Our President announced recently that we should rename the Defense Department, the “War Department” because we have not been winning enough wars. That is a bad idea.

Maybe it was an idea that came from some of the “issue for the day” people that he has surrounded himself with, i.e. it didn’t originate from him. But, still, war is not something that we should be embracing, promoting or touting in any manner.

Congress and the courts should just let the Defense Department remain the “Defense” Department. Let the President sign all of the Executive Orders that he wants to…but let’s not go back to the “War” Department.

I have often thought, though it may be just happenstance, that Robert H. Jackson may have influenced the renaming of the old War Department as the new “Defense Department” back in 1947. Remember, he had just gone through the major trial of Nazi defendants at Nuremberg.

One of Jackson’s observations coming out of that experience is engraved on the flagpole base at the Robert Jackson Center here in town. It says: “If we can root out of men’s thinking that all wars are legal… at last we will have mobilized the forces of law on the side of peace.”

The last thing we need to do to promote peace in the world is to go back to the idea that war is inevitable and legitimate. Yes, we do have a right to defend ourselves as a nation…but that gives us no right to frame “war” as an objective by giving it the priority of departmental status in our government.

Admittedly, the name change to Defense Department came out of a long-needed reorganization of our military services… an evaluation sparked in many ways by our experience in the Second World War. There had been serious divisions during that conflict between the Army and the Navy, and there was also a perceived need to create the Air Force as a separate service. Better coordination was needed. That reorganization also gave impetus to creating a department of “defense” and not “war.”

In the United States, a strong defense has always been framed as a way to avoid war, not to promote it.

I know something about war, having actually been in one and in combat. It is not something anyone should want.

So, Mr. President, I am assuming that the idea of creating a War Department was not a serious proposal, but just something to get people like me riled up. I know that you had a falling out with both General “Mad Dog” Mattis and General Kelly in your first administration, both of whom had distinguished careers in the Marine Corps. But on something as consequential as renaming the Pentagon as the home of “war” instead of “defense,”–perhaps you should pull them back into your orbit one more time and ask them what they might think of such an idea.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident and a Vietnam veteran.