The Trump regime can never be expected to do something positive for the laboring people of the United States, let alone of the rest of the world. But sometimes, by error, this racist, misogynist and warmongering crew in office now does something that cuts both ways.
Such was its decision to rename the “Department of Defense ” back to the “Department of War,” as it was called until 1949. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the name change will toughen the Pentagon. So does Trump. They claim the name change will counter “woke” policies.
Remember that Hegseth has two main qualifications for his post as War Secretary: He helped free convicted U.S. special troops who had been convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of whose own special-troop buddies testified against him. He fawns allegiance to Trump.
During the more than 75 years of the Department of Defense, the U.S. started dozens of wars. This was under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The U.S. Armed Forces roamed the planet invading and bombing countries and killing many millions of people — in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, unimpeded by the softer name, Department of Defense.
It’s true, as Trump has said, that the U.S. has won no wars outright since World War II, but not from holding back on killing.
The renaming simply eliminates the lie that the U.S. killing machine defends all the people of the U.S. and that all U.S. wars are defensive wars. This lie aims to deceive the U.S. population. Most of the world is not deceived.
By calling the Pentagon the Department of War instead of the Department of Defense, the Trump crew helps clarify the Pentagon’s real purpose.
The Department of War wages aggressive wars to protect and expand the private property, wealth and profits of a tiny group of extremely rich capitalists and bankers who make up the imperialist ruling class. These superrich people count on the U.S. military to help them exploit the labor of billions of workers and farmers worldwide and pillage the natural resources of the Earth.
When workers and oppressed peoples struggle to increase their earnings or nations struggle for sovereignty over the land they live in, the Department of War kills them. It represses these struggles. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops also died or were wounded in wars the U.S. started.
The Department of War also provides profits for the military-industrial complex. That is, it guarantees profits to capitalists who own weapons corporations. This year the budget for the Department of War alone is more than $1 trillion –– a new record, all taken from taxes that mainly workers pay. The budget’s increase, taken with bipartisan support in Congress, is transferred to the already superrich. Last year’s increase could easily fund the services cut from health care and education.
No workers from the U.S. should risk their own lives or kill other people to serve the interests of this filthy rich ruling class. Not in West Asia, the South China Sea, Korea or Eastern Europe. Or in Africa. Or in the Caribbean against the Venezuelans. Or in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles or Chicago against migrants, Black people and other workers.
Whether MAGA or old-school Republicans or Democrats are in charge, the working class needs to resist the Department of War. The troops inside the military should resist the illegal orders from the White House.
Let’s take the name change a step further and make the “Department of W.A.R. ” stand for the “Department of Weapons’ profits, Aggression and Repression.” And let anyone shocked by the name change absorb the lesson of what the U.S. Armed Forces really are: instruments of aggression and repression to gain superprofits for a tiny few unspeakably wealthy rulers.