President Trump announced his main goals during his second inaugural address on January 20, 2025:
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”
President Trump also declared:
“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”
President Trump’s stated goals are the bedrock of our fragile democracy. It takes very little to get mired in endless wars, especially when voices calling for peace and reason are silenced. History is littered with great societies who charged headlong into their own destruction for the silliest of causes.
The most famous war of ancient western civilization was the Trojan War between Greece and Troy. It lasted ten years, cost countless lives and treasure and was started over one woman, Helen, whose face, according to the poet Homer, “Launched a 1,000 ships”.
World War I was often called the “war about nothing”, cost the earth millions of human lives, including over 100,000 Americans, and was started over the assassination of the Arch Duke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand.
America’s Viet Nam War spanned over twenty years of conflict, but it was a questionable attack on a United States ship in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 that was used to justify America’s involvement in the “endless war”.
The United States had no quarrel with Iraq but false intelligence alleging Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” got us involved in the costly military slog that has continued since 1990. In this pointless and endless war America has expended and is still expending countless lives and treasure. What President Trump recognized in his inaugural address is that war can be slid into easily but may result in catastrophic consequences and never end.
Since his inauguration, President Trump has frequently compared the fighting between Israel and its neighbors to a school yard dustup between boys. As President Trump has frequently said, America has no reason to be involved. U.S.A. involvement might lead to another world war but it could lead to a permanent Middle East Peace if we put into practice the lessons of history or simply those from our mothers.
When I was in the first grade, for some never fathomed reason, another first grader and I developed a routine of fighting every day after school. As do most schoolboy contests, they amounted to little damage to either of us but did result in the destruction of numerous tee shirts. Well, our mothers banged our heads together and ended our “endless war”. He and I, of course, became good friends and still are today. Neither of us has a clue what we fought about back then.
I respectfully suggest to President Trump that he tell Israel and Iran they should neither one have nuclear or atomic weapons and neither should attack the other or their neighbors. Instead of arming one country to attack the other, America should use its enormous motherly power and wisdom to sit Israel and Iran down with the stern warning that no more tee shirts will be lost by anyone, including us.