Donald Trump was double cruel about Iran casualties minimized importance of veterans killed and created unrealistic correlations with other wars

As a Vietnam era draftee, I will always be focused on the avoidance by our country of unnecessary war. Donald Trump’s campaign included a commitment to avoid future wars. Well and good. 

Echo opinion letter published in the Las Vegas Journal-Review by Thomas B. Petersen in St George, Utah.

But, during Donald Trump's disaster on Sunday's (June 7th,  “Meet The Press” interview with journalist Kristen Welker, it was (justifiably) pointed out that he had not made good on his campaign promise to avoid future wars, and that there seemed to be no end in sight to the U.S. attacks on Iran. 

Donald Trump's response was to draw comparisons to our involvement in World War II, Korea and Vietnam in regard to durations and casualties, making the specific case that 😕😢only 13 U.S. casualties in the current war and the current two-month duration to date paled compared to our losses in previous wars.

His justification for the Iran war as having cost us only 13 casualties versus more than 50,000 in Vietnam was especially offensive to me. His campaign promise to avoid future wars was not kept, and our war with Iran is not justified. 😡😒😞😧😠😭😢

Donald Trump gave a failed April Fool's speech. It was no joke. Obviously Trump is lost and cannot find a way out of the mess he created,

Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech. His messed up "speech" raised more questions than it answered about the war in Iran. By Tom Nichols. Americans have been waiting for Donald Trump to address the nation and explain why the country is at war. 

Echo opinion about Donald Trump's failed April Fool's Day stupidity speech about Iran. 

Published by Tom Nichols in The Atlantic magazine. 

For weeks, Donald Trump offered only snippets and sound bites about his decision to lead the United States into another conflict in the Middle East; his prime-time address on April 1, 2026, might as well have been a sick April Fool's joke, His (so called) speech was, one assumes, aimed at informing and reassuring the American public.

Maybe he’d have been better off not trying. (IOW, Trump was a "Fool", for trying when he is not capable of explaining anything, much less trying to describe a reason to go to war.)

Trump’s critics (including me) castigated him for refusing to go on television and provide a comprehensive explanation about the war to the American people. But, given his April Fool's performance  his address did not come across as a wartime speech but instead was a disjointed series of complaints, brags, and exaggerations (along with a few outright lies) delivered by a man who looked and sounded tired. After his 19 minutes on the air—brisk by Trump’s standards—Americans could be forgiven for being even more concerned now than they were only a few days ago.

A speech that should have been a clear explanation about why the United States is fighting a nation of 92 million people began, instead, in shambolic style. He discussed the operation that captured the president of Venezuela, perhaps hoping to make listeners believe that the Iran war will be a similarly short operation. 

Trump then said that Iran has taken losses never seen “in the history of warfare”—as if the destruction of, say, the Axis in World War II had never happened.

Trump offered little that was new, instead repeating the same lines from a short video presentation the night that he ordered attacks on the Islamic Republic, more than one month ago. He listed—rightly and correctly—the various offenses that the fanatical Iranian regime has perpetrated against the United States and other countries for nearly a half century. 

Nevertheless, he couldn’t help himself: He patted himself on the back for killing the Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani in his first term, and for canceling the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. (“Barack Hussein Obama,” of course.) The United States, Trump claimed in a strange moment, had emptied out all the banks in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia as part of that deal—“all the cash they had”—to send that “green, green” currency to Iran.

But, back to the war Trump illegally launched: What is America fighting for❓ Trump insisted that Iran must never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Almost no one would disagree with this general point—certainly I don’t—but Trump presented no evidence that Iran was nearing the nuclear threshold. 

Instead, Trump simply asserted that the Iranian mullahs were going to get a nuclear weapon and that the United States had to stop them: In other words, he admitted to launching a preventive war based on something that might happen one day.

Trump, however, then undercut his own point by assuring the country that Iran’s “nuclear dust” was buried under mountains of rubble, inaccessible since the great success of last June’s joint Israeli-American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians would never be allowed to excavate any of it, he said.

So, then, perhaps the war was about regime change, which would be the surest way to stop every evil plan gestating in Tehran, including nuclear weapons and terrorist plots. Well, no, it turns out, the war is not about that either. 🙄Trump explicitly denied that the goal was to bring down the Iranian theocracy—a staggering claim given his exhortations to the Iranian people on the first night of the war that their hour of liberation was at hand. 

After denying that the U.S. goal was regime change, he then claimed that regime change had now already happened because so many Iranian leaders have been killed.

In addition to ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Trump laid out three other goals that he said were now within reach: neutralizing Iran’s ability to project power anywhere through terrorism, destroying the Iranian navy, and eliminating Iran’s missile stocks and production capabilities. As with so many other Trump promises, he said that  these goals would be accomplished in two to three weeks. 

