A South Korean protester wears a mask of U.S. President Donald Trump during a protest outside the U.S. embassy in Seoul on Monday.JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
When Donald Trump finished his first term as U.S. President, many around the globe were relieved.
His exit marked the end of Mr. Trump’s opportunity to start the type of global calamity many feared he would launch. There had been enough serious-minded adults around Mr. Trump to ride herd on his worst instincts. He would leave Washington with his reputation in tatters after inciting a riot on the U.S. Capitol that left Americans angry and appalled.
That was the end of him.
But, of course, it wasn’t. Mr. Trump launched a comeback and returned to the seat occupied by the most powerful person on Earth – this time with no restraints. He surrounded himself with deeply unqualified sycophants afraid to utter even a peep of defiance. The President was free to unleash the chaos and panic many feared he would in his first term.
Now he is doing exactly that.
European leaders rebuff Trump’s calls for military help in Strait of Hormuz
First it was the tariffs he put on U.S. trading partners, which roiled markets and hurt businesses and consumers in his own country and around the world. But that was nothing compared to the disaster he has now caused in his misguided, poorly conceived attack on Iran – at Israel’s urging, according to his own Secretary of State.
Iran was never going to be a match, militarily, for the war powers of the U.S. and Israel. What it did have was an economic weapon Mr. Trump was warned about but, not surprisingly, decided to ignore: the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s decision to close the Strait to most oil traffic has been a colossal debacle, not just for the U.S.-Israel war mission but for world economies. The price of oil has shot up to more than US$100 a barrel, sending gas prices to levels not seen in years. The measures the U.S. has mentioned as solutions – military escorts of tankers through the Strait, strategic oil reserve releases, gas tax holidays – have been denounced as sideshows that won’t produce the kind of permanent relief the world needs to see.
A poster featuring U.S. President Donald Trump, which was installed by protesters from the group 'Everyone hates Elon', at a bus stop in London on Friday.Kin Cheung/The Associated Press
It has forced Mr. Trump into the humbling position of begging other countries for help in guiding tankers through a Strait that Tehran has reportedly seeded with mines. Many are members of NATO – the same NATO the President recently denounced as never having been much help to the U.S. in conflicts. He even implied NATO troops were cowards, that they “stayed a little back” from the front lines, despite the fact that thousands of allied troops have died in defence of U.S. ambitions everywhere from Iraq to Afghanistan.
I can’t tell you what a delight it has been watching country after country – Britain and Germany being the latest – tell Mr. Trump to go pound sand: this is his war, not theirs.
The President, in turn, has warned that NATO faces “a very bad future” if they fail to help open the Strait as he has demanded. Fact is, Mr. Trump has been undermining the alliance almost from the moment he returned to office. The only countries that Mr. Trump seems to have any loyalty toward are Israel and Russia. The President’s disastrous incursion – excuse me, “excursion” – in Iran has helped Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine immensely.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump even suggested the U.S. might just walk away from the fiasco he has helped create. “Maybe we shouldn’t be there [in Iran] at all. We have a lot of oil. Other countries should protect the Strait because we have a lot of oil.”
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He actually said this. This is how cavalierly this vile, lying creature treats events that have caused death, destruction and economic losses in the billions. He is truly more interested in the state of the ballroom he is building at the White House than he is in Middle East politics and the burgeoning quagmire he now finds himself in.
It is clear that Mr. Trump and the many morons with whom he’s surrounded himself have no idea what they’re doing. They have no true end game. Imbued with boundless arrogance, the President and his incompetent defence chief, Pete Hegseth, thought they could pull a Venezuela: move in, get rid of the evil head of the government, install a puppet and leave without any loss of life. That’s how stupid they are.
Now, most everyone agrees regime change is not going to happen in Iran. The U.S. will inevitably depart having not achieved that objective, and leave behind an enemy that will be more embittered and hostile than ever. America will have to live with that for decades to come – along with the shame of electing this man, not just once, but twice.