But Trump’s honesty about what our military really does isn’t to his credit

By Herbert Rothschild

Although President Donald Trump is an inveterate liar, he is extraordinarily transparent. Previous administrations worked hard to conceal from public view their illegal and brutal behavior abroad, either by secrecy or by high-minded justifications. Trump occasionally attempts the latter, but his heart isn’t in it. For him, politics is a power game, and he plays the game out in the open.

So, it was entirely in character that, on Sept. 5, Trump signed Executive Order 14347, “Restoring the United States Department of War.” The text directs that the Department of Defense may be referred to as the “Department of War” and its head as “Secretary of War” for certain communications and ceremonial uses. Uncharacteristically acknowledging that Congress, not he, has the authority officially to change the name of a Cabinet-level department, Trump instructed the secretary of defense to recommend actions, including possible legislation, to make the name change permanent.

For most of this nation’s history, we had a War Department. The National Security Act of 1947 discarded that name, and amendments to the act in 1949 changed it to the Department of Defense.

Trump said back in June that the 1949 change was prompted by political correctness, and during the news conference at which he announced his renaming, he called the earlier change “woke.” On that occasion, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth followed Trump’s lead. “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.”

Trump and Hegseth didn’t get it. We renamed our war-making machine the Department of Defense at the very time our leaders committed the U.S. to achieving global hegemony. We built a huge navy and hundreds of overseas bases to project our power everywhere. The name change was a classic Orwellian ploy. Offense became defense.

At the news conference Hegseth said, “It’s gonna fight to win, not to lose. We’re gonna go on offense, not just on defense.” He added, the U.S. will “raise up warriors, not just defenders.” Regarding Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq as defensive actions is odd. It seems that Hegseth believed his government’s propaganda. He served in the latter two wars.

I don’t think his commander in chief, who dodged the draft avoid fighting in Vietnam, is similarly naïve. And to his credit, Trump has no interest in “crusades.” He just wants to win. The name change is another boast to the world that he has the power to win.

We lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, not because we played defense, but because we didn’t have the overwhelming advantages that we did with Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic, Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, and Clinton’s invasion of Haiti. As our current aggression indicates, Trump has the bully’s predilection for singling out the relatively weak. But it’s one thing to destroy small boats in the Caribbean, another to invade a country of 31 million people. If he does invade Venezuela, we’ll again learn to our regret that winning isn’t as easy as may seem.

Speaking of the name change, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “this change is essential because it reflects the department’s core mission: winning wars. This has always been our mission, and while we hope for peace, we will prepare for war. Defense isn’t enough — we’ve got to be ready to strike and dominate our enemies.”

Aside from his perfunctory nod to peace, Parnell expressed perfectly the Trump ethos.

I’ve made the point before that hypocrisy is underrated. It indicates that the wrongdoer knows what is morally right and recognizes the importance of seeming to uphold it. So, while I’m tempted to welcome as refreshingly honest Trump’s declaration that our thoroughly militarized foreign policy is about power, I don’t.

Trump’s is the honesty of a moral bankrupt. This latest display is of a piece with that infamous statement at a campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Jan. 23, 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

Is Trump correct? Is the U.S. populace also morally bankrupt? Are we so in love with power that winning is all that matters, and winning simply means dominating our opponents? That possibility can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Posted in the locker room of my high school gym was sportswriter Grantland Rice’s famous couplet, “For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, / He writes — not that you won or lost — but how you played the game.”

Rice wrote that in 1908. In 1962, Vince Lombardi, the highly successful coach of the Green Bay Packers, was quoted in Esquire as saying, “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” Tellingly, Lombardi is constantly misquoted as having said, “Winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing.” Actually, Red Sanders, the UCLA football coach, said that in 1950.

Fans at big-time college football games are energized by a near-manic desire to crush the opposition. Is that not the tenor of a MAGA rally? Worse, for all too many who call themselves Christians it has become the tenor of their faith life. The prospect of gaining political power has led them to become devoted fans of a transparent religious charlatan.

I was encouraged, however, by the finding of a CBS/YouGov poll late last month that 76% of respondents felt the president had not adequately justified his aggression against Venezuela. More encouraging was the finding by a Reuters/Ipsos poll that 48% of Americans opposed the bombing of alleged drug-carrying boats without judicial authorization, while only 34% supported it.

These findings suggest that the majority of Americans still need to believe that we are morally good people. That need will induce future administrations to again refer to our military machine as the Department of Defense and again clothe its aggressions in high-minded rationalizations. Regrettably, there’s little likelihood that they will confine its operations to national defense.  

Relocations is taking a holiday. The next column will appear on Jan. 9. Opinions expressed in these columns represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected]. Email letters to the editor and Viewpoint submissions to [email protected].