How he will do all of this was left unclear, other than that he will hit Iran “extremely hard.”

Meanwhile, Tehran still controls the important Strait of Hormuz. Trump said only that other nations should go in, clear the strait, and take Iran’s oil. He chided Americans for their impatience; the two world wars, and conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq took longer than the current war, he said. (BTW, the outcomes of all three of those wars were disasters. Korea war is still not settled, Vietnam collapsed, Iraq was based on a lie, to destroy "weapons of mass destruction" that did not exist.)

Trump He also lied when he waved away any economic concerns. Everything will get better, he promised, telling viewers that only a year ago America was a “dead and crippled country” that he personally rescued. 

Oddly, Trump claimed that the United States has never been more economically prepared for a conflict—the “little journey,” as he called it—like the one he has led against Iran.

Trump also said things that might come back to haunt him. He vowed not to let Israel or America’s friends in the Persian Gulf “get hurt or fail in any way, shape, or form,” as if Iran were not already inflicting damage on them. 

And, Trump assured Americans that gas prices would come down. (They might, but not anytime soon.) He threatened, yet again, to bomb all of Iran’s electrical plants, a likely war crime if carried out with the completeness that Trump promised, should Iran refuse to … well, do whatever it is he thinks they should do. “We are unstoppable,” he said, noting that U.S. forces were in combat against “one of the most powerful countries.” (This, too, is nonsense: It takes nothing away from U.S.-military valor to admit that Iran was at best a second-tier power even before the war.) 

America might be unstoppable, but Donald Trump is obviously at loose ends now that the Iranians have a chokehold on a major part of the world’s energy supply.

Maybe the only bright spots in the speech were in the things the president did not say. He did not, as many observers expected, prepare Americans for the introduction of ground forces into Iran. (If he now goes ahead with such an operation, he will have betrayed the public by misleading them about the course of the war.) And he did not eviscerate

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and threaten to pull out of the alliance, as some expected him to do because of his ongoing anger at major European powers’ unwillingness to join a war they did not start.

If Donald Trump meant to be reassuring, however, he missed the mark. The reality, as best we can tell, is that Trump fully expected the Iranian regime to collapse in a matter of days or weeks, and he is now flummoxed to find out that a major war is a lot more complicated than he—or (the failed) Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—realized. The president’s delivery tonight was hardly a confidence-building exercise. He was, as he himself might say, low energy—mumbling and lapsing into the repetitive phrases that come out when he’s riffing on a point instead of reading the speech in front of him. (I lost count of how many times he said “like nobody’s ever seen” and “decimated” and “never before.”)

Donald Trump is looking like he is lost and downtrodden. Perhaps he should have stayed off the podium for a bit longer, rather than display how adrift he is to the American public and the world.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans will be held accountable for horrible behavior because history will never forget!

History’s Judgment about those who go along, by Michael Luo published in The New Yorker: Some civil servants and senior officials in the Trump Administration are experiencing bouts of conscience. (Ya'think❓)


During the second Donald Trump maga cult administration, there has been unprecedented cruelty, in a myriad of ways.

Perhaps, above all, are the unexplainable ways that Trump managed to cajole, cow, or simply command people in his Administration to carry out even his most undemocratic wishes with remarkably little dissent.

Some civil servants and senior officials, however, are experiencing bouts of conscience. In March, Erez Reuveni, a veteran Justice Department lawyer, was promoted to the position of acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. He decided to personally take on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly sent back to El Salvador, in violation of a 2019, court order. On April 5th, Reuveni told his supervisor he would not sign an appeal brief that said Abrego Garcia was a “terrorist.” According to a whistle-blower complaint that Reuveni later filed, he said, “I didn’t sign up to lie.” He was suspended and then fired.

Other career prosecutors have chosen to step down. In February, when Trump officials moved to dismiss corruption charges against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, it triggered resignations from Danielle R. Sassoon, the interim United States Attorney in Manhattan, and from Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, the two officials in charge of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. 

In September, Erik Siebert, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned, after his investigations into Letitia James and

James Comey stalled and Trump demanded that he be fired.

There has been turnover in senior ranks of the military as well.

In October, Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, abruptly announced that he would retire at the end of the year. Tensions had reportedly been mounting between Holsey and the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, particularly over the admiral’s concerns about the legality of drone strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Now military experts have raised the possibility of war crimes, as lawmakers investigate a drone operation on September 2nd that destroyed a boat and killed everyone on board.

The excesses of the Trumpzi Administration seem only to be escalating. A ProPublica investigation, published in late October, found that ICE had arrested more than a hundred and seventy American citizens, nearly twenty of whom were children. In November, after the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national, Trump suspended the issuance of visas for people travelling on an Afghan passport, halted the processing of all asylum claims, and vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.”

