Bad case of war fever

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Four days after bombs and rockets began raining onto political and military targets throughout Iran, President Trump hosted a press conference in the Oval Office, during his meeting with the Chancellor of Germany. The bombings came as no surprise following so much US military hardware moving into the region, in the form of two aircraft carrier strike groups and more warplanes deployed at many bases around the Persian Gulf.

Israel has been knocking heads with Iran ever since the revolution of the Ayatollah and his mullahs back in 1979; an Islamic theocracy and a Jewish state with deep religious hatred for each other. The President calmly discussed how two close allies quickly decapitated Iran’s Supreme Leader and 49 of his team, by flattening their compound. He noted how other allies had not backed his actions, and singled out Spain and England as both being slow to agree to the US Air Force using their bases; he was particularly displeased with UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

President Trump gave a sneering description of the British PM with: ”He’s no Winston Churchill”. Between the many gold-coloured trinkets in the Oval Office, there’s a famous bronze bust of Churchill, first presented to President Lynden Johnson back in 1967 by a group of American wartime friends of Sir Winston. The original bust was made in 1947, with a dozen casts produced by the artist Jacob Epstein – now there’s a surname that keeps popping up these days.

While the situation in the most volatile Middle East develops, there are more questions than answers about the destiny of the 93-million people living in Iran; along with rumblings and mumblings of regime change, there was fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its penchant for international terrorism. President Trump may gain solace from a glance at Churchill’s 1948 biography, The Gathering Storm, in which he wrote: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”.

Messrs Trump and Netanyahu certainly seem to have a bad case of war fever.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada