The Department of Defense will soon officially become the Department of War, if Republicans get their way. Key committees in the House and Senate have approved the name change, and Donald Trump is eager to sign it into law. The rebranding is candid and ominous, offering a future of heightened zeal for killing, maiming and destroying.

Christened in 1949, the Department of Defense unified the military branches with the Pentagon as their headquarters. Since then, presidents have routinely promoted each new war as vital for the defense of the United States and its values, a pretense that has pervaded mainstream media and political discourse.

Belief in that pretense has now hit bottom, with US public support for this year’s war on Iran extraordinarily low from the outset. But Trump, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and their underlings are doing what they can to inculcate the idea that US warfare is not just superbly laudable but also inevitable. The unabashed fervor for catastrophic violence is fueling the momentum to replace “defense” with “war” department.

A switch to Department of War would undermine some of the deceptive marketing that has been central to the Department of Defense brand. Along the way, the new name could make it more difficult to perpetuate the assumption that US military actions spring from admirable motives.

Politicians and journalists drag the public down a misleading rabbit hole when they habitually refer to “defense spending” and a “defense budget”. Even antiwar activists do the same as they advocate for cutting the........

© The Guardian