In recent days, Donald Trump has called on various nations from around the world to help secure and reopen the Strait of Hormuz – a job necessitated by the war being waged by Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the people of Iran and Lebanon.
Sorry, but I distinctly heard Trump announce a week ago that we’d already won the war. If we’ve won, then why the need for international help? Why the need for any help at all?
Perhaps it’s best not to delve too deeply into Trump’s statements about this unwarranted, unjust and illegal assault on another nation. After all, can anyone in the Trump administration articulate in a sentence or two what the goal of this war is?
Is it to change the leadership of Iran? To remove the country’s nuclear threat? To liberate the Iranian people?
Americans also haven’t been told why this destruction is necessary, just or moral. Instead, we’re asked to accept the decisions of a man whose grasp of reality grows more tenuous each day.
Then there are Trump’s unserious statements about the nature of the war, including threatening to bomb Kharg Island again “just for fun” and that he’ll have the “honor” of “taking Cuba.” This coming from a man who dodged the draft and claimed he experienced his “personal Vietnam” while avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the 1980s and 1990s.
The reality remains that evil is being done in our name. As much as I see this as Trump’s war, the world sees it as America’s war—and Israel’s, for that matter. And casualty rates continue to rise.
Cities in Iran and Lebanon are being leveled. Civilians are being killed by the thousands, including over 150 young girls at an Iranian school—I call it murdered—after being hit by a U.S. cruise missile. The cruelty and barbarism of how this war is being waged and the sick way it’s being portrayed in pornographic snuff-style videos emanating from the White House should make us all ashamed of our so-called leaders.
It’s heartening to see that a large majority of Americans oppose this war. There is anger that American lives are being lost and that the rest of us are being placed in harm’s way.
And indeed, they are in harm’s way. At least 13 U.S. soldiers are dead and more than 200 have been wounded. And more people will surely die.
We should raise our voices and demand that Trump cease his war, and that Congress refuse to fund it. If either or both refuse, Trump and his complacent, Republican-led Congress deserve to be impeached.
This is also about money—lots of money.
This war is costing about $1 billion a day, according to administration officials. So, I did the math; based on these figures, it costs the U.S. about $41 million an hour to wage war in Iran.
$41 million. Each. Hour.
The union I lead, United University Professions, is calling for $41 million to eliminate structural deficits at four SUNY campuses. We could clear those deficits with just one hour of what America has spent on this inane war. Can you just imagine all the good things we could do, how many lives we could change, with just a few hours’ worth of what’s being squandered?
I close with this bit of wisdom from President Dwight Eisenhower, who led the fight against fascism in Europe, and who—unlike Trump and his minions—understood the true cost of war: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
I invite you to ponder those words and where our nation is heading during this violent, destructive period in history.
Frederick E. Kowal is president of the 35,000 member United University Professions, which represents faculty on 29 New York State campuses. UUP is an affiliate of NYSUT, The American Federation of Teachers, The National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.
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