Politics

The Wars

“The wars we never get into.” Yemen, Iran twice, Venezuela, the Caribbean, Nigeria, Syria, and troops in American cities, in order.

The argument

A president can be right to use force. Some of these strikes have strong defenders, and this page states their case. It is still worth setting the promise beside the record, one operation at a time.

He promised to be remembered as a peacemaker. In under two years the United States bombed Yemen, struck Iran, went to war with Iran, captured the president of Venezuela, killed some 230 to 240 people on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, struck Nigeria and Syria, and sent troops into American cities. Congress never authorized the war with Iran, and Utah’s entire delegation voted against every attempt to limit it.

1. The promise

2. The record, in order

3. The war with Iran

Strikes began February 28, 2026. The White House said the goals were to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat, destroy its missiles, and weaken its proxies. Iran largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes. A ceasefire signed in June collapsed in July. As of October 12, 2026, there is no settlement and a U.S. blockade continues.

Iran’s health ministry reports about 3,500 people killed in Iran; the human-rights group HRANA counted 3,636 by April, about half of them civilians. On the first day, a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran. Reported tolls vary by source, from about 120 children to about 175 people in all.

In March 2025, eleven months before the war, his own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said in the annual threat assessment that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon,” while warning that pressure on its leader to build one had probably grown. Asked about it on June 20, 2025, he said: “She’s wrong.” The war’s effect at home shows up on the gas price page.

4. The boats

Since September 2, 2025, the military has struck boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific that the administration says were carrying drugs, under an operation later named Southern Spear. As of October 4, 2026, at least 238 people had been killed, by Military.com’s count. The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources, that after the very first strike Secretary Hegseth gave a verbal order to leave no survivors, and that two people who survived it were killed in a follow-up strike. Hegseth called the report false, and the admiral who ran the operation told Congress there was no such order. A United Nations expert said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the killings were unlawful.

The administration’s case: the cartels are designated terrorist organizations, the drugs kill Americans, no American has been hurt, and Congress was notified.

5. Troops in American cities

In June 2025 the president federalized California’s National Guard and sent about 4,000 Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles over the governor’s objection. Guard troops followed in Washington, D.C. (about 2,000, extended through 2026), Memphis, New Orleans, and Portland; a deployment to Chicago was blocked in court. Federal judges ruled against several of the deployments, and the administration ended the Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland deployments at the end of 2025.

6. Congress, and Utah

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. The Senate voted at least fourteen times in 2026 on resolutions to end or limit the war with Iran. Utah’s senators, Mike Lee and John Curtis, voted no every time. They also voted no on the October 2025 resolution on the boat strikes, voted against the Venezuela resolutions in November 2025 and January 2026, and both voted to block the January one on a procedural point of order.

In the House, Utah’s four representatives, Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy, and Burgess Owens, voted no on all six Iran war-powers resolutions. Both chambers did pass one, H.Con.Res.86, in June 2026, but its legal force is disputed and the war continued.

For a Latter-day Saint, there is a scripture for this. The Lord tells the Saints to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (D&C 98:16), and the same section sets conditions before going to war at all, including repeated offers of peace (98:33–37).

What is true on the other side

• Iran has killed Americans for decades, directly and through proxies, and its nuclear program was real.
• The June 2025 strikes cost no American lives, and Maduro, under U.S. indictment, was captured without an American death.
• He did help bring the Gaza hostages home. The ceasefire he pushed took effect October 10, 2025, and the last 20 living hostages were released three days later.
• Presidents of both parties have fought without new authorizations from Congress.

The common rebuttals

“Peace through strength.”

That is a real philosophy. It is not what he promised. He promised to be measured by “the wars we never get into.”

“These are strikes, not wars.”

Some were. A campaign in which 21 American service members have died and thousands of Iranians have been killed over seven months, with a naval blockade and a closed strait, is a war by any ordinary meaning of the word.

What this means

He asked to be measured by the wars he never got into. The record is measured in the ones he did.