Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.

Department of War?

Last week, President Trump took steps to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

The President explained his rationale for the name change. It used to be called the Department

of War and it had a stronger sound. We want defense, but we want offense too. As Department of

War, we want everything, and I think we have to go back to that.

At first it sounds like a terrible idea. A department of war may well make war more likely.

The stronger sound may embolden the U.S. government to take us into even more wars.

There would be no longer any need for the pretext that we take the nation

to war to defend this country and its interests and only as a last resort. As Clinton administration

official, Madeline Albright famously asked of joint chiefs chairman Colin Powell when she was pushing for

U.S. war in the Balkans. What's the point of having this superb military that you're always

talking about if we can't use it? So yes, that is a real danger. But at the same time, the U.S. has been at war nearly

constantly since the end of World War II, so it's not like the Defense Department,

has been in any way a defensive department. With that in mind, returning to Department of Defense to the Department of War,

which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all,

as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our war mongering.

If we return to a war department, then we should also return to the constitutional requirement

that any military activity engaged in by that department, short of defending against an imminent

attack on the U.S. requires a congressional

declaration of war. That was the practice followed when it was called the War Department,

and we should return to it. Dropping the notion that we have a defense department would free us from the charade that our

...