Anyone still serving in the Trump Administration must reckon with the reality that, when the government has previously perpetrated egregious miscarriages of justice, history has not been forgiving to those who’ve gone along, however reluctantly.

A graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II.  (I read this book with a library reading group and recommend it.  My first time to read a "graphic" book and I appreciated the experience.)

Consider the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. On the morning of December 7, 1941, when Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand people of Japanese ancestry lived in the continental United States, most of them on the West Coast. Nearly two-thirds were American citizens. Wild reports—later debunked—of lights signalling to Japanese vessels offshore proliferated. Public fears about a potential enemy attack from within began to spread, even as intelligence officials in Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration believed them to be baseless.

Lieutenant General John DeWitt was the head of the Army’s Western Defense Command. Driven by his own alarmism and his suspicions of members of the “Japanese race,” he began pushing for the removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. The Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, a revered figure in Roosevelt’s Cabinet, initially had doubts about the legality of the plan, as did his deputy, John J. McCloy, though they ultimately supported it, as a matter of military necessity. But lawyers for the Justice Department, who bore responsibility for the handling of “alien enemies,” argued that a mass evacuation was unnecessary and likely unconstitutional.

The debate culminated in a tense meeting, on the evening of February 17, 1942, at the Georgetown home of the Attorney General, Francis Biddle, who had joined the Cabinet only a few months earlier. Edward J. Ennis, the head of the Justice Department’s “aliens” division, and James H. Rowe, the Assistant Attorney General, were forceful in their opposition to the plan. But Biddle, who had also been opposed, was noticeably reticent, Rowe later recalled.

Then, an Army official drew from his pocket a draft evacuation order, and Biddle revealed that he had dropped his objections to it. Ennis nearly wept.

Two days later, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, which led to the U.S. government dispatching the entire Japanese American population of California, Oregon, and Washington to ten concentration camps, as Roosevelt initially termed them, in the interior of the country. (The final camp did not close until early 1946.) Justice Department lawyers went on to defend the policy in court and, most controversially, took steps to obscure from the Supreme Court reports that cast doubt on the military justification and showed that Japanese Americans were overwhelmingly loyal to the United States.

In the decades since, numerous historians, as well as members of a federal commission that, in 1981, held hearings across the country, have studied the path to the executive order. The circle of blame has included not just Army and War Department officials but Biddle, who chose to “surrender,” as the historian Peter Irons put it, in his book “Justice at War.” Biddle admitted in his memoirs that, being “new to the Cabinet,” he was reluctant to challenge Stimson, “whose wisdom and integrity I greatly respected.” Irons also scrutinized Ennis’s decision to sign on to a misleading brief to the Supreme Court, observing that “institutional loyalty had prevailed over personal conscience.”

Standing firm on principle sometimes sits opposite other factors, such as fealty to colleagues and professional ambition, but it invariably comes from within. During the early days of the first Trump Administration, Sally Yates, who had been Obama’s Deputy Attorney General and had stayed on as the acting Attorney General, directed her staff not to defend an executive order from Trump restricting travel from several Muslim-majority countries—his so-called Muslim ban. Trump fired her.💢❗

Several months later, Yates delivered a commencement-week speech to graduates of Harvard Law School, in which she talked about the need to hone the “compass that’s inside all of us.” 

Introspection about difficult decisions that involve conscience, she said, helps “develop a sense of who you are and what you stand for.” For those in the second Trump Administration, the time to answer those questions could be now. ♦

Published in the print edition of the December 22, 2025, issue, with the headline “Conscientious Objectors.”

Americans have a moral imperative to prevent Donald Trump and maga Republicans from normalizing evil behaviors

Echo opinion letter published in the the Louisiana Times-Picyune NOLA newspaper: 

The term “the banality of evil” is a philosophical concept coined by Hannah Arendt*, a Jewish philosopher, after attending the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who sent millions of Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust during World War II.

Arendt concluded that individuals can commit hideous acts due to a failure to engage in independent thought and moral reasoning.

I am bothered that in today’s America, we have normalized and desensitized individuals to acts of evil. When cruelties are rooted in everyday routines and policies, they may be perceived as "normal" or even necessary, diminishing individual responsibility and moral awareness.

We expect evil to have a tail, horns and a pitchfork, appear in red or slither on the ground. It’s far more likely that it will look like your favorite uncle or your sweet grandmother. It just might cover itself in platitudes like “equality,” “social justice” and the “common good.” It could even be a prominent member of your church or in government.

The lesson is that ordinary people can do the wrong thing if they don’t step up to the moral imperative of reflective thinking.

