No.Nonsense.

When Trump initiated the attack on Venezuela and captured Maduro, I didn’t have a problem with that action. With China funneling deadly fentanyl through the country and Maduro’s trafficking of it to the US, it made sense to me to take out the one who was a direct threat to our country. Fentanyl had killed thousands of our people. It was a bomb in a little pill and the terrorist who was funneling it into our country needed to be stopped. When you can’t take out the source, aka China, you take out the pathway.

And that should have been enough.

And then we attacked Iran.

We had supposedly destroyed their nuclear weapons program last year and removed the threat they posed. Yes, they were proxies for terrorist organizations around the world but the sanctions we had imposed on them were choking out their ability to fund those organizations. All that was left was a regime that was fighting for its life in the wake of the uprising of its citizens.

They were not a threat except in the minds of the Israeli government. They definitely were not a threat to us.

We left a power vacuum when we took out the Ayatollah and 40 of his top leaders. When asked who was going to take over, Trump said he had someone in mind but, oops, we killed him in that strike on the palace. So, sorry. Now, the man that has taken over the government is reported to be worse than Khomeni.

And we’re still fighting.

Every time I express on social media my lack of support for this war, I get a lot of pushback. The most common line I hear is that it’s a military action and not a war. In my estimation, if bombs and missiles are being sent back and forth it’s a freaking war and no parsing of the language changes that fact.

And, now, there is discussion of the US overthrowing the government in Cuba.

Oh. My. God.

Where does it stop?!

Trump ran on a platform of getting us out of endless wars and keeping us out of future wars. He was adamantly against our involvement in Iraq. He argued that we needed to extricate ourselves from the mess that was Afghanistan. He continues to tout that he has brokered all of these peace deals and ceasefires around the world- a claim that according to fact checkers is tremendously overstated. He was supposed to be the president seeking peace in the world, according to his own words.

Instead, he has become the despot who continues to try to shape the world into the image that he wishes to create, imposing US values on everyone else. He is saying if they don’t do it our way then we will make them do it our way. And if they then don’t bend, we will bomb them into oblivion.

This is not who we are.

In the 1980s the Soviet regime was the scourge of the world, subjugating country after country across the eastern block of Europe. When Ronald Reagan sought to dismantle the regime, he didn’t do it with bombs and rockets. He did it through building a relationship with Gorbachev that was mutually beneficial to both countries and allowed the Soviets to save face while finally doing the right thing and freeing the countries it controlled. He fearlessly stood in front of the Berlin Wall and called on the Soviets to tear it down. Even though Russia has risen back to a place of power under Putin, it has never returned to the level of power it once had. And we did it all without firing a single shot.

The US is not meant to be kingmakers. We, in reality, suck at it. We are not the policemen of the world, keeping every one in line. We should not be the parent to which the kids run to fight the bully on the playground. At some point we have to let the kids fight their own battles.

Someone needs to rein in what’s happening right now. Someone needs to have the backbone to say to the president that enough is enough. It’s not showing you have balls to drop the bomb; it’s showing you have balls when you stop the bombs.