FTA: "With the renaming of the War Department as the Kitten Department in 2027, the military part of the government will become sacred, virtually untouchable. How could anyone vote to cut Kitten unless he or she is willing to face political defeat?" George McGovern, 2011.
I didn't read the article but I agree that changing the name to Dept of Defense was a Trump-caliber piece of bullshittery. It's funny to me that it's "woke" now since everyone right and left bought into the idea that we changed it because it's more kumbaya to say "Defense." Should have changed it to Department of Kittens and told everyone we don't do war anymore, only kitten.
FTA: "With the renaming of the War Department as the Defense Department in 1947, the military part of the government became sacred, virtually untouchable. How could anyone vote to cut defense unless he or she is willing to face political defeat?" George McGovern, 2011.
I didn't read the article but I agree that changing the name to Dept of Defense was a Trump-caliber piece of bullshittery. It's funny to me that it's "woke" now since everyone right and left bought into the idea that we changed it because it's more kumbaya to say "Defense." Should have changed it to Department of Kittens and told everyone we don't do war anymore, only kitten.
Missed the opportunity to call it the Dept. of Peace.
I didn't read the article but I agree that changing the name to Dept of Defense was a Trump-caliber piece of bullshittery. It's funny to me that it's "woke" now since everyone right and left bought into the idea that we changed it because it's more kumbaya to say "Defense." Should have changed it to Department of Kittens and told everyone we don't do war anymore, only kitten.
Since inauguration day, the Trump White House has routinely evoked a deep-rooted Cold War framework for expressing Americaâs relationship with war. This framing sits at odds with the presidentâs inaugural address in which Mr. Trump, conjuring Richard Nixon, argued that his âproudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.â
From January 2025 on, the administration has instead engaged in a steady drumbeat of aggressive militaristic taunting, threatening real and perceived enemies, foreign and domestic alike. From ordering 1,500 active-duty troops to assist with border patrolling and deportation missions, to the secretary of defense censuring the nationâs armed forces for not focusing enough on âlethality,â the Trump administration is reviving a decades-long trend within an increasingly militarized U.S. foreign policy â a faith in and fear of war and its consequences.
Since the end of World War II, Americans crafted and then embraced a rather disjointed relationship with war, exhilarated by its possibilities to transform the world and make them safe, while also fearing wars they could not prevent or, perhaps worse, win. This tension between faith and fear has haunted Americans and led to a persistent failure to align ends and means in carrying out US foreign relations.
Of course, ideals, interests, and power matter when it comes to foreign policy. Cold War commentators insisted that international politics was a âstruggle for power.â True, some critics worried about the consequences of using âraw powerâ to achieve global dominance while overestimating threats. They fretted that wielding power might actually produce foreign policy crises rather than solve them.
But in the decades following the Second World War, many Americans feared that if the United States âlostâ the burgeoning Cold War, their nation might not even survive. It was a tense time. World War II gave Americans the worldâ¦and the faith necessary to rule it. But seemingly new evils emerged that gave pause to policymakers and the general public alike.
Here were inklings of a relationship between faith and fear that would inform U.S. foreign policy ever since. I talk about this in my new book, "Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War since 1945." A secular faith in war to solve any foreign policy problem, coupled with fears of Americaâs enemies bringing destruction to the nationâs shores, indelibly shaped policy choices when it came to containing communism around the globe.
In short, Americans largely held faith that war would always be utilitarian, a ârational meansâ for attaining their desired ends.
In such a cognitive framing, war might bring chaos in the dangerous world of which realists warned, but it also lured with the promise of influence, even dominance, the chance to reshape or control whole swaths of the globe. (...)