This makes this process as much of a spiritual process as it is a political one. Questions that need to be asked are:

• Is there a willingness to challenge authority or question the status quo if it is believed to be leading to unethical outcomes?
• Are injustice and harmful behaviors being spoken out against, or is one choosing to remain silent, thereby allowing them to persist?
• Are the consequences of actions for others considered, or is the focus primarily on what I am told?
• Is a "deep and compassionate fighting spirit" being nurtured to keep goodness alive, or is one becoming complacent in the face of injustice?

You need to think for yourself in order to describe the reality you find yourself in, so that you can then resist it.

From Sister Beth Mouch in New Orleans

*From Nazi-Occupied France to New York

While in France, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)worked for the organization Youth Aliyah, which rescued Jewish youth. There she met the man who would become her second husband, Heinrich Blücher. 

Arendt was imprisoned in a detention camp in Gurs in southwest France. After escaping, she and Blücher fled Nazi Europe, and in 1941, they arrived in New York. Through the 1940s, Arendt wrote essays on anti-Semitism, refugees, and the need for a Jewish army for Aufbau and other German émigré journals. She worked as an editor for Schocken Books and served as Executive Director of The Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization. She and Blücher lived on Riverside Drive in NYC and in Kingston, NY near Bard College where Blücher taught for 17 years.

 

Donald Trump is destroying American exceptionalism after decades of being a "shining city on the hill"

Echo opinion published in Idaho Capital Sun newspaper by Jim Jones

Ever since the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II, America has been admired around the world as a beacon of equality, freedom and opportunity. That admiration helped the United States become the world’s preeminent economic and military power over the last 80 years. While we have faced serious problems, like racial inequality, poverty and questionable wars, our elected representatives have usually been able to work together in an effort to address them. 

I fear that the era of America’s economic and moral dominance is now faltering and headed into a period of decline.

The so-called big, beautiful bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed on May 22, is a symptom of the decline. It will greatly benefit the wealthy, while denying medical care, food assistance and other social safety-net programs to those on the lower income scale. The bill would substantially increase income inequality in the country and likely necessitate a $500 billion cut in Medicare spending. It is unfathomable that U.S. Reps. Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson voted for the bill and that Gov. Brad Little strongly supported its passage. Unless the U.S. Senate stops the bill in its tracks, the states will have to increase their budgetary outlays or let their voters go without vital services.  

The national debt consequences of the bill are also of great concern. It should be remembered that Trump added $8.4 trillion to the national debt during his first term, more than any other U.S. president. His big, beautiful bill would add an additional $3.8 trillion to the debt, which would raise the debt from its current $36.2 trillion to a whopping $40 trillion. That is a very serious problem in itself, but made substantially worse by other destructive actions he has taken that will seriously hinder the nation’s ability to deal with that massive debt.

The U.S. lives wildly beyond its means by borrowing against the future. Instead of requiring wealthy corporations and individuals to pay their fair share of taxes, we simply finance the deficits by issuing government bonds.

Since the mid-1990s the GOP has forgotten that budget deficits can be prevented by raising adequate revenue. Thus, the national debt has ballooned from $5.6 trillion in 2000 to $36.2 trillion at the end of 2024.  About $8.5 trillion of the debt is held by foreign governments and investors.

Foreigners have helped finance our debt because the U.S. has been regarded as a steady, reliable trustworthy nation. Our dollar is the coin of the international realm, and our government bonds have always been seen as a safe, reliable investment, particularly in times of international economic turmoil.

Donald Trump has shaken the world order by dumping on our friends and allies, including those closest to us – Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and Korea.

He has disregarded trading relationships that have made America the leader of the free world. Trump’s latest threat to impose 50% tariffs on European nations seems designed to drive away our steadiest, most-reliable trading partners and military allies. His erratic and self-defeating tariff actions have shown America to be an unreliable partner. Our friends and allies have started forging stronger trading relationships among themselves and with China, our chief international adversary. This will reverberate against U.S. economic and security interests well into the future.

The bond market has become increasingly edgy about Trump’s erratic behavior. Investors are concerned about the safety of U.S. bonds, as evidenced by an increasing interest rate on our nation’s bonded indebtedness. The big, beautiful bill promises to trigger a crisis in the bond market. A well-regarded economist has observed: “The U.S. government bond markets are already shaky, long-term interest rates are rising, and it seems that foreign investors are fleeing the United States.” It is inconceivable that such chaos in the economic foundation of our country could have occurred since January.

America has long been regarded as the moral beacon of the world. As President Ronald Reagan put it in his Farewell Address — “The shining city upon a hill.” That perception is no longer the case. A recent survey discloses that America’s worldwide popularity has suffered a collapse since January. China is now regarded more favorably than the United States. Trump is viewed more negatively (58%) than Vladimir Putin (49%) and Xi Jinping (31%). Those dismal numbers foretell a decline in America’s ability to sustain its position as the premier moral, economic and military power in the world.

