President Of Peace?

Editor, Times-Union:
On November 11, 2013, Donald Trump said, “... I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly ...”
Obama never attacked Iran. Instead he negotiated a deal on July 14, 2015, with Iran and four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — China, France, Russia, and the U.K., as well as Germany and the European Union. This agreement (JCPOA) imposed restrictions on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program.
Two years later President Donald Trump, during his first term as president, withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear accord. He then directed an air strike in early 2020 that killed the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, prompting the Iranian government to announce it would no longer abide by any operational restraints on its nuclear program under the Iran nuclear deal. During the first year of his second term, Donald Trump, without constitution-mandated approval of Congress, but with the approval and encouragement of Israeli P.M., Benjamin Netanyahu, his partner in war crimes, approved a stealth bomber raid on Iranian enrichment sites and declared those sites were “obliterated.”
Despite this obliteration declaration, a senior U.S. official recently claimed that Tehran “is a week away from having bombmaking material.” Is this the reason Trump decided to once again ferociously attack Iran? Or did his decision again have anything to do with his curious ties to Bibi Netanyahu whose greatest wish is to see his nemesis, Iran, destroyed? No American president — until now — has gone along with Netanyahu’s war plans for Iran, fearing the U.S. could be dragged into a wider Middle East war. Or could it be just another extreme distraction from Donald Trump’s imminent exposure to his role in the Epstein sexual abuse and trafficking saga?
Just who is it, really, that is not skilled to negotiate? Didn’t Donald Trump say he would/could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours? Didn’t he boast he ended the Israeli war in Gaza? Didn’t he begin his second term by presenting himself as a peace president? Truthfully, not only has Donald Trump failed to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza —he has actually started and/or expanded wars in Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and now Iran … twice. Finally, dispelling his delusions of grandeur with his claims that he has ended as many as eight wars around the world, close research into these claims seems to contradict his grandiose and false “achievements.”
Adding insults to our intelligence and more hardships to our lives, Trump and his administration seems to have found plenty of money … our money … to wage new wars, to bow to the wishes of leaders like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, to pay ill-trained thugs to terrorize innocent citizens on the streets of American cities, and to allow “leaders” like Kash Patel and Kristi Noem to fly in luxury wherever and whenever they choose. How are all of these decisions helping to better the lives of ordinary Americans?
Jeanne Tuka Schutz
Winona Lake, via email