# "Warfighters"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warfighters/1017478>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [April 25, 2025, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warfighters/1017478 "2025-04-25T12:40:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 25

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**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\
**Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warfighters/1017478/25 "2025-09-21T17:09:12Z")

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Bumping this as I was reminded of the term in [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-marines-us-not-soldiers/1023254/42) and had some additional thoughts that seemed too far afield from the FQ topic.

> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#):
>
> Using a term like that makes it sound like war is as inevitable as something as common as fires (firefighters). The collective term used to be service persons or “men and women in uniform” “Warfighters” just makes them sound like weapons. That is definitely a term with an agenda.

Totally agree with this sentiment. What the current SecDef and POTUS are missing with their use of the term “warfighters” and worse, with the [renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restoring-the-united-states-department-of-war/), is that the first purpose of a strong standing military force is _not_ actually to fight wars. It is to deter wars.

If you actually have to fight a war, then you’ve failed in that first purpose.

But our current leadership misses this point entirely. Heaven help us, Trump reportedly misses this point with our nuclear forces as well. Forces whose sole purpose is to deter our adversaries, and which, if ever used, could lead to the deaths of billions of people and the end of civilization. [Cite](https://wapo.st/4nGVR23) (gift link).

> [@Washington Post](#):
>
> By August 2016, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough claimed that Trump had asked a foreign policy expert [what good nuclear weapons were if they weren’t utilized](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html). “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump,” said Scarborough, who was intermittently friendly and adversarial with Trump. “And three times, [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times. He asked at one point, if we had them, why can’t we use them?”

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