I led a platoon of infantrymen in the 10th Mountain Division in Bermel, a rugged district in Afghanistan’s Paktika province on the Pakistan border.Our mission was the one American infantry carried for generations: close with and destroy the enemy.We protected the Afghan people by doing exactly that: waging war against the enemy who would have harmed them.
Their safety was the result.War was the job.Every soldier in my platoon knew it.
In combat, the fog of war settles over everything.Plans break.
Radios fail.Young leaders make life-or-death decisions with no time to ask for guidance.
What carries them through is a mission so clear that no one has to wonder what it is.TRUMP DELIVERS $1 BILLION TO MARINES TO RELIEVE DECADES-LONG SUFFERING OF AMERICAN HEROES AND THEIR FAMILIESThat is why the name matters."Department of War" states the mission from the very top: our military exists to fight and win the nation’s wars.President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth upon arrival at the US Army War College Field Landing Zone, on his way to the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Penn., on July 15, 2026.
(SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had the conviction to say so plainly.Many in Washington would have left the name alone.
The president chose clarity over convenience when he signed the executive order authorizing the Department of War name.Hegseth has made that mission the standard for everything the department does, from restoring the warrior ethos to ensuring our warfighters remain the most lethal fighting force in the world.US ARMY HITS 2026 RECRUITING GOALS FOUR MONTHS EARLY, PETE HEGSETH ANNOUNCES AT WEST POINT COMMENCEMENTThis is a restoration, not an invention.
The War Department was established in 1789 under President George Washington.For more than 150 years, it carried America’s military through its most consequential conflicts, fr...