For most of the history of the United States, what we now refer to as the Department of Defense was the Department of War. Yet, aside with the arguable response to the attack on Pearl Harbor70 years ago, that is not the purpose to which it is put.
In the recent decades it has become, more and more, a self-perpetuating means of corporate welfare and employment to "defend" our "national interests" on foreign soil, with mixed and sometimes catastrophic results.
We should like to see the integrity of the language trump political-speak and the U.S. usher in an era of honest expression of our intents, purposes and actions.