Department of Offense

An alien visitor, or even a foreign observer, might find it peculiar that the United States military falls under the auspices of the Department of Defense. The army I was a part of never defended a damn thing. In hindsight, I fought for little that was tangible, except maybe deluded policymakers’ notions of American interests, or to ensure a steady flow of hydrocarbon resources or to distract an apathetic nation from the unrelenting assault on its civil liberties.

I mean, think about it: When was the last time our soldiers actually defended the homeland? The Civil War? The War of 1812? It’s hard to say, really. The populace at large, unlike our hypothetical extraterrestrial, fails to see this because offensive war, “away games” so to speak, is the new normal, and has been as long as most of us have been alive. Still, with American troops deployed to 70 percent of the world’s countries, and the U.S. bombing seven nations that we know of, now seems like the proper time to take stock of the role our military plays on this planet of ours.

And, for good measure, perhaps we should rename the agency responsible for that military: Department of Offense. Has a nice ring to it.

It is strange, our euphemistic naming convention. America used to be so much more direct and emphatic. At least until the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, we had a Department of War. “War.” A forceful word, precise language. What did our military exist to do? War. Still, one supposes we needed to jettison the term. It’d be so inaccurate today. Heck, the U.S. has not followed the Constitution and declared war since 1942. An American who last lived under an official, legal state of war is now 73 years old.

It’s not that state-sanctioned violence ended. Oh, not by a longshot. Some 100,000 American troopers and several million foreigners have been killed in an array of U.S. conflicts of choice since 1950. Nowadays we just don’t bother calling it war. It’s a semantics game. When the truck in front of mine blew up in Baghdad, it sure felt like a war. Same when a propelled grenade vaulted me over a low rock wall in Kandahar. Silly me, I was mistaken. Turns out that my units were actually engaged in “counterinsurgency” “stabilization operations” or—in my favorite bit of DOD speak—“