Letters

Colin Grattan apparently enjoys the unique perspective that President Donald Trump is too “stupid” to discern the American interests at stake in the Middle East [“Stupid People,” Letters, July 17]. Mr. Grattan infers that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running U.S. foreign policy largely through flattery that he says President Trump is unable to resist — flattery that inspired our “stupid” leader to destroy (for now) the Iranian nuclear capability that threatened Israel, the region and, potentially, us.

Yes, it was clearly clueless and “stupid” for the president to keep extending peaceful options to Iran, which disguised the surprise Israeli air campaign. Iran was brought to her knees, and the U.S. is not entangled in a new foreign war.

Current U.S. policy in the region must be compared to the resoundingly unsuccessful Middle East policy by the Biden administration — an approach that alienated the Arab world and the Saudis in particular, a community that had been on the verge of joining the “stupid” Abraham Accords that could have brought peace and great prosperity to the region. The accords, of course, were another “stupid” Trump initiative that a desperate Iran sabotaged by ordering proxy Hamas to disrupt by murdering and raping innocent civilians inside Israel.

Oh, and since you brought up the Hunter Biden laptop, the revelations about the deliberate misinformation campaign concocted by the Obama intelligence services and some politicized FBI leadership are no laughing matter anymore. New evidence of planted and promulgated known lies that were used to interfere with and distract the newly elected Trump administration in 2016-18 have been exposed in correspondence that existed between key members of the Obama inner circle.

It is noteworthy that the FBI withheld the laptop’s certification, using the excuse that it was a Russian plant, when it had been already verified that they knew it was real. Then the same bad actors from the intelligence field, who ran the Russia-gate scandal, signed off on the lie that the laptop was likely a Russian plant, knowing that, if they didn’t, the scandal for candidate Joe Biden would have cost him the election in 2019.

Try to find some treatment for your derangement. And, as you say, the problem with stupid people is that they’re too … well you get it.

My friend and neighbor John Neely and I disagree once again [“Who Will Pay?” Letters, July 24]. But I will agree that both parties have played their part in creating this debt crises. My overview goes like this: One party defines itself by the redistribution of wealth, and one party believes in the economics that create it. The key to the equation is that you can’t get the two out of balance, or the party is over.

Ask yourself which side is in trouble.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton