"Here is where the world ends, every time"

Imagine your child is serving in the Middle East, in the war President Trump launched against Iran.

You follow the news. You wait for messages. You know how much can happen between one message and the next.

Then you hear the commander-in-chief declare that he personally is easing sanctions on Russia—despite a law passed by Congress, a law he signed—and you know that Vladimir Putin’s regime has been helping Iran wage that war.

There are now at least 21 Americans who have been killed in Trump’s wretched war; 865 have been wounded. Those casualties are American sons and daughters, American husbands and wives, American brothers and sisters.

And now Trump is doing a deal for diesel with Russia, which has been resupplying Iran with missiles and components to help Iran rebuild its depleted military stockpiles. And you know those missiles will be coming for your kid, your loved one.

It’s infuriating. A deep betrayal. of our troops by our own commander-in-chief.

What does Trump say about this dirty deal?

You’d think he’d lie about it. That’s his usual response. But no—Trump admits he has decided to pay a country that is actively resupplying our enemy.

But Russia, Trump says, is doing “very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing.”

Compared to what they could be doing.

There are reports of Russian targeting intelligence assisting Iranian attacks on American military installations, and of Russian missiles replenishing Iran’s arsenal. The full extent of that assistance remains contested. But the duty of an American president to take it seriously does not.

Yet Trump is offering Putin sanctions relief in a diesel-fuel arrangement meant to ease prices—a desperate effort to stave off a Democratic wave in the midterms. Analysts say the promised additional supply is too small to make much difference in the near term. Ukraine, meanwhile, faces American pressure to stop striking the Russian refineries that help sustain the invasion of its country.

Betrayal is a particular kind of wrongdoing. An enemy can hurt you. But a betrayer uses you—your confidence, your loyalty, your willingness to place yourself in his hands.

A president receives all of these. From the troops he commands. From the citizens he serves. From nations that have built their security around America’s word.

Our president has broken faith with our troops. He has also broken faith with nations around the world, who see America aligning with the Kremlin against the independent nation of Ukraine and understand that we are no longer the nation we were.

It’s tragic. But the judgment of the midterm elections that Trump is so desperate to avoid is an opportunity, America has broken faith before. We have also struggled to become worthy of the faith others placed in us.

That struggle is part of patriotism—real patriotism. Real patriots will have to take it up again.

—Terry

I thought the poem this week should come from a veteran of one of America’s 21st Century wars.

Brian Turner is a US Army veteran, serving as an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning in November, 2003,with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Before that, in 1999 and 2000, Turner served in the 10th Mountain Division, and deployed to Bosnia and Herzogovina.

This is his most famous poem.

by Brian Turner

If a body is what you want,

then here is bone and gristle and flesh.

Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,

the aorta’s opened valves, the leap

thought makes at the synaptic gap.

Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,

that inexorable flight, that insane puncture

into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish

what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,

here is where I complete the word you bring

hissing through the air, here is where I moan

the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering

my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have

inside of me, each twist of the round

spun deeper, because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.