Trump

Candidate Donald Trump’s election victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war.”

Trump as president started a war against Iran without coherent objectives, international cooperation or congressional authorization. What did it accomplish?

Regime change: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled Iran. He was killed by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes and succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, replacing one theocratic hardliner with another.

Nuclear proliferation: Former President Barack Obama’s agreement with Iran was enforced by on-site inspections. Trump arbitrarily discarded it during his first term, allowing Iran to enrich uranium unimpeded.

According to Trump’s memorandum of understanding, Iran reaffirms (as they have for decades) its promise not to produce nuclear weapons. Further negotiations on nuclear proliferation may be postponed indefinitely. Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis were not addressed.

Economy: Predictably (by everyone but Trump), Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing worldwide shortages of oil, natural gas and fertilizer. Iran had us over a barrel (of oil). U.S. gas prices increased 50% and inflation increased 4.2%. Trump’s MOU reopened the strait as it was before the war.

Costs: Trump’s war resulted in the deaths of 13 American service members. Moody’s Analytics estimated the war cost U.S. consumers and taxpayers $132 billion, averaging $1,000 per household (so far). Trump’s MOU lifts previous sanctions on Iranian oil and gives Iran $300 billion for reconstruction.

Trump surrendered on terms that either returned to pre-war conditions or are more favorable to Iran. The U.S. lost this senseless war.

David Campbell, Virginia Beach

Media portrayals

Re “Target” (Your Views, June 30): A recent letter claimed the “media only reports” what President Donald Trump says, and it’s true.

Americans, however, are quite unaccustomed to hearing the blunt truth from a president that hasn’t spent years engaging in the soft double-speak the professional political class has used to mislead the public. I would also submit that the same media declared former President Joe Biden was as “sharp as a tack,” “ran circles around his staff” and was “the best Biden ever,” until the now-famous presidential debate demonstrated in no uncertain terms how the media was lying to our faces.

Watching Biden was a sad spectacle since, I believe, it was obvious that he was unable to execute the job of president, let alone articulate a coherent thought or idea. We all saw it and the media could no longer hide it.

After that debate, the media also artfully avoided the more important question of “who was really running the country.”

Jimmy Frost, Virginia Beach

Rogue Supreme Court

Re “Swinging the bat” (Our Views, July 2): Thank you for your wonderful editorial. We can expect the Supreme Court to engage in similar behavior when Virginia’s assault weapons ban comes before them. Any SCOTUS composition prior to the current one, would have not found it controversial that assault weapons could be banned. The 1994 assault weapons ban was not reversed by the courts. Even the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledged in the wrongly decided 2008 Heller opinion that the government may restrict the type of weapons Americans may own.

Given the tremendous damage this Supreme Court is wreaking on our republic, I hope there is remorse among those voters who could not bring themselves to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. More voters should care about who is given the opportunity to appoint federal judges. Now we are all paying the price for their extremely bad judgment. Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservatives on the court will continue in their quest to transform the Constitution into a suicide pact when it comes to the gun issue, and to create a far-right and white, Christian nationalist dystopia.

Christina A. Knight, Newport News