Holocaust curricula must be supported and taught because the world must "Never Forget!" Nazi terrorism

Echo opinion essay published in the Seattle Times, a Washington State newspaper by Lisa Wellman and John Braun. 

Holocaust and genocide awareness are crucial lessons in schools.

Check the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at this site here for resources to help teach about the Holocaust. 

Antisemitism and other kinds of hate are on the rise across our nation. American Jews are experiencing levels of harm not seen in 45 years — hate-filled protests, antisemitic vandalism and the spread of dangerous conspiracy theories.

Disturbingly, these incidents are often fueled by a troubling ignorance of history.

A 2020 survey of Americans in the millennial and Generation Z age groups — meaning younger than 40 at the time — revealed 63% did not know 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Even more alarming, 11% of respondents believed Jews were responsible for their own genocide. Today, conspiracy theories and the Holocaust-denial movement exploit social media and increase bias and bigotry against Jews and other groups. These trends are deeply troubling, not just for the Jewish community, but for the integrity of our democracy and society as a whole. Hatred festers in the shadows of ignorance. That is why we, as leaders in our caucuses, are committed to combating hate and fostering understanding. One foundational way we can do this is ensuring access to Holocaust and genocide awareness education for Washington’s teachers and students.

The Holocaust was not onlt a horrible Jewish tragedy; it was a humanitarian tragedy. The systemic persecution and murder of at least 6 million Jews and 5 million others — Roma, people with disabilities and political dissidents, who were all targeted for being different, highlights the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred, scapegoating and authoritarianism.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators killed six million Jewish people. This systematic, state-sponsored genocide is now known as the Holocaust. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators also committed other mass atrocities. They persecuted and killed millions of non-Jewish people during World War II.

The lessons of the Holocaust are not about history alone, they are for now. Today, more than ever, they show us how unchecked dehumanization and propaganda erode the moral fabric of society. And they compel us to confront our biases, challenge misinformation and stand up against hate in all its forms.

From encouraging Holocaust and genocide awareness be taught over two decades ago, to finally passing a bill in 2019 to “strongly encourage” Holocaust education, to funding that work to ensure it is successful, legislators have committed to ensuring school communities have access to these critical resources.

This effort cannot rest solely on teachers. It requires the leadership of policymakers, community leaders and parents. We must ensure educators have the resources and training needed to address this sensitive topic with accuracy and compassion.

But sadly, in this year’s budget crisis, continued funding of this work is at risk. We have tough decisions to make. We have to ask ourselves, what kind of society do we want to create? What will the consequences be if our youngest Washingtonians are not able to learn these critical lessons? We must preserve maintenance level funding for Holocaust and genocide awareness education in the next two-year operating budget.

The fight against antisemitism and hate requires more than condemnation — it demands education, empathy and action. In a time of rising division, Holocaust education is a powerful tool to foster unity, remind us of our shared humanity and uphold the values of justice and equality.

Now is the time for continued collaboration and sustainable funding. Together, we can continue to provide this critical work and educate the next generation to be better-informed citizens with fundamental lessons that foster critical thinking, media literacy and social responsibility, empowering individuals to create positive change.

Let us not forget the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who said, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” By committing to robust Holocaust education, we honor the memory of those who perished and ensure future generations understand the stakes of allowing hate to go unchecked.

It is our shared duty to say, “Never Again”❗ — and to mean it.

Lisa Wellman: is a Democrat representing the 41st Legislative District and is chair of the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee.

John Braun: represents the 20th Legislative District and is leader of the Senate Republican Caucus.

Republicans make excuses for Donald Trump crude behavior even as they would not tolelrate it in their own children

Donald Trump gets a pass from MAGA Republicans to call people names. But, we teach children to respect people and not to tolerate what the MAGA cult excuses in Donald Trump's disgusting behavior.

Echo opinion published in The Laconia Daily Sun a New Hampshire newspaper:

"My father did not fight in World War II to have this happen to this country" 

Example: 

• Trump's names for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, etc. even people from his own party if they don't agree with him.
• Item two, defending against the destroying of (Elon Musk's) Teslas (I don't condone it), but an insurrection (January 20th attack on the U.S. Capitol) is OK❓ 
• Then the definition of "illegal". So, shredding our Constitution with executive orders to achieve one's complete demolition of our democratic republic isn't illegal when most of what he and Elon Musk have done should've gone through the proper channels. 
• Then he goes on about what is given freely to immigrants and people leaving Democratic states, where is the proof❓ 

This litany is just more lies from MAGA and its cult leader Donald Trump. If he wants to talk about veterans not getting what they need, has he missed what is happening to our veterans since Trump and Musk have taken a chainsaw to not only what they're entitled to but, women, children, Medicare, etc.❓ 

God has absolutely not blessed Trump and never will because Trump has sold his soul to the devil. 

