He calls himself a man of peace, yet he has started more wars than anyone else, not only the highly publicized military aggression and kidnapping of the president in Venezuela and the scorched-earth war in Iran, but also the lesser-known ones in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, employing mercenaries of all kinds, confident that the arms industry will quadruple its lethal production, and delivering another 12,000 bombs to his armed wing in Israel.

Now, this man, who had never before attended a military funeral for American soldiers, did so for six compatriots killed in the war that he, along with his beloved Bibi Netanyahu, declared on Iran, where at that very moment they were burying 180 schoolgirls killed in his first bombing campaign against the Persian nation, where there are already more than 2,000 civilian victims.

Reuters, CNN, MSN, and other decidedly non-progressive media outlets had to acknowledge, in one way or another, President Donald Trump's embarrassing moment of having to bury soldiers killed in a conflict he himself started, in collusion with Israel.

The contradiction between his campaign promises and the grief of the six families of these soldiers, with whom Trump met this Saturday at the base morgue, has already drawn criticism from some of the most prominent figures in the MAGA (Made America Great Again) movement. They accuse their leader of betraying the ideals of America First by leading the country into a war thousands of miles away.

It wasn't the first time Trump had seen coffins draped in the Star-Spangled Banner being unloaded from the belly of an aircraft in a ceremony of this kind, but it was the first time he couldn't blame another president for those deaths.

In his first presidency, Trump, who last December received the bodies of three Americans killed in Syria, spoke of the “toughness” of his visits to Dover. At his rallies, in addition to boasting that he hadn't started any wars, he often recalled the cries of parents receiving the bodies of their children in Delaware.

For him, those ceremonies, as he has stated, served as a lesson about the consequences of “endless wars,” like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the United States has traditionally waged in places many of its compatriots wouldn't be able to locate on a map. The current aggression in Iran, which this Sunday marked its eighth day, has no end in sight.

His predecessor, President Joe Biden, also had to go to Dover. In the summer of 2021, he went to receive the bodies of the 13 Americans who died during the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. It was one of the lowest points of his presidency. In 2024, he returned; then the dead were three reservists, also killed in the Middle East.

WITH THE PUPPETS

The entire ceremony, which was a nuisance to Trump, took place two hours after he met with 12 right-wing Latin American presidents, whom he has been manipulating like puppets to form a less-than-glorious Shield of the Americas, which endorses his military aggression against Venezuela and is already discussing a possible intervention in blockaded Cuba, once the aggression against Iran is over.

In his Miami retreat, Trump, always accompanied by his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, met with the popular Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, a star of the show, and even with the Honduran president, Nasry Asfura, imposed through blatant and never-investigated fraud.

In short, the presidents of Argentina, Javier Milei; Bolivia, Rodrigo Paz; Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves; Ecuador, Daniel Noboa; the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader; and El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, participated. Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali; Honduras, Nasry “Tito” Asfura; Panama, José Raúl Mulino; Paraguay, Santiago Peña; and Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissesar, in addition to the elected president of Chile, José Antonio Kast. Governments such as Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil are excluded, and, of course, the much-maligned Nicaragua and Cuba.

It's worth remembering that the much-discussed Summit of the Americas, the meeting scheduled for the Dominican Republic last December, was canceled after it became clear that Donald Trump would not attend. The divisions among the continent's governments were... too deep, it was argued at the time. Neither Cuba, Venezuela, nor Nicaragua were invited by Abinader, following instructions from the United States.

This Saturday, the US president presented at his golf club in Miami the long-awaited alliance with the region's leading figures who share his reactionary ideology. The goals are to combat drug trafficking and mass immigration, and to reduce China's influence in the area, but some of them are heavily involved in drug trafficking and the plundering of public funds with complete impunity.

The meeting is another step, perhaps one of the most significant, in implementing the neo-imperialist vision distilled in what the Republican administration calls the "Donroe Doctrine": that new "America for the Americans" proclaimed by James Monroe two centuries ago, and which the White House believes should make the United States the hegemonic power on the continent. This doctrine, reflected in the National Security Strategy, declares Washington's top foreign policy priority.

He advocates for strengthening ties with governments and figures aligned with Trumpism and fostering their rise to or retention of power. At the same time, he plans to confront those he considers hostile, even to the point of deposing them or threatening to do so, as in the cases of Venezuela and Cuba.

Mark Schiefelbein of the Associated Press reports that at the meeting, he boasted about the success of the military aggression against Venezuela, the US-backed government headed by Delcy Rodríguez “is doing a great job,” and the oil that the South American country leaves in Washington’s hands “is starting to flow.” His Armed Forces have announced a major joint operation against drug trafficking in Ecuador. And in his statements about the joint offensive with Israel against Iran, he alludes with increasing frequency to Cuba and predicts almost daily, and without being asked, that the Cuban government “is about to fall.”

WHERE GOD IS SUMMONED

The participants in the meeting at Trump's golf club in Doral (Miami) “are the leaders of these countries that have formed a historic coalition to collaborate and tackle criminal drug cartels and mass immigration, not only to the United States, but throughout the continent. This remains a key and absolute priority for the president,” the White House announced.

The State Department, in turn, described the meeting as a moment in which “the United States will welcome our best like-minded allies in our hemisphere to promote freedom, security, and prosperity in our region. This historic coalition of nations will collaborate to advance strategies that stop foreign interference in our hemisphere, illegal and mass immigration, and drug cartels and criminal gangs.”

On the eve of the summit, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to Doral to visit the headquarters of the Southern Command, responsible for US forces in Latin America, and meet with his counterparts from the new alliance, in a meeting dubbed the Anti-Cartel Conference of the Americas. There, the head of the Pentagon linked mass migration to the end of “Western and Christian” civilization on the continent, and maintained: “We face an essential test to determine whether our nations will remain Western nations with distinctive characteristics, Christian nations under God.”