Department wasn’t born of ‘wokeness’

First of all, it’s still legally the Department of Defense. The executive order does nothing to overturn the legislation that established the department. You’ll never hear me call it the Department of War.

Now let’s examine one of Trump’s statements:

“We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So, we’re going Department of War.”

First of all, the name wasn’t changed. The Department of Defense was a brand new department that was established in the late 1940s that unified two other cabinet level departments, the Secretary of the Navy (Marines and Navy) and the Secretary of War (The Army).

Second, the men at the seat of defense power at the time of the transition were James Forrestal, WWII Secretary of the Navy and the very first Secretary of Defense. Later George Marshall and then Omar Bradley as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

These are literally the men who won WWII and oversaw the establishment of the DoD. They’re woke now?

And finally, when you do a little reading on the name choice you see things like this:

The name change from “War” to “Defense” was a deliberate choice that reflected a new strategic vision. The original name, while historically accurate, no longer suited the U.S.’s new role as a global superpower responsible for deterring conflict and maintaining international stability.

Proponents of the name change argued that “defense” projected an image of a nation focused on protecting itself and its allies, rather than on conquest or aggression.

These WWII guys didn’t need chest thump and inflate their machismo.

Roger Tucker

Mundelein