If words won wars, then the braggadocio and jingoism spewed by President Trump and his so-called Secretary of “War, Pete Hegseth, would have won wars “the likes of which the world has never seen.” Indeed, according to the president, the war in Ukraine would never have occurred had he been President when Russia invaded its neighbor.  That’s truly an accomplishment, “the likes of which the world never saw.” And who is more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a world leader that could’ve, would’ve stopped wars from occurring without actually having to do it?  Now, I don’t want to steal the President’s thunder or anything, but dare I say I would’ve stopped WWII from occurring if I were alive and elected Reich Chancellor of Germany in 1934? (Are you listening Norway?) In any case, the President also promised to end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his second term.  Okay, that war may still be raging more than a year later, but the President has basically “won” that war by agreeing with Putin that Ukraine doesn’t actually exist.  I mean, in President Trump’s terms, Ukraine has no “cards” to play. Those “cards,” evidently, are nuclear bombs.  In other words, the President has won the Ukraine war by agreeing with Putin that might dictates reality.  Trump always wins because he plays a rigged game. Consider Trump’s declaration that the U.S. has already “won” the war it started in Iran, which according to envoy Steve Witcoff was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”  Pardon the cognitive dissonance, but Trump announced last June that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”  So, I guess the president likes winning wars so much that he wants to wage them more than once, especially if his adversary has already been defeated. And I suppose our Mideast allies are clearly grateful for this unmitigated victory that’s left Iran with its “Navy…gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth.”    Meanwhile War Secretary Hegseth assured the world that press reports of a “few” pesky drones blowing up our allies’ oil refineries, apartment buildings, hotels, etc. are motivated solely by the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Without such biased journalism, the American public could celebrate America’s glorious dominance  over Iran ignorant that the military targeted a school and killed over a hundred children in a careless bomb strike. No doubt our Mideast allies may have to hold their breath for a bit until oil-soaked clouds dissipate from the atmosphere.  It seems that despite Iran’s utter defeat, their pesky drones continue to blow up Mideast oil refineries.  I can almost hear Secretary Hegseth channel a variation of the words spoken by the fictitious character of Lieutenant Bill Kilgore in the movie Apocalypse Now: “I love the smell of burning oil in the morning.  It smells of …victory!” Certainly, the U.S. and Israel successfully fulfilled their goal of Iranian regime change when they dropped a bomb on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  But please don’t pay attention to the hard- liner son who replaced him. After all, President Trump says the new Iranian leader won’t be around for long.  Nor, I suppose, will the next leader, or the next, and so on, and so forth.  But don’t worry —this whack-a-mole war won’t drag on.  As the President assures the world, “We’ve already won…but we haven’t won enough.”  It certainly is a head-scratcher, however, that Trump complains Iran refuses to make a deal when America has already won the war. This declaration of definitive victory will no doubt provide comfort to American consumers paying higher gas and oil prices.  It will also console those whose 401K accounts have been torpedoed like, I don’t know, an Iranian ship in international waters.  Taxpayers will no doubt appreciate how many billions they have contributed to an unprovoked war a half a world away.  And our soldiers now being deployed to the Mideast can rest easy that they won’t have to sacrifice their lives in a war already won. “So, when will the war be over?” the Trump Deranged press wants to know.  “When I feel it in my bones,” says the President.  Hmm.  I suppose these are the same bones once riddled with alleged spurs that once kept the President from serving his country in war.  Not to worry.  If Trump had been drafted and fought in Viet Nam, no doubt the U.S. would have won that war with Trump’s acts of heroism, “the likes of which the world has never seen.” The sad fact is that war’s devastating reality, the likes of which the world has seen before, has been triggered upon the world through history by boasting, craven dictators and despots very much like our President.   They may claim to have “won” the war, but I don’t believe they know the meaning of the word. Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher from Avon.   ...read more read less