The president who dodged the draft 5 different times during the Vietnam War has no problem sending Americans to fight and die in the Middle East. He did not bother to make the case for the urgency of Operation Epic Fury to the American people beforehand, announcing the attack at 2:30 Saturday morning on his social media site. No official address till 3 days later. He did not consult with Congress, much less get authorization as required by law. The only justification for a president to unilaterally start a war is if there is an imminent threat. But there was no such threat – as he, himself made clear when he declared Iran’s nuclear program “obliterated” following U.S. bombings last summer. There was widespread expert consensus that this attack had left the program in shambles, with no ability to produce nuclear weapons.

In his address, President Trump called the first service members to die in the war, “true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice,” but went on to say, “Sadly there will be more before it ends. That’s the way it is.” His matter-of-fact delivery really put the “casual” in “casualty.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, assured us in his typical, testosterone-fueled, frat boy fashion that the operation would be 0% “woke”. “No stupid Rules of Engagement. No Nation-building quagmire. No Democracy-building exercise. No Politically Correct Wars.” This contradicts the military’s own instructions to new recruits in Rules of Engagement with handbooks entitled, “Principles of the Law of War.” These include the concepts of 1. Proportionality (the level of response is proportional to the threat. 2. Avoid Unnecessary Suffering (minimize destruction of property, infrastructure, and physical suffering of both civilians and combatants.) 3. Distinction (focus on the military objectives and not against noncombatants or protected places.)

Now, with no clear objective, no strategic plan, and no exit strategy, the president has committed massive military resources to wage war in the same part of the world we have been many times before. And both Trump and Hegseth have refused to rule out “boots on the ground.” Forbes Magazine estimates the cost to U.S. Taxpayers is $1 billion, so far.

Despite campaign promises to bring down the cost of living, families are struggling to afford groceries, housing, and healthcare. Our international alliances are fracturing from inconsistent trade and tariff policies, not to mention threats to take over sovereign countries. The Trump Administration seems guided by the 3 C’s: Chaos, Cruelty, and Contempt. This is demonstrated by everything from disastrous immigration policies with an untrained secret police force that rounds up, disappears, and even kills people, to an environmental policy that rolls back protections for clean water, air and soil, to an anti-science health policy that has allowed measles and other diseases to make a comeback, to the elimination of food programs that children rely on and many farmers benefit from… The list goes on and on.

And then there’s the Epstein files – another campaign promise broken. Full transparency – what happened to that? Millions of pages not released. Pages redacted to protect the guilty. Pages released exposing survivors. Pages of testimony from a 14-year-old girl who accused the president of forcing her to have sex with him – now completely gone.

So we find ourselves in yet another war, this time led by a president who’s failure to speak to us and explain the mission, embodies the contempt he holds for the majority of the populace. As his nemesis Jimmy Kimmel described it, this is a WMD, a War of Mass Distraction.

Rachel Brown is a Greenhurst resident.