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By John McWhorter
Opinion Writer
President Trump’s decision to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War might strike skeptics as a silly distraction, and supporters as a brilliant rebranding. Historians may see it in terms of reclaiming a symbol from the nation’s past. I’m a linguist. From that vantage, the executive order didn’t come out of the blue and it wasn’t just an attempt at political distraction. It was consistent in every way with how Trump uses — or abuses — language.
The Department of War was created by the first Congress to oversee the new nation’s military. The Truman administration changed the name to the Department of Defense in 1949, in the wake of splitting the Air Force off from the Army, and brought the two of them together with the Navy under the same umbrella. Trump asserts that since then, the American military has “never fought to win.” According to our commander in chief, “We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.” Getting back to the old name, the theory goes, will help get us back to the old mission.
