The agency celebrates the US and the president as aggressor, conqueror and unrestrained international lawbreaker
On Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order restoring the Department of Defense to its original name, the Department of War.
That name “had a stronger sound”, Trump told reporters in August. “As Department of War we won everything,” he added, “and I think we’re going to have to go back to that.” In June, at the Nato summit, he called Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, his “secretary of war”.
In the Department of War, Trump and Hegseth see the embodiment of a revived “warrior ethos” purportedly lost to overweening “woke-ness” in the armed forces. Hegseth has opined that women don’t belong on the battlefield and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) has rendered American fighting forces “effeminate”. Introducing a bill last week to the same effect as Trump’s order, Greg Steube, a Florida Republican senator, said the new-old name would “pay tribute” to past fighters’ “renowned commitment to lethality”.
And the president, who fashions himself a dealmaker for peace, now has a department named to reflect his excellence as warrior king.
