What’s changed, President Trump? During the campaign, you promised not to embroil the United States in the Middle East’s petty wars. You correctly stated that we have no clue who the Syrian rebels are. You wisely argued that as bad as dictators like Bashar al Assad may be, they at least keep terrorists at bay.

What’s changed?

Do pictures of dead innocents render irrelevant all the logical points you raised while running for office? Is America to go to war every time a leader around the world kills innocents?

“But he gassed babies,” pundits say. True, but why is death by gassing worse than death by bullets? Death is death. Some people evoke Hitler’s gassing of Jews. Well, I am a Jew. I grew up reading Holocaust memoirs. And I don’t recall anyone ever making a moral distinction between the gassing of Jews at Auschwitz and the gunning down of 35,000 Jews over two days at Babi Yar.

President Trump, you were the one who bucked the entire establishment. While everyone else’s brains turned to mush upon seeing a picture of a bloody Syrian boy, you wisely reminded us that America must come first; that it is not our job to fight everyone else’s wars; that with 19 trillion dollars in debt we literally cannot afford to make it our job; that an American president’s duty is to his own people, not to the world.

Mr. President, please don’t become Bush III. All we need is more intervention in the Middle East. You yourself said that if our politicians had done nothing during the last 15 years – that if they had just gone to the beach – we would be better off today. What’s changed? Why get involved in this Syrian mess? Why oppose a man fighting radical jihadists?

Please, President Trump: Please return to your common-sense approach to world affairs. Please only commit American troops to battle when America’s national security is at stake. Please don’t listen to your Russophobe advisers. Russia doesn’t threaten us. Under communism, Russia was ideologically committed to worldwide domination. But communism is history. All Putin wants is to make Russia great again, just like you want to make America great again. Russia has zero interest in America. Russia’s glorious period under the czars never included domination over Western Europe, let alone the United States.

Our real enemies are a rising fanatical China and radical Islam. So match China’s belligerency with a military buildup and do everything in your power to keep radical jihadists out of this country. Everything else is a distraction. Embroiling America – militarily and/or financially – in yet another Middle East conflict will ultimately accomplish nothing for this country. War is tragic. Innocents die, sometimes in horrific ways. But please don’t compound the problem by allying with Syrian rebels who would do a lot worse than gassing if they were in power.

You campaigned on the slogan “America First.” Please stick to that promise, President Trump. That’s why we voted for you.