Category: War and Peace

Trump is cozying up to the Russian leader. What does this mean for the world?

By Bill Eddy / Bill Eddy’s Substack / October 22, 2026

Last week President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff spoke with the Russian President and praised him as a “humanitarian” because of releasing a 74-year-old American prisoner who may have been arrested for the purpose of being a bargaining chip. Trump also waived sanctions on the sale of Russian oil, which will produce a windfall for Putin to use in promoting his brutal 4-year war on Ukraine. Trump’s fondness for Putin has led him to withdraw most U. S. support for Ukraine, telling reporters this week in the Oval Office, according to PBS News: “We want Zelenskyy to make a deal. We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. We’ve gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss.”

In reality, Ukraine has been the bulwark—the defensive wall—for democracy in Europe against Putin’s war of choice to expand its territory, just as Britain and the United States were the bulwark for democracy against Hitler’s war of expansion across Europe. But this week Trump became open to the idea of a summit of Trump, Putin, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to resolve the war in Ukraine. This would involve getting Ukraine to concede land to Russia that was taken by force.

To understand the danger of this shift, let’s look at Putin’s personality since this is a column on why personality matters in politics. Specifically, does Putin fit the dynamics of “malignant narcissism,” as many dictators do (including Trump?) and what this means for our future.

The past two weeks show an increase in his extreme behavior and statements. Is it time for the 25th Amendment?

By Bill Eddy / Substack / October 12, 2026

In the past two weeks, several events demonstrate the escalation of President Trump’s emotional, rather than logical, decision-making and manner of speech—and it’s dangers. Most human decision-making combines emotions and logic, but Trump is impulsive and almost completely dominated by his emotions without thought of the consequences. This includes a lot of projection, which means that he feels that others are thinking and acting the way he is actually thinking and acting. This is leading to more and more unstable and dangerous behavior which must be stopped.

On September 27 he released a dark election-type TV ad with him walking down a hallway with a voice-over warning of a final battle to protect the country against “globalists, warmongers, communists, Marxists, and fascists.” It says this was “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” in other words paid for by taxpayers (and should be illegal). In black-and-white it is clearly meant to target the emotions of his followers, triggering fear of evil villains and showing him as a great hero protecting the country. It is a perfect example of “right brain politics,” which I explained in my Substack post on August 24.

Yet he is unable to connect the dots that the majority of the country now think of him as the biggest “warmonger” because of his disastrous war of choice against Iran. He is also the person most often referred to as a “fascist.” His own former White House Chief of Staff, General John F. Kelly, applied this term to him and his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said he is “fascist to the core.” He is blinded by his projections which make him attack others when the danger is inside himself.

At a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, while discussing the war with Iran and its economic effects, Trump suggested that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego as a “small price to pay.”

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump said. “They can take out a city, let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego.”

The comments drew cheers, laughter and applause from the relatively small sized rally. But they laughed and cheered anyhow at the thought that Iran could bomb and wipe out up to 10 million people who live in the two cities. Because they’re only blue — they / we don’t matter.

They laughed in Nebraska, but no one in California was smiling. Here’s some of the reaction, as compiled by Patch San Diego.

Gov. Gavin Newsom responded on social media, pointing to Trump’s previous deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to California before criticizing the president’s latest remarks.

“Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” Newsom wrote. “He is deranged and dangerous.”

Newsom’s press office also condemned the remarks, noting that more than 10 million people live in the two metropolitan areas.

“Let’s be clear: The President is advocating for an attack on 10+ million U.S. residents in two of America’s largest cities,” the governor’s press office wrote on social media. “This is not normal. None of this is. And we will continue to remind folks of that every day.”

By Noah Robertson,Tara Copp, Warren P. Strobel, and Alex Horton / Washington Post / Sept. 18, 2026

More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

A sixth official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration, in concert with Israel, initiated the Iran war. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said.

Additionally, the official said, three U.S. contractors who were based in the region have died since combat operations began.

U.S. Military and Defense Dept. Have Hidden Extent of Damage to Aircraft, Buildings and Vehicles

By Cameron Adams / Daily Beast / Sep. 15 2026 

Bombshell leaked photos have exposed the extent of serious damage to buildings, aircraft and vehicles at U.S. positions in the Middle East after punishing attacks by Iran.

President Donald Trump’s war is now in its seventh month, with no clear timeline for when it might end. The damning photos contradict Trump’s repeated claims that the conflict has been “won” and that Iran’s military has been decimated by the U.S.

The photos, leaked to CBS News by active service members on condition of anonymity, tally with an inspector general’s report released on Monday. In it, the Pentagon watchdog revealed that “hundreds” of buildings used by the U.S. and “dozens” of aircraft had been damaged or destroyed by Iranian attacks.

By Steve Rodriguez

Students of history, politics and military affairs are familiar with the classic definitions of war formulated by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz. Back in the 1800’s, Clausewitz defined war as both “a continuation of politics by other means” and “an act of violence aimed at compelling an opponent to fulfill one’s will.”

However, as done with other traditional concepts, President Donald Trump is attempting, while demonstrating great frustration with his inability to defeat Iran, to unravel the conventional understanding of war. Some Trump critics are brushing off these attempts at redefining and/or rebranding as nothing but the silly tantrums of a man-child. However, I contend the president’s efforts have some serious implications for certain American institutions.

While trying hard to divert attention from the unforeseen length of the Iranian War – one which was supposed to end after a week of bombing – Trump has previously labeled the war as a “little excursion”, and most recently “not a big thing” and “small potatoes.” In playing this game of semantics, we should expect nothing less from someone who referred to the January 6, 2021 insurrection as a “day of love.”  Yet, we must remain aware these attempts to change the definition of war have unintended consequences.

Join veterans and others to protest the ongoing war in Iran …. time to bring the troops home.

By Tanja Kropf / Explore Clairemont / Sept. 2, 2026

Linda Vista has always been a scrappy neighborhood, fighting to avoid being overlooked, with fiercely loyal residents leading the charge to protect their home turf. One of Linda Vista’s earliest scrappy residents was a woman who fought the pending evictions of Linda Vista’s public housing residents and led the way for them to become proud homeowners instead.

[Please go to original for all the great links.]

A neighborhood of small homes and big dreams
Besides being a Linda Vista resident, Margaret Hottell was the editor and founder of the local newspaper, the Linda Vista Reflector. In 1952, she used it as the platform for her movement to keep her neighbors, who were military and defense workers, in the homes they’d lived in for a decade. The Defense Housing Act of 1951 had recently passed, allowing the enforcement of certain guidelines that were squeezing residents like the Hottells out of their homes.

Housing in Linda Vista was erected at a fever pace in the early 1940s. Despite the City of San Diego’s objections, the federal government pushed forward, building thousands of homes as World War II raged on. San Diego’s population had exploded 67% from 1939 to 1945, and military families and employees of local defense companies desperately needed homes. The federal government chose Linda Vista because the land was cheap, vacant, and easy to acquire. The Linda Vista Housing Project became the largest low-income defense housing project in the world.

A group of eight or ten of us