But may God bless America and keep it free from would be dictators and kings. My father did not fight in World War II to have this happen to this country and freedoms he and my uncles fought to defend nor, I pray, for what our veterans since have fought and given their lives for. I know many veterans who voted for Trump the first time but realized what he was like quickly during his first term.

From Barbara Barnes in Sanbornton New Hampshire

Rosh Hashanha - Starting a new year of fighting against evil antisemitism

Antisemitism and the power of the big lie

Echo opinion by Jeff Jacoby published in the Boston Globe:

Throughout the centuries, even educated people have been induced to believe the most audacious falsehoods about Jews.

Last October 7, 2023, was the deadliest day of violence against Jews since the end of the Holocaust. It was also the start of the most virulent eruption of antisemitism in the West since World War II. 

To mention but a single statistic, in the first three days following the ghastly Hamas pogrom, online calls for violence against Jews surged by 1,200 percent, according to the Antisemitism Cyber Security Monitoring System. The orgiastic spilling of Jewish blood drove antisemites into a frenzy of hatred that has yet to subside.

A year ago, it might have been possible to believe that the post-Holocaust taboo on openly loathing Jews was still in force. Though outbursts of antisemitic viciousness had been occurring in recent years with increasing and alarming frequency — and coming from both the right and the left — they seemed the exception to a broadly enforced rule. No longer. Even in America, antisemitism is being mainstreamed, particularly among the young. The post-Holocaust reprieve has ended. Antisemitism is back with a vengeance, brazen and self-assured.

Over the millennia, the hatred of Jews has assumed predictable patterns, none more fundamental than the “big lie.” Antisemites — whether they hate the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, or the Jewish state — have expressed their hatred not merely by exaggerating negative stereotypes, denying inconvenient truths, or recycling bigoted slurs. Time and again they have also promoted falsehoods so monstrous and vicious, so audaciously and aggressively untrue, that their utter implausibility gives them the illusion of truth.

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility,” wrote Adolf Hitler in “Mein Kampf.” Many people “tell small lies in little matters,” he observed, but “it would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” That is the paradox and power of the big lie, especially when it is repeated often enough: Even reasonable minds gradually accept it as fact. After all, they subconsciously assume, why would government officials or the press or social elites make claims so shocking and scandalous unless they were true?

Hitler launched his war against the Jews with the big lie that Germany was defeated in World War I because it had been “stabbed in the back” by Jewish traitors. In reality, German Jews were exceptionally loyal to the fatherland — more than 100,000 had served in the German army during World War I and 12,000 had fallen in battle. Later came an even more unspeakable lie: the grotesque claim that Jews were racial subhumans who defiled the purity of Aryan blood. 

Today, it seems incredible that citizens of Germany, the most sophisticated and cultured nation in Europe, could have believed such insane falsehoods. But tens of millions of Germans did believe them. And when the Nazis set about ostracizing and then exterminating Europe’s Jews, it was with the avid support and participation of innumerable German citizens.

Jewish history is replete with such deadly lies.

Beginning in the 12th century, Jews were adly accused of kidnapping and slaughtering Christian children, in order to use their blood for baking Passover matzah. 

On the strength of these “blood libels,” revived again and again in medieval Europe (and recycled to this day in the Muslim world), countless Jews were imprisoned, expelled, or murdered. The accusation was not just false, it was a wholesale inversion of the truth. In Jewish culture, the consumption of blood is forbidden; indeed, it is one of the first prohibitions in the Hebrew Bible. 

An essential step in preparing kosher meat is to meticulously rinse it clean of blood. Yet this demented big lie was believed by vast numbers of Europeans.

So was the big lie, spread during the devastating Black Death of the 14th century, that Jews caused the plague by poisoning wells and springs. They intended, it was said, “to kill and destroy the whole of Christendom and have lordship over all the world.” The charge was ludicrous, not least because Jews were dying of the plague like everyone else. Yet so effective was the lie, and so fervent the antisemitic hunger to believe in Jewish culpability, that it resulted in thousands of Jews being rounded up and burned alive.

From era to era, the big lies told about Jews mutate. At the start of the 20th century, Jews were accused in the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” of conspiring to control the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, they were accused of having plotted the terrorist attacks. Louis Farrakhan has for years indoctrinated his Nation of Islam adherents in the libel that Jews were to blame for “the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, [and] Jim Crow.” 

