Pete Hegseth wants a new name for Defense Department: War Department. Why it matters.

[douglas9]

The last time there was a War Department, Hollywood still made most of its movies in black and white, and Americans were falling in love with a new entertainment device called the TV set. They cost an average of $400 each.

The year was 1949.

In at least one respect, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to turn the calendar back to that time. The nation’s military forces were organized under the War Department, and Hegseth believes that term, with its bold martial overtones, better suits his desire to remake the armed services to emphasize fighting and killing.

The Trump administration has yet to formally propose renaming the Defense Department. But students of the military say Hegseth’s talk about doing so should not be taken lightly. They say it could signal a desire to free combat forces from legal restraints meant to protect civilians — rules of war Hegseth has derided as fussy, burdensome and dangerous to American soldiers.

https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/pete-hegseth-rename-defense-department-war-20242899.php

[Redleg]

1. I knew this POS would want to do this

I was just wondering when. This is all part of the "warrior ethos" bullshit these "tough-guys" having been pushing. It is not fitting for a 21 century military to refer to its soldiers as "warriors."

[Turbineguy]

2. Easier to spell.

[CanonRay]

3. Party like it's 1875

[roscoeroscoe]

4. Way to get ready to fight the last war

What the heck, going to enlist a bunch of FIT TO FIGHT telegraph operators and mule drivers?

Dumbest stuff I've ever heard, and I was in the Army for 26 years.

[thucythucy]

5. And how much will this cost?

How many millions of tax dollars to pay for another Trumpist PR stunt?

[Eugene]

6. turn back the clock like a true reactionary

What will he do next - resegregate the armed forces?

[bluesbassman]

15. He's already moving to limit females in combat positions.

Once that’s accomplished he’ll need a new DEI target and segregation would make a great “it’s good for unit morale” meme.

He’s not only a POS, he’s an unqualified, incompetent POS.

[Ping Tung]

7. Was he clenching his jaw, displaying his biceps, showing off his tattoos, while growling the announcement?

?w=1400&h=787&crop=1

[IcyPeas]

8. And... he still has a job even after signalgate x 2

[Aristus]

9. It would be a ridiculously idiotic thing to do.

At the same time, after the War Department was re-organized as the Defense Department, war and other armed conflict were very much given the corporate touch, making war seem like a business to be handled in a business-like manner. This tended to pervade all levels of the Armed Forces. During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon recruited officer candidates using corporate boardroom language, and selling a military commission as an entry into an executive position.

Officers were encouraged to follow a structured path to high rank, making sure to get their "ticket punched" at each level. Leading troops in combat, rather than being an end in itself for which to train to competence, was viewed as one of those rungs to climb. During the war in Vietnam, officers were rotated into and out of combat positions for as little as six months, after which they were rotated into staff positions to prepare them for high rank. The enlisted ranks suffered from lack of comprehensive leadership, and never getting to know, or trust, their leadership, who didn't have skin in the game anyway.

In the movie Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard remarks that his target, Col Kurtz, was being groomed for "one of the top slots in The Corporation", and there was almost no cynicism in his voice when he said it.

If there was some way to de-corporatize the Pentagon (other than re-naming it the War Department)...

[Midnight Writer]

10. And here I was worried that Whiskey Pete wouldn't be on top of things in his new job.

This sounds like he is settling quite comfortably into Trump's fantasy world.

[albert992]

11. protect us

it reminds us they’re here to protect us, not just fight wars. Switching to “War Department” feels more like show than real change.

[kwolf68]

12. Fighting and Killing

Ya know shit Jesus would be advocating for.

[Torchlight]

13. Given this administration, renaming 'department' to 'ministry' seem more apropos

Not so much the red-baiting as it is recognizing the radical American clerics

[Wounded Bear]

14. Well, we started far fewer wars when it was the War Department...

Back then, we didn't start major wars, we just won them. Now we start minor wars and lose them.

[jmowreader]

16. What he isn't realizing...

...is that the United States War Department after 1789 was only responsible for the United States Army and, after airplanes were invented, the United States Army Air Forces. The Navy Department was its own entity formed in 1789. The National Security Act of 1947 did three things: it renamed the War Department to the Department of the Army, it pulled the USAAF out of the Army and reincorporated it as the United States Air Force with its own Department, and it connected the Departments of the Army, Air Force and Navy at the top with a Department of Defense.

So to make a long story short, the Department of Defense hasn't been the Department of War since long before they stopped making warships out of oak trees.

And I've got news for Platoon Leader Hegseth: YOU CAN'T RUN THE ENTIRE DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT BY YOURSELF. No one could. You MUST have under your department a subgroup that only deals in ground combat, one that deals in waterborne combat, and one that deals in air and space combat. Trust me, dude: Infantry Officer Basic Course doesn't prepare you to deal with fighters, bombers and ships.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

17. Maddow Blog-Trump expresses interest in rolling back the clock to bring back the 'Department of War'

Would the president change the "Department of Defense" back to the "Department of War"? He sounds increasingly serious about the idea.

In March, Trump and his team got the ball rolling on changing the "Department of Defense" back to the "Department of War."

Three months later, at the NATO summit, he suggested he’s not kidding about this. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-06-25T17:33:06.845Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-expresses-interest-rolling-back-clock-bring-back-department-war-rcna215029

Donald Trump and his team have been fixated in recent months on renaming things. From the Gulf of Mexico to the USNS Harvey Milk, from Veterans Day to the Persian Gulf, the president and his administration have made it painfully clear: They’re not satisfied with names and labels that much of the public finds familiar, and they’re eager to impose new ones.

Evidently, we can add the name of one of the nation’s oldest departments to the list. USA Today reported:

President Donald Trump suggested changing the name of Defense Department back to its pre-World War II moniker as the War Department, after the success in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘You know it used to be called secretary of war,’ Trump told reporters June 25 at the conclusion of a NATO meeting in the Netherlands. ‘Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.’

The Republican did not appear to be kidding. In fact, at his NATO press conference, the American president referred to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as the “secretary of war” and reflected on the title that hasn’t existed in a few generations. Trump added, “It used to be ‘secretary of war’; then we became politically correct. ‘Secretary of defense,’ maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it.”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lsgsjsiznr2q

Link to tweet

While it’s true that the United States had a Department of War, which was renamed in the years following World War II, it’s also worth noting how absurd his interpretation of modern history is. Kevin Kruse, a historian at Princeton University, sarcastically explained via Bluesky, “Yeah, when historians discuss the National Security Act of 1947, we absolutely stress how the centralization of American military power under the new Department of Defense at the dawn of the Cold War was all about being ‘politically correct.’”....

I’m not making any predictions about the White House’s next moves, especially given Trump’s limited attention span, but if he actually tries to roll back the clock on the department’s name — because, as the president put it, he and his team “feel like warriors” — no one should say we weren’t warned.