Trump’s delusion of valour

It takes a special kind of arrogance to call yourself a “war hero” when you’ve never worn a uniform, never risked your life in combat, and once dodged military service with a note about bone spurs. But Donald Trump, in conversation with conservative broadcaster Mark Levin, has done just that – declaring that he, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, deserves the title.

Let’s pause here. Netanyahu has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is facing international condemnation, not acclaim, for the catastrophic toll of the Gaza war. Sixty thousand civilians – men, women, and children – have been killed. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Yet Trump, with a wave of the hand, reframes this as “heroism.” It is a grotesque distortion of language and morality.

Trump’s self-description is no less disturbing. In his telling, the decision to launch U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities is the equivalent of personal bravery. He boasts: “I sent those planes.” To him, ordering bombs to fall from the safety of the Oval Office – knowing others will do the fighting and civilians will do the dying – is enough to qualify as a “war hero.”

The truth is simple: heroes are those who place themselves in danger to save others, not those who wage destruction from afar. To claim otherwise is to insult every soldier who has ever served in good faith, and every civilian who has ever paid the price for a leader’s reckless decisions.

The irony, of course, is that Trump once fled the draft. When his peers were bleeding and dying in Vietnam, he was busy securing deferments. Now, decades later, he wraps himself in borrowed valour – and, worse still, confers it upon a foreign leader whose actions have brought untold suffering.

Words matter. To call Netanyahu or Trump a “war hero” is not just pathetic; it is dangerous. It normalises brutality, erases victims, and corrupts the very meaning of sacrifice. If we allow the language of heroism to be so debased, then the word itself becomes meaningless.

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