After World War I, President Woodrow Wilson came up with a plan for future peace among nations called the Fourteen Points. One of his ideas had to do with collective security. This involved nations working together as one for a common worldwide purpose. Only then, said President Wilson, could real peace be achieved.
Not every president who followed was a fan of this approach. But even those who wanted the U.S. to act mainly alone at least tried to find some allies with whom to share foreign policy plans and goals.
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Our current president has no plans and goals. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that failing to kill a high-ranking Iranian general would have been “culpably negligent,” he forgot to mention that we turned our backs on collective security.
Trump took the U.S. out of a multinational Iranian nuclear treaty that brought together countries that almost never worked together (the U.S., United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, China). Yet this time they did work together, with common foreign policy plans and goals. Did President Trump drop out because it was signed by President Barack Obama? When he dropped out, with what plan did he replace it?
Killing an Iranian bad guy might drum up support with Trump’s base, but what dangers does it hold for the future? This is a president who ignores history and forges ahead if it gets him popularity points. When one looks at the administrative plans for health care, foreign policy, immigrant children, and the environment, it seems as though Trump wants to erase Obama’s history with absolutely nothing but what sounds good in a tweet.
Jan Goldberg, Riverside
Can’t have it both ways on Iran
In a rudderless diatribe condemning the administration, the Sun-Times acknowledged the appropriateness of an Iranian terrorist’s elimination, but qualified it with a slam against President Donald Trump’s decision-making capacity. Well, you can’t have it both ways. The decidedly left-leaning editorial condemning the decision never expresses the obvious: President Barack Obama didn’t pull the trigger.
Finally, this administration made the appropriate strategic decision to send the general to his just reward. The irony is this demon killed many Americans using cowardly buried roadside bombs. Now he received what he deserved on a Baghdad roadside, when death visited him, not from below, but from on high.
Tom Kelly, Evergreen Perk
