This post is also available in: Italian, GermanRestoring the original and non-Orwellian name to the U.S. Department of War ought to have a positive impact on people’s speech and understanding. Even peace activists relentlessly talk about “the Defense Department,” “the defense industry,” “defense contractors,” etc. Endless massive, ever-growing War Authorization Acts could make Congress stop and notice the absence during the past 84 years of any Declaration of War, or of any moment in which the U.S. War Department was not at war, or of any war that could be said to have accomplished anything useful. We should not be bothered by what he calls the war machine, but by the war machine itself — even when the name change is resisted or reversed. We might consider alternatives to war, and the case for war abolition.