A thriving industry denies that there was ever a✡️ Holocaust,🕯, insisting that the most comprehensively documented genocide in history is a Jewish fiction. 

All of these are lies so crazy, such obvious reversals of reality, that they ought to be impossible for any sane individual to believe.

Yet all of them have been believed, often in great numbers and by celebrated and influential people.

In the modern era, the most lethal antisemitic big lies have been those spread about Israel. The Jewish state has been slandered for decades as being founded on racism and practicing apartheid. Israel is smeared as a colonialist intruder with no legitimate right to exist. Long after it withdrew entirely from Gaza, it is routinely condemned as an “occupier.”

Holocaust children Nazi genocide

For decades, whenever Israel has been forced to fight in own defense, antisemites have raged that it slaughters civilians with a wanton disregard for decency and international law. 

In the year since October 7, these lies have been taken to fantastic extremes — that Israel deliberately bombs hospitals, that it knowingly induces famine, and even, in an updated imitation of Holocaust denial, that it faked the October 7 massacre for propaganda purposes and concocted the evidence of mass rape and sexual torture.

The biggest of these big lies is that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. Once again, this is not just a falsehood but a wholesale inversion of reality. It is Hamas that unleashed genocidal violence against Israel on Oct. 7, Hamas whose leaders publicly vow to carry out the “slaughter, extermination, and annihilation” of the Jews, and Hamas whose strategy explicitly relies on maximizing Palestinian deaths. To believe that Israel — which has always gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties — is actually trying to exterminate the Palestinian people is about as logical as believing that Jews would spread the Black Death by poisoning the drinking water.

But when it comes to Jews, people — even educated and sophisticated people — have always been willing to believe the most monstrous big lies. And the horror of October 7, far from making such lies seem more deranged than ever, has led even more people to embrace them.

Columnist Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jeff.jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on X @jeff_jacoby.

"Insurrectinist in chief" Donald Trump is delusional about January 6 attack on the US Capitol

Echo opinion published in the Raleigh, North Carolina, The News & Observer newspaper.

We must not allow anyone to rewrite the history of what we all saw happen on January 6 | Opinion

Donald Trump the insurrectionist in chief

My grandfather lied about his age to join the U.S. Army at 16, and fight in World War II, to defend the ideals of freedom and democracy worldwide. Had he still been alive, he would have been devastated by the events of January 6, 2021, and disgusted by recent efforts to minimize the severity of the crimes committed that day. 

I am a patriot and 10-year Coast Guard veteran. I’ve defended my country against enemies, both foreign and domestic. I assisted with enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq in the Persian Gulf, served as a Sea Marshall after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and protected our shores from the entry of illicit drugs and illegal immigrants. Of all my service, some of my proudest moments were as a Coast Guard Liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives. My heart would swell with emotion every time I made my way across the National Mall, toward the Capitol, and through the doors of the Rayburn House Office Building. I held with reverence the opportunity to walk the hallowed halls where the work of our nation has safely taken place for more than 200 years. 

On January 6, 2021, my heart broke as I watched in disbelief and horror a mob of Americans storm our United States Capitol, use force against sworn officers, terrorize elected officials and cause millions of dollars of damage to those same hallowed halls I revere. As a nation, it was hard for us to process these images, including gallows erected within view of the Capitol, coming from within our country. Yet, as dark a day as January 6 was, light emerged quickly when Americans, regardless of political affiliation, condemned those actions and affirmed that a bright line had been crossed. With the third anniversary of January 6, recently passed, some Americans would like us to forget just how egregious the actions of those individuals who stormed the Capitol were. They would like us to believe the rioters were simply exercising their constitutional rights. 

Let’s be clear: Our constitutional rights do not permit us to assault law enforcement officers, unlawfully enter federal buildings, hunt down elected officials with intent to harm them, or vandalize federal property. They do not allow us to attempt to undermine the results of an election we do not like.

If we stand by and allow others to rewrite the events of that day to suit their political interests, we are in danger of permitting future acts of violence against our most valued principles. We must hold firm to the collective outrage we felt in the days and weeks after and use those feelings to fuel our commitment to restoring people’s faith in our government institutions and processes. We must strengthen our muscle to peacefully debate ideas, to participate in civic and political action, and to diligently prevent falsehoods to sit uncontested. Remaining silent would be more comfortable. 

But, if my grandfather was willing to risk death for democracy, discomfort is the least he, and all those who serve, should expect of us. 

Opinion submitted by Theresa Reno-Weber is the chief operating officer and president for North America at Kentucky startup GoodMaps. She served as the president and CEO of Metro United Way in Louisville from 2017 to 2021, was a deputy mayor in Louisville Metro Government from 2012 to 2017, and is a 10-year veteran of the United States Coast Guard.

