LinkedIn on Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Let me start by confessing that I’m no fan of Donald Trump.  Not even close.  But I don’t what anything to happen to him, physically that is.  I know he’s seventy-nine, overweight and that his exercising is limited to playing golf and walking up the runway stairs onto Air Force One.  And then there’s that creepy little dance he does when the music plays at his rallies.  No one lives forever but, for humane and political reasons, I wish him well.

What I do want to happen to him is impeachment and then trial and conviction for the crimes he has committed.  I want him to be the poster boy for the principle that no one is above the law.  I need him to stay in office long enough for the authoritarianism he espouses to be soundly rebuked by the American people.

Unfortunately, I’ve been noticing how often President Trump has been talking about killing people since we attacked Iran.  If you remember, the invasion started when we abandoned talks with Iran – which, by all accounts, seemed to have been making progress – in favor of killing their Supreme Leader and most of the country’s senior government officials.  Killing people may be easier than kidnapping them the way we did in Venezuela, but the relative efficiency of killing isn’t reason enough to do it.

And now the Supreme Leader’s son, a cleric in his own right, has taken over.  Word is he’s even more radical than his father and not at all the people’s champion that President Trump was hoping for.  Once again, as he did in Venezuela, Trump has failed to accomplish the regime change that was his stated objective.  …Not incidentally, we’ve just killed the new Ayatollah’s father and his wife.

So, what does President Trump do now?  Kill the new guy?  And the one after him and the next one until the revolution happens and a pro-American leader takes charge?

Does Donald not fully grasp the nature of the people whose government and country he’s shellacking?  He is, after all, killing people who are the principal instigators of anti-American terrorism in their part of the world.  People who, for confused religious and political reasons, are going to fight to their death and ours to honor the principles in which they believe.  True, their military capabilities are no match for ours, but do the President and his advisors really think for a minute that anti-American Iranians are going down without coming for him and the rest of us here, in our homeland?

Fear of reprisals…  Fear of anything for that matter, is never a good reason not to do the right and essential thing, but was attacking Iran, based on sketchy estimates of nuclear weapons development, the smart move?  Or more of a political distraction and self-serving exercise in power by a President falling in the polls?  Hopefully, our federal and local security agencies all around are vigilant and preparing for the worst.

As of this writing, we’ve lost seven members of our military, none of which are senior commanders or political officials.  I seriously doubt that the Irani government and the terrorist organizations it supports are going to let America limit it casualties to single digits, however precious those few may be to us. 

-Les Cohen