Carlin, who in a 1990 skit shredded America's penchant for war.
"We like war! We're a war-like people! We like war because we're good at it...because we get a lot of practice. This country's only 200 years old and already, we've had 10 major wars. We average a major war every 20 years in this country so we're good at it! And it's a good thing we are because we're not very good at anything else anymore! Can't build a decent car, can't make a TV set or a VCR worth a f**k, got no steel industry left, can't educate our young people, can't get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right! Especially if your country is full of brown people!" Carlin observed in a comedic take-down of Washington's perennially offensive posture.
Rajghatta is author of Kamala Harris: Phenomenal Woman