The United States loves to use semantics when it comes to those types of things that might disturb people in their firm belief that the United States is truly the land of liberty, freedom, and the rule of law – for the United States tortures people under the moniker of “enhanced interrogation,” and when it kills other nation’s civilians, it likes to call those civilians that they kill, “collateral damage,” and pretty much the list goes on and on. There are legitimate reasons why the United States, changed its War department name from the Department of War, to the Department of Defense, such as the fact that back in the day when our armed forces were first put together, the Department of War was synonymous with the United States Army, in which, only later did the Navy, and then over a century beyond that, did the Air Force, become part and parcel of our armed forces; we find then that the thinking was that these separate armed forces divisions, did not desire to be perceived as being under the exclusive control of the Army. Subsequently, the National Security Act of 1947, enacted legislation of which each branch of the armed forces was thus its own department, subsequentially subsumed under the new controlling department name of Defense.
The thing about the word, defense, is it is not the same word as offense; in fact, it means the opposite of such, and in consideration that the United States is not only a global power, but is the premier global power, proven by the fact that it has over 750 military bases worldwide – of which, this then would seem to clearly indicate that the United States isn’t really about defense, at all; but, is instead about worldwide domination, and that domination to be done through the implicit threat of war, at the sole discretion of the United States.
When we look at the United States, it shares a very long border with both Canada as well as with Mexico, in which, neither of these countries is a danger or a menace to the United States; but, in fact, these respective nations are pretty much always in harmony or in compliance with United States demands. Further to the point, there isn’t any sole nation in the world, or even a consortium of nations, that would even consider waging war against the United States, for they recognize the stupidity and futility of such. So then, there isn’t any defense ever really going on in America, but there is though certainly plenty of offense, as the United States, has been waging war, almost continuously, since the conclusion of World War II, with just some very brief respites from such, of which, not a single one of these wars so waged, has really needed to have United States participation in it.
The United States should be honest with its people, especially since it claims to be of, for, and by people in its governance. Therefore, the Department of Defense should be renamed to the Department of War, forthwith, and additionally, the United States should make its case to its own people, as to the reasons why it has to be at war, all of the time, without any of these wars, since 1942, actually being authorized through Congress, as mandated per the highest law of the land, its Constitution.