Rest in peace Mr. Ben Ferencz: Hero of justice for millions of murdered Jews

Ben Ferencz (1920-2003) - After World War II, he brought 22 Nazi officers to trial for murder. The men were Einsatzgruppen commanders who were responsible for killing more than a million people — not in concentration camps, but in towns and villages across Eastern Europe. 

They would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ferencz.

Ben Ferencz, was the last living Nuremberg prosecutor. He died at 103, in Boynton Beach, Florida.

At 27, he prosecuted Nazis for more than 1 million deaths in perhaps the largest murder case in history.

Echo report by Emily Langer for The Washington Post.

Ben Ferencz was a 27-year-old lawyer with no courtroom experience when he prosecuted what would be called the largest murder case in history. Standing 5-foot-2, he nearly disappeared behind the lectern in the packed courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1947.

Mr. Ferencz, a Transylvanian-born Jew who had arrived in the United States as an infant, presented to a U.S. tribunal the massive case against 22 authorities of the mobile Nazi killing units, called Einsatzgruppen, that operated in Eastern Europe during World War II.

A memorial plaque in Budapest, Hungary

 (L'Heureux photograph)

Most of the murders along the edge of the River Danube took place around December 1944 and January 1945, when the members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party police ("Nyilas") took as many as 20,000 Jews from the newly established Budapest ghetto and executed them along the river bank.

All 22 of the defendants were convicted. Four were executed. If not for Mr. Ferencz, a former Army investigator who personally tallied the million deaths using sequestered German war documents and brought the case to his superiors, the men might never have been tried.

Mr. Ferencz, who devoted much of the rest of his life to the cause of international justice, and who was the last living Nuremberg prosecutor, died April 7 at an assisted-living facility in Boynton Beach, Fla. He was 103. 

His son, Don, confirmed the death but gave no cause.

Mr. Ferencz spoke only Yiddish until he went to school, and he was the first person in his family to go to college. He graduated from Harvard Law School, where he studied war crimes before joining the Army midway through World War II. He was detailed to an investigations unit collecting evidence of Nazi crimes.

Following Allied liberators, Mr. Ferencz visited Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Dachau.

“Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget — the crematoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cordwood waiting to be burned,” he once said. “I had peered into hell.”

He was “the lawyer for humanity,” said John Q. Barrett, a professor of law at St. John’s University in New York City and a scholar of the Nuremberg trials. “The scale of the atrocities, the pure innocence of the victims … was at the heart of the exterminationist evil of Nazism.”

Mr. Ferencz said that when he left Europe at the end of his military service, he wished never to return to Germany. But he was soon recruited back to serve as a civilian under Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, who succeeded U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson as chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg.

By the time Mr. Ferencz’s phase of the proceedings began, the highest Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, had been prosecuted. Britain, France and the Soviet Union had moved on to other postwar concerns, leaving the United States to oversee any further prosecutions in Nuremberg.

Under Taylor’s prosecutorial leadership, the tribunal decided the cases of Nazi doctors who had conducted medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, as well as industrialists who had availed themselves of slave labor.

Mr. Ferencz was overseeing investigators examining documents in the German Foreign Ministry when one of his researchers discovered top-secret reports from Einsatzgruppen, detailing the towns and cities the killing squads passed through and the horrors they visited upon them. Barrett described the documents as “murder receipts.”

One, labeled Exhibit 179, was a dispatch from Kyiv.

“The city’s Jews were ordered to present themselves,” read the document, according to an account on the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes.” “About thirty-four thousand reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.”

Speaking to the London Guardian, Mr. Ferencz recalled that one defendant had ordered his troops: “If the mother is holding an infant to her breast, don’t shoot the mother, shoot the infant because the bullet will go through both of them, and you’ll save ammunition.”

With the United States seeking to form a Cold War alliance with what was to become West Germany, Taylor was under pressure to conclude the tribunal’s proceedings, Barrett said. 

Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor in the "Einsatzgruppen Trial", 1947 - 48. Bust by Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. Donation to the Nuremberg Museum, by the artist, in honor of the 101st birthday of Benjamin Ferencz on March 11, 2021.

Initially, the overextended staff seemed unprepared to take on another case, especially one as large as the Einsatzgruppen matter. But Mr. Ferencz implored his superiors not to overlook such a consequential crime.

“I start screaming,” Mr. Ferencz told “60 Minutes” in 2017, recalling his conversation with Taylor. “I said, Look, I’ve got here mass murder, mass murder on an unparalleled scale. And he said, can you do this in addition to your other work? And I said, sure. He said, okay. So you do it.”

With that, Mr. Ferencz found himself in charge of the case.

He chose the defendants based on their rank and education. He could have charged thousands, he said, but was limited by the number of seats in the courtroom.