After hearing Palmer Luckey's argument for the name change[0], I tend to think it's good change.
Some of his arguments:
It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
Department of war is a more honest name, department of defense is a somewhat newspeak term, although "Department of Peace" would be worse.
It's harder to seek funding for "war", then it is to seek funding for "defense".
If you ask someone, "Do you want to spend money on education or war?", you will get a different answer asking, "Do you want to spend money on education or defense?".
> It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
The problem with this argument is that the _original_ Department of War is now called the Department of the Army, which existed alongside the Department of the Navy. Besides, it’s a moot point unless Congress actually changes the name.
Regarding Luckey's other statements, I can almost assure you that the administration did not think as much about it as Luckey has. Insecure Pete just thought the title "Secretary of Defense" was too wussy so he wanted to be Secretary of War.
Also, I think people mainly have issue with the fact that Trump is just randomly and unilaterally renaming random stuff and demolishing buildings without congressional approval. If he had gone through the correct alleys then maybe people could ignore it. Maybe. We'd probably still have qualms about it, but at least we'd know that our representatives had a say.
It’s a good change in that it discourages unwarranted funding. Bad for the DoD’s budget, good for the country.
It’s analogous to why `React.__SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED` is a pretty good name.
(But even if it's a decent name in isolation, it isn't actually the name of the department, and using it is a tacit submission to the power of the executive over congress. So… bad overall.)
Good point. Yeah it's an accurate description of the department; I'd want to rename a bunch of other departments to be more accurate too, since apparently names are arbitrary now!
That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense.
Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united because... Well, you know)
As a recap, my reply to your reply was that DoD is the actual newspeak, and your reply to that evolution of the discussion is that you were not discussing newspeak.
In trying to understand if I'm missing something, I looked up what newspeak means. I (as well as probably a few other commenters based on the contents of their comments) was under the assumption it meant "new speak" meaning it's something new.
In case anyone else reading this was not aware of this, this is what I discovered.
It's a term from George Orwell's 1984, describing a language used to make thoughts unthinkable by removing words from the language. It has nothing to do with "age of the term."
Hence, Dept of Defense is indeed newspeak. Dept of War, while being a new name for the dept, is too literal to be newspeak.
Thanks for the opportunity for me to learn something!
Department of Defense has historically been a prime example of newspeak.
I think Department of War is also newspeak. Or at least, they didn't change the name just to get the name in line with the amount of war the department does.
They changed it because they wanted to do more even more war. The amount of war the department does under the name "Defense" has been status quo for a long time, and my take is they wanted us to think of them differently so they could do even more war, which they have since been doing.
The person you're responding to probably hasn't read the book and is just parroting the word. That's kinda where we're at right now in society. I see the comments by malfist and abustamam are similar. No idea what newspeak means, just parroting and saying "that's not its name".
The problem will get worse as we have a generation raised by LLMs.
I went to a military high school up until 2011 and never remember hearing it. My dad and grandpa were military for 20 years each and I've never heard either say it. It definitely hasn't been used broadly in the US for very long (maybe in very specific circles). Even my friends who work as engineers for defense contractors now have never called people "war fighters" around me.
Idk, it might've been used on stuff in the past. My point was that it wasn't a thing that normal people (even normal people in the military) would say. The person I'm responding to described it as "common use" for the last couple decades and that just doesn't match up with my experience at all.
No, they didn't. The name of the department at issue is “the Department of Defense” and of its head the “Secretary of Defense” — these are set in statute (the latter for slightly longer time than the former) and the relevant statutes has not been changed, since the office of the Secretary of Defense was created in 1947 and the Department of Defense was created in 1949. The executive branch has just decided to use a nickname for a government department (which is the historical name for a prior department which was split to form two of what are now the three main direct subordinate elements within that department.)
Well, I’m in the US and have been following politics closely for the entire time window you mention, and this year marks the first time I’ve heard it. It is very jarring and a notable rhetorical shift from the concept of “service”.
Oh good, I've always had respect for soldiers, but never the govt. I'm glad to hear that soldiers are not buying into this name BS.
Edit: not sure if you're talking about the term warfighters or dept of war. Either way, warfighters just sounds silly, regardless of how long its been in use, and dept of war also sounds silly. It's like what my 5 year old nephew would call his fictitious military agency.
Warfighter - it’s basically “oh we got a badass over here.” People who take things and themselves too seriously and chest pound about their service too much.
It’s exactly the kind of language people like Hegseth love.
Everytime I hear 'Department of War', it just saddens me. Warfighter is the same.
"When the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to
ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses
breed on the border." Tao Te Ching chapter 46.
Trump also says it's war. Different parts of US government leadership are arguing opposite tacks. That said, it's clearly intended to create an existential threat to Iran, so it's plainly obvious that the USA started an actual war.
I will bet that before the election, you were one of the many shouting that voting for Kamala would mean war with Iran.
It's pretty wild to observe you all getting firmware updates in real time. At least it proves, once and for all, that any attempt at reasoning is futile.
> Also the original commenter does not understand the word "Orwellian"
Seems they understood it well: George Orwell wrote a book named "1984", in which a central plot point was that distortion of language ("Newspeak") causes distortion of thought, which causes distortion of reality. Newspeak is a means of engineering reality.
This is an example of that: by distorting, say, "servicemember" into "warfighter", you distort the reality that people at the DoD are there to serve the people as their primary goal, not "fight wars". This means building bridges, levees, aiding disaster-struck friends overseas, etc.
Even if a war actually needs to be fought, it should not be the goal, and thus the job description. It should be in service of the actual primary goal, which is serving the people.
