So what is the definition of the word peace? It is not only an absence of war, violence and hostility. It is a freedom from fear, it is a state of social harmony. Peace involves creating a society where people can live together with mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation, regardless of their differences. It resolves conflicts through peaceful dialogue, negotiation and mediation. Trump’s pitch to the American people is “Peace through strength.” Hmm. Trump just bombed the dickens out of several targets in Iran, (breaking yet another campaign promise) a show of “strength” with little hope of “peace” as it will likely draw the US into a longer armed conflict. Did Iran cry uncle? Of course not. An advisor to Iran’s supreme leader posted, “[G]ame isn’t over…surprises will continue!” On US soil, Trump called in the National Guard and the Marines to put down “rebellion” (his loose self serving definition) greeting peaceful protesters and reporters with violence - hardly a resolution of conflict through dialogue or negotiation - imposing order by trampling on people’s constitutional right to dissent and to bear witness. It is an odd kind of “peace” when opposition is greeted with rubber bullets and political arrests here, and bombs there. Trump’s “peace through strength” doesn’t really want peace in the sense of justice or freedom from fear or mutual respect, understanding and cooperation or conflict resolution through peaceful dialogue. It wants total control. It wants absolute power. It wants us too afraid to resist. Trump has gone to war with dissenting American citizens, universities, lawyers and politicians, and is now at war with Iran. There are more things to peace than are dreamt in Trump’s myopic philosophy, and we are not the greater for it.