Renaming Cabinet department from ‘Defense’ to ‘War’ rejects peace, true power
The news that President Donald Trump has signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense back to the Department of War shakes me deeply.
This is not just a bureaucratic shuffle. Words matter. Titles matter. The language we use tells the next generation who we are and what we believe.
When Harry Truman and Congress chose “Defense” in 1949, they were not fussing with semantics. They signaled a turn away from constant war-making. They recognized that America’s strength must be measured not only by military might but also by a commitment to stability and peace. That mattered then, and it matters now.
So when I hear Trump say that under the “Department of War,” we “won the World War I, World War II” and that “everybody likes that,” I feel a knot in my stomach. It reduces our history to battles won, as if war is the highest expression of who we are. That is not the America I want to hand to our children.
What troubles me most is the pattern underneath those words: When a leader romanticizes war, they court the war they want to fight. A president who aggrandizes war to feel powerful will always find a reason to wage one.
When power is defined as domination, an excuse will always be found to justify its use. History teaches us this lesson repeatedly. Schoolyard bullies grow into political bullies, and the stakes move from bruised egos to human lives.
From Marshall to Carter, peace happens through diplomacy
The administration refers to the change as a “warrior ethos.” I call it a dangerous illusion. If you hang a sign over the Pentagon that says “War,” you tell the people inside to prepare for war. You shape policy, direct budgets, and steer decisions toward conflict.
Our nation’s history is replete with great peacemakers and visionaries who understood that true power stems from restraint, diplomacy, and justice. President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex even as he carried the weight of World War II on his shoulders.
Former Secretary of State and of Defense George Marshall looked at a broken Europe and offered the Marshall Plan — not domination but rebuilding through investment and cooperation. Decades later, Georgia’s native son President Jimmy Carter gathered adversaries at Camp David and showed that patient diplomacy could accomplish what armies never would. Their examples remind us that peace, when chosen with courage, can hold the world steady for decades.
To replace them with leaders who romanticize war — who treat it as a personal stage for swagger and profit — is to invite disaster.
Real strength lies not in saber-rattling or spectacle but in the quiet, often unseen work of diplomacy and restraint. That steady labor prevents violence before it explodes. We once trusted statesmen and women who knew that nonviolence is not weakness but power under discipline. That vision of power deserves our honor today.
John Lewis, MLK and Young taught us about nonviolence
Atlanta knows that vision well. This city taught the world what courage looks like, marching unarmed into the teeth of hatred. John Lewis, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, and so many Atlantans proved that nonviolence can move empires.
If we forget that legacy, we forget ourselves. Georgians — including military families — deserve leaders who recognize that the words we choose shape the world we create and keep the sons and daughters who choose military service safe.
Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War will not make us safer. It will not make us stronger. It will make us smaller. It will teach our children that violence defines our destiny and that peace belongs only to dreamers.
That is not a story I will ever tell about my country, and it is a future we must refuse. This is not semantics. It is a dangerous rewriting of our national story. And a leader who chooses war over peace in name reveals the war he intends to pursue in practice.
Bryce Thomason is the executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, a faith community with deep roots in Atlanta’s civil rights movement. He is a longtime advocate for social justice and lives in Atlanta. The views expressed are his own.
