Letter: U.S. is not a beacon of democracy anymore
Published 1:30 am Friday, March 27, 2026
Editor,
Introducing his Board of Peace, or BOP, Trump proclaimed, “The Board of Peace is going to almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly.” A grammatically obtuse statement supporting the Israeli unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that militant Palestinian supporters have infiltrated UN agencies.
The BOP is reminiscent of another Trump Israeli production, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, which lasted nine months. Once again, the rationale utilized was Israeli insistence that UN agencies are compromised by militant Arabs committed to the obliteration of Israel. The short-lived GHF managed to disrupt delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza by reducing 400 aide distribution centers to four, a military decision to facilitate crowd control. A total of 2,615 Palestinian civilians were killed and over 19,177 wounded at or near GHF stations, desperate starving people, mostly children, killed by Israeli soldiers.
A review of the status of the BOP member states makes it clear they were not selected for commitments to civil rights or democracy. Freedom House rates the strength of democracy in 208 countries and territories, evaluating individual freedoms ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law, utilizing a scoring rubric of twenty-five specific measurements. Countries are assigned the following scores: completely free (71–100), partly free (36–70), or not free (35-0).
These are the BOP members’ scores. Argentina (85 free), USA (84 free, in the bottom 45%), Israel (73 free), Hungary (65 partly free), Morocco (37 not free), Jordan (34 not free), Turkey (33 not free), Qatar (25 not free), UAE (18 not free), and Saudi Arabia (9 not free). Tragically, 52 countries have a higher score than the U.S. Clearly this board is not fit to espouse freedom based on democratic principles.
On June 21, Trump claimed, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated”. The rationale espoused by the Secretary of State Rubio for the current ravishing of Iran is that the US knew Israel was launching an attack on Iran which would elicit retaliatory strikes on U.S. assets in the region. To minimize the efficacy of those retaliatory strikes the U.S. had to preemptively degrade Iranian ability to respond. If you struggle to discern the logic in this argument it is because none exists. This explanation is more akin to K9 tail chasing syndrome, the goal seems within reach but remains elusive the harder you run.
Jack Gribble
Oak Harbor
