Comment by dragonwriter

Comment by dragonwriter 2 days ago

> It was always called the Department of War [1] from 1789 until 1947.

No, what became the Department of Defense didn't exist from 1789 until 1947. The cabinet level Department of the Navy (current Department of the Navy) and the cabinet-level Department of War (later split into the current Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force) did, as separate, co-equal entities with no single civilian head over them beneath the President.

The National Military Establishment under the cabinet-level Secretary of Defense was created as a unified military structure in 1947 over both the Department of the Navy (which remained a cabinet-level department) and what had been the Department of War (which was split into the cabinet-level Departments of the Army and the Air Force). And in 1949 the three service departments were fully subordinated within the NME instead of being cabinet level, and the NME was renamed the Department of Defense (pribably not entirely because it was really awkward having the combined military organization use an initialism that sounded like “enemy”, but...)

More detailed version in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46825849

somenameforme 2 days ago

All you are describing is a restructuring of which the Department of War had gone through repeatedly throughout its history. It's not like it had the same structure, or anything remotely like it, in 1942 as in 1789. The choice of the name was, as you observe, a choice. And it coincides exactly with the move away from public honesty in international relations and events.

You have things like WW1 being framed (at the time) as 'The War to End All Wars' but I think that was probably naivete whereas after we started calling war 'defense' we entered into the era of 'police actions' instead of wars, like the Korean War, and outright false flags such as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident for Vietnam. All the while the CIA was running around acting like a rabid chimp all across the world. It was entering into an era where deceiving the public became standard operating procedure, of which framing war as defense was but one typical aspect.

I believe we are now leaving that era, and I think that is a good thing for everybody.

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dragonwriter 2 days ago

> All you are describing is a restructuring of which the Department of War had gone through repeatedly throughout its history
No, from 1789 to 1947 there were two separate cabinet-level departments, War and Navy.
> It's not like it had the same structure, or anything remotely like it, in 1942 as in 1789
Internal to the two cabinet-level departments? Probably not.
At the cabinet level? There was exactly the same structure: the Department of War with the Army underneath it and the Department of the Navy with the Navy and Marine Corps.
The War Department did not become the Defense Department. In 1947 War was split into Army and Air Force, and a fourth cabinet secretary, the Secretary of Defense was added, heading the combined National Military Establishment that was created over both what had been the War Department and what still was the Navy Department (all still cabinet level departments). In 1949, the three service secretaries (two of which headed parts of what had been the War Department) were formally subordinated to the Secretary of Defense and the NME was renamed the Department of Defense. The Department of War was direct predecessor to the Departments of the Army and Air Force, not the Department of Defense, which was a new level of coordination interposed between the President and the formerly organizationally-separated services.

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- somenameforme 2 days ago
  
  This is inaccurate. The Department of War initially had oversight over the Navy as well. The separation of the Navy into a separate department (which did not even exist at the time when the War Department was created) was one of those many restructurings it went through, without ever having a name change until we entered the era of deception.
  
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