Rebranding an entire department under the US government cannot be cheap. That does not sound like something a frugal government does without a very good reason.
This action might save trillions of dollars when the future generations will see all this money going to war, instead of "defense". And you are worried about a few million it might take to rebrand?
> "War and Peace" had a working title "War, what is it good for" before his mistress insisted he change it.
I suspect that you are being facetious, but for the benefit of anyone else reading, this is not true. It's a "factoid" (an invented fact mistaken as true)[1] spawned from a joke on the TV program Seinfeld[2].
Maybe it's more obvious when named this way, but I don't think I've ever been under the impression that the DoD is focused on peaceful means of keeping the peace.
You're right. USAID was the Department that used peaceful means and encouragement for suffering countries in spite of lack of resources, adventurism, health and wealth inequalities and border disputes. It was a stick and carrot way of influencing participation in the spread of democracy, feeding the hungry and warding off disease that could spread to the rest of the world.
Transparency might cost a government in a direct sense, but the liberal argument would be that a transparent government is a more democratic and accountable government therefore that cost should ultimately result in better governance which has lots of indirect benefits.
In reality the majority of the US military budget does not go to defence in the colloquial sense, it's far more about projecting US power globally (which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you think that the US is projecting it's power for good).
"War" is a better description and sounds less innocent than "defence" would imply, although I think you could argue that even this is a slightly misleading description.
No, its not; not that the implicit equation of “how it used to be” with “how it ought to be” is valid to start with.
> We had a War Department. Rebranding to Defense was a PR move to hide what was really happening.
No. We had a War Department that was the agency responsible for the Army, including what was then the Army Air Forces, and a Navy Department that was the agency responsible for the Navy including the Marine Corps. Splitting and rebranding the former to the two Departments of the Army and Air Force was done to simultaneously more accurately reflect its responsibilities and to address the growing significance of air power.
This split was simultaneous with the old and now split up War Department and the old but keeping its name Navy Department being subordinated to the new consolidated military establishment named the Department of Defense, but the Defense Department wasn’t a new name for the War Dpartment, it was the name for a completely new thing placed above the older, separate military departments.
I understand it's also something which takes an act of Congress, not that this administration seems to care about that at all. See also tariffs. And delaying the TikTok ban.
Pretty sure OP is referring to the propaganda this admin spewed about DOGE's purpose being to save money. An admin that actually cared about saving money wouldn't waste money on a pointless rebrand.
Sure, but those logos need to replace the old ones, everywhere. The new logo might cost a few millions to design, but that's the least of it. You'd need to replace the old logo and naming everywhere from signs, websites, letterheads, social media, software products and everything in between. Everything that currently says DoD now needs to say DoW. I don't know if they changed the colour scheme, but if they did, they'd might need to repaint a bunch of things as well.
If you wait and just update the logo as things naturally ages out, then it's going to take decades.
