To the editor: Contributing writer Josh Hammer begins another fan letter to the president by describing him as the most “clear-eyed” agent of transformational foreign policy of Hammer’s lifetime (“The best Trump can do with his Iran deal is to blame it on Vance,” June 19). Hammer holds that prudent statesmanship on the world’s stage requires setting clear ends and then calibrating the means to achieve the mission’s objectives. None of that happened in the war President Trump started without congressional approval, as evidenced in the next paragraph where Hammer acknowledges the “deeply flawed” memorandum of understanding” that was fashioned by Vice President JD Vance but signed off on by the president of the United States.
The fallback plan for saving face is to blame Trump’s staff. Blame Vance, who, as always, is tone-deaf when it comes to the nuances of diplomacy and send this global dumpster fire to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stepped back when his counsel was disregarded, to be fixed. Once again, Hammer absolves the president for this most serious deadly and costly war and he fails to see how these defenses confound logical thinking.
President Obama and his team developed a carefully thought-out plan that was accepted and held for 10 years, without the deaths of our valiant troops, the bombing deaths of schoolchildren and the promise of hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran. So where were all the president’s clear-eyed and transformational oversight and “Art of the Deal” skills that Hammer defends? It leaves, to use Hammer’s words, the president uniquely vulnerable to confusion of means and ends, resulting in making a deal for deal’s sake, even a bad one.
Joy Rockport, Valley Glen
..
To the editor: Hammer equates President Trump’s Iran “‘peace” deal with the 2015 Obama deal. Trump’s deal unlocks a $300-billion postwar fund. Obama’s deal, which the Republicans screamed about: $50 billion.
What about nuclear capability verification? Trump has zero guaranteed monitoring. Obama’s signed deal, torn up by Trump, had 24/7 monitoring of enrichment and multiple, independent, unannounced visits to Iran for visual inspections.
Hammer should not make excuses for the man who will sign the deal, one that will go down as among the worst foreign policy outcomes in American history, with more than $100 billion in estimated war costs and lost lives on both sides.
Pat Levitt, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: While Hammer sees Trump as a president with a transformative foreign policy, others see him operating from the perspective of a self-aggrandizing Manhattan real estate developer looking for properties to acquire, profits to amass, empires to build, competitors to crush, associates to forsake and tributes to collect.
Ronald Enholm, Encino
