“ A little piece of Poland,
A little piece of France,
A little piece of Portugal,
And Austria perchance”

Mel Brooks The Producers

Trump ran on being a peace president and ending or avoiding wars—both “forever wars” involving the United States and other wars around the world. Amazingly and extraordinarily, according to him and his “alternative facts,” he has accomplished all this with ease. Okay, maybe some bluster was involved. Possibly threats were made. And okay, there was some bombing, strafing and killing, but all the violence was done with peaceful intent. Obviously, sometimes you have to destroy the village in order to save it. Sometimes you have to kill for peace. Sometimes you have to fornicate for chastity.

Speaking of fornication inevitably leads us to Mel Brooks and his satire in The Producers as Hitler sings that all he wants is “Piece…a little piece of Poland, a little piece of France.” This may serve to clarify our legitimate confusion concerning Trump’s commitments. He wants a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela’s the oil fields.

With Trump, the meaning is never clear or permanent. We can’t tell what he really means or intends and what its half-life might be. A trade and tariff agreement with Europe, meant to last decades, can be rescinded unilaterally by Trump (and only by Trump) on a whim or in a punishing fit of pique.

A fit of pique for not receiving the Noble Peace Prize drove him to confess, in a completely crazy and self-revelatory letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, that since they refused him the Nobel Prize (not their governments to give) he was “No longer obligated to think only of peace.” This is the Platonic form of Petulant Narcissism.

While Trump claims that he has “settled eight wars,” his understanding of “Settled” is, well, unsettling. I guess a settled conflict is one with relatively low killing or the absence of all-out war. He claims to have settled Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo. Yet, despite his assertions, guns, bombs, militias and rebels are killing people every day in all these ongoing conflicts.

Let’s concentrate on one complex region and one simplistic and false claim, to wit (or half-wit): “We have peace in the Middle East.” He made this claim during his rambling rant in Davos last week. Just to prove his intent, he repeated it multiple times during his speech. I stopped counting at six. Despite repetition it is demonstrably false. And I’m not nit picking here and denying the claim because peace is not absolute. I’m denying it because it’s not a credible assertion.

There is no state of peace between Israel and Iran. Iran continues to fund proxies and promulgate policies aimed at exterminating Israelis and Israel. I’m also confident that Israel is actively planning operations in Iran to sabotage their military efforts. There is no peace between Israel and Syria, with Syrian forces killing Israel’s Druze allies and Israel bombing ISIS elements in Syria. There is no peace between Israel and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Israel has not only not withdrawn but still makes airborne assaults on militants in Lebanon. Neither has Hezbollah stopped fighting. There is no peace in Lebanon between the government and Hezbollah. Southern Lebanon is essentially occupied by Iranian-supported Hezbollah. There is no peace between Israel and the Houthi’s. Nor is there peace between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. There is no peace between Israel and Hamas. There is only a ceasefire that isn’t a ceasefire but a violent intermission between more violent conflicts. There is no peace between West Bank Palestinians and the Netanyahu backed militant settlers on the West Bank, where neither the Arabs nor the settlers are experiencing anything like peace. There is damned little peace between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hell, we can’t even call the relationship between the average Israeli and elements of the Ultra-Orthodox peaceful.

So, when Trump asserted that he brought Peace to the Middle East, (“They said it couldn’t be done”) I’m at a loss for what he was thinking. To be fair, this is a question that no one can answer with confidence, not even Trump, the ultimate “confidence man.” When he said this repeatably, did he know it was a lie, a big lie and believe that repetition would make it believable? Did he believe, with magical thinking, that if he said it often enough and loudly enough it would become true? Is it possible that he honestly believes that the Middle East is at peace, when he clearly doesn’t believe that Minneapolis is at peace and might need a military intervention?

With Trump it’s difficult to distinguish what is a lie from what is a good faith misunderstanding, or what is the puffery of salesmanship and what is outright deception, or indeed what is deception aimed at a credulous public and submissive government officials and what is self-deception.

Contrary to Trump’s assertions, we do not have peace in any of the conflicts he claims to have solved. We have anger, violence, killing and dying. We do not have peace, but we do have our hopes and hearts broken and shattered into pieces.