What a world! It couldn’t be much stranger, could it?

And by the way, what is it about the Middle East? Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, it’s just never really ended, has it? Who cares that the region is halfway around the world from Washington, DC? Yes, the US fought Iraq there from 2003 to 2008. And recently, of course, President Donald Trump has gone after Iran. If you want to spread out just a bit more, you could toss in this country’s relatively brief war in Libya and its almost endless one this century in Afghanistan. And don’t blame me if I left something out. After all, I’m almost 82 years old and starting to forget a few things.

I mean, Iran makes particular sense, right? After all, it’s a mere 6,000-odd miles from this country. Anyway, why not shut down part of the world’s supply of fossil fuels and threaten us all with global economic disaster? And since you asked, how could anyone be surprised? After all, since World War II, my country has indeed been the definition of a (if not the) global imperial power and it’s never really stopped making war.

President Trump should really be considered the equivalent of a giant piece of green algae from that Washington pool of his, but the pool he’s actually in is the United States of America—or, perhaps even more accurately, Planet Earth.

In my youth, for instance, Washington spent almost 20 years fighting in Vietnam. Of course, who even remembers these days, given all the wars that have followed?

Still, on a planet with so many other problems, particularly heat, you might wonder why our government continues to periodically turn up the heat in the Middle East and beyond, led, of course, by a president who, once upon a time (in the wake of his first term in office) in what now seems like another age and another universe, was proud of not going to war anywhere. Oops! Except—yes again, in the Middle East—Syria. Oh, double oops, and I almost forgot to look in the direction of Africa and so include his more recent brief bombing campaign in Nigeria and the seemingly never-ending one in Somalia—yes, Somalia!

And in case you hadn’t noticed, despite all those endless wars (without a victory in sight), the US military doesn’t exactly feel at the top of its game anymore either. Otherwise, despite Donald Trump’s promise of an unparalleled future Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion—and no, that is not a misprint!—why would one US general after another be resigning, retiring, or—thank you, Secretary of (most distinctly) War Pete Hegseth—being fired?

These days, of course, if you want to be a—if not the—major power on this planet (and I’m thinking, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, about China), there’s distinctly something to be learned from the previous great power’s three-quarters of a century of failed wars that (yes, again!) just never seemed to end (and may soon be added to, possibly not in the Middle East or anywhere near it, but in Cuba, or perhaps Greenland, or—since it’s Donald Trump—almost anyplace you care to imagine on Planet Earth.

Honestly, just in case you hadn’t noticed, what a truly strange world we now find ourselves in. I mean, from George Washington to Barack Obama, we’ve had presidents of all sorts, temperamentally speaking, but never one faintly like Donald J. Trump. And there have, of course, been........

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