To the Editor:

Martin, any attempt at humor is welcome in this troubled world, so don’t be too hard on yourself because this reader missed it. No need to explain yourself; it compromises the ambience.

Your only concern about protests seems to be the identity and cause of the perpetrators, and the financial costs of control. If it’s BLM or a protest for First or Fifth Amendment Rights, you want it instantly quashed by any means available. Forget states’ rights, or the fact that the LA protest originated as a First Amendment exercise, or who actually initiated the violence. This was no “Rodney King” protest. “Insurrection will not be tolerated” in a “trash heap city”, in a blue state, but was tolerated and rewarded when the Trump-induced January 6 mob threatened the Capitol, people died, and Trump consecrated the principle that violence on his behalf is “heroic.” All others are anti-American.

Like Trump, you don’t seem to stand for Constitutional principle so much as for the audacity of any group to challenge your political ideas or engage in violence, even if instigated by military or police. I believe you to be an intelligent man, but from your MAGA perch, you often can’t see the woods for the trees, or the frog in the cooking pot.

We learned from George W. Bush not to engage in regime-change hostilities without a clear and defined Plan “B.” Obama’s self-owned biggest foreign mistake was attacking Libya without a plan for re-stabilization of a nation long under despotic rule. Regime change is a massive, expensive, and long-term undertaking, and Trump has no patience for such commitment. He wants something else from the conflict.

Trump dismissed statements from his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and VP Vance denying that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, an assessment that undercuts the US and Israel’s stated reason for the attacks on Iran. When Trump yanked their chains, these two “brilliant advisors” immediately recanted. SoS Marco Rubio was near-hysterical with Margaret Brennan, insisting that “proof” of Iran’s nuclear capabilities was “irrelevant.”
When VP Vance was later asked by USA Today if we can trust our intelligence community that there was no imminent threat from Iran, a redirected Vance replied that, “we trust [them], but we also trust our instincts.” The report continued, “Trump and Vance just marched America into a potential war because the vibes felt real nuclear-weapon-y?”

What is the point of this attack on Iran for us? Why did Trump betray “America First”? We know that Iran is a very repressive country that makes threats to nearly every other country, especially Israel. They must be taken seriously. But why is it to America’s advantage to destabilize the country now?

Netanyahu has always wanted the US directly involved in this conflict, and now we are. Israel was the military aggressor and Iran retaliated, and we supported the aggressor. While Trump doesn’t really care about Europe, the Middle East, or Asia, except for personal investment purposes, he knows that, historically, most citizens follow their president in a crisis, no matter how contrived. He just needs a crisis to skew the American psyche, and he is expert at creating those.

For an individual who relentlessly warns of imminent WWIII, Martin, you are remarkably bellicose. Like Trump, you appear to believe that a speculative war, based upon deliberate, willful disregard of known, essential intelligence disputing Israel’s nuclear weapon allegations, is a defensible risk of war. You passionately lament threats of international conflicts while defending and endorsing our own.

Kelly Scoles,

Fillmore, Ca