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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Trump said the war would be a short one — he called it “a little excursion” at first – and discounted the possibility of disruptions to global shipping. He flicked away rising gas prices as “a very small price to pay” for national security. “Only fools would think differently.”
But who is the fool?
Increases in gas prices of 20% and the looming likelihood of a return to the 1979-80 gas rationing in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Who’d a thunk?
Big Ag and family farms are already moaning about how high costs for fertilizer, components for which were major exports of Iran, will rise and consumers are now quaking in anticipation of spiking grocery bills.
In his anti-Muslim mentality Trump saw his war against the Islamic nation of Iran as a wham-slam-thanks-Imam, an in-and-out with him receiving accolades for providing peace to the free world. That was Plan A.
He had no Plan B.
Except, perhaps, to threaten to bring charges of treason against media outlets that did not report favorably about his war.
Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader vowed to his countrymen that Iran would avenge “the blood of your martyrs” and would continue its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
Which seems to have hit Trump by surprise.
Oops! Poor planning by the Commander-in Chief?
Why ever would the president have thought Iran capable of absorbing the pain inflicted by the mighty United States and keep hangin’ in, or that they might have the foresight and strategies to ricochet back pain on the American consumer?
Tit-for-tat for what the Great Satan has inflicted on the Iranian people over the years.
A protracted war could add two percentage points to global prices, pushing inflation to over four percent in the United States, potentially precipitating another recession.
Trump’s current campaigning on “Lower Prices. Bigger Paychecks” is a sick joke.
America’s debts make America more vulnerable.
Under previous administrations, its credibility and trustworthiness constantly enticed foreign investors, enabling the United States to borrow cheaply.
With costs rising, with taxes flowing into the bank accounts of billionaires instead of the U.S. Treasury, with the escalating erosion of trust in Trump’s America... who’s the fool?
And there’s no end in sight.
On Saturday, in clear rejection of any imminent peace deal and after demolishing oil infrastructure on Iran’s Kharg Island, Trump gleefully suggested the U.S. forces might strike “a few more times just for fun.”
Closer to home, Trump is reopening the network of pipelines along the Santa Barbara coast, including the one that spewed almost half a million gallons of oil on Refugio State Beach, killing hundreds of marine mammals and sea birds. Will 11 years have improved their safety? Or put California even more at risk.
His Operation Epic Fury is now imperiling Ukraine with sanctions on Russia lifted. Hopefully but unlikely, to push prices down at the pump. At best they may put off the inevitable. In any case, accelerating energy prices and the resurgence of a nastier Putin. The redrawing of Europe.
And of Asia.
With Trump’s trade wars, China’s exports to the Middle East have blossomed and it invested billions of dollars in the Gulf where munitions are now falling on ports and ships, on pipelines and desalination plants.
Bangladesh has called for fuel rationing and closed universities to conserve electricity; local governments in the Philippines which gets nearly 90 percent of its oil from the Middle East have shifted to four-day workweeks.
Health experts warn of long-term respiratory and neurological risks as smoke from burning oil spreads across the region
Trump panicked last Monday, because he was shocked—shocked!—to learn that attacking the nation that controls the maritime chokepoint for 20% of the world’s oil supply, with prices up 40%, and attempted to bamboozle commodities traders by announcing that the “excursion” into Iran would be over soon leading to a dip but prices are now solidly on an upwards trajectory.
And priceless historical antiquities. Generating long-lasting and toxic air, water, and pollutants.
Does Trump really want his legacy to read poisoner of the earth and destroyer of irreplaceable cultural artifacts?
Then there’s the 2,500 deaths so far, expected to grow exponentially even with the fiddling of ‘official’ figures.
Friday, Hegseth reportedly approved a request to send more warships and thousands of Marines to the Middle East to stop Iran’s paralyzing attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. More deaths, more tax dollars, more hatred against Americans... and less protection here at home.
Pentagon officials told lawmakers the cost of the war exceeded $11.3 billion in its first six days, close to $2 billion a DAY. With Netanyahu promising to extend the war another two weeks, we are looking at $75 billion in blowing up things on the other side of the globe.
These are resources that could be better spent improving the lives of the American people.
Soaring oil and gas prices in the US are inevitably hitting the poor and working class much harder than the affluent.
Americans need healthcare, not warfare. Affordable housing, not battleships. Childcare and eldercare, not for-profit incarceration. Better schools, not the renaming of public places after a divisive president. Fair taxes, not tariffs.
Basic needs met for Americans that this administration claims it can’t afford.
Huh?!
But it can afford a $1 trillion Pentagon budget and the additional $500 billion Trump says it now needs? Plus, uber-conservatively, another $2 billion a day for his game of war?
Cluster-munition warheads – ordnance banned by over 100 countries, but not Iran, Israel and the U.S. – have already been fired indiscriminately by Iran at Israel. Will American facilities, territories, and the United States be next?
Especially given incontrovertible evidence of the massacre of schoolchildren by a made-in-the-USA missile in Minab.
Especially given the American Navy chose to sink an unarmed Iranian frigate, killing more than 100 sailors as it returned home – after participating in naval exercises where vessels are mandated to have no functional weaponry.
At a nonprofit retreat for Congressional Republicans Trump said he asked: “Why don’t we just capture the ship? We could have used it. Why did we sink them?”
Rhetorically, he replied that an official had told him: “It’s more fun to sink them.”
Playing to the crowd’s laughter, Trump reportedly joined in, his punch line being: “They like sinking them better. They say it’s safer to sink them. I guess it’s probably true.”
Sick. A punch in the gut of all moral and ethical Americans.
As Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project opined, “firing on any ship for ‘fun’ represents the kind of immoral depravity that this White House is infamous for…[and] failing to do everything possible to rescue those aboard is certainly a war crime.”
Trump and Hegseth deserve to be hauled into court for war crimes and ostracized by all humanity.
Trump arguing his war will bring world safety and peace just doesn’t line up with the damage he is doing. To the environment, to food stocks, to oil and water supplies, to countries working together, to long term mental health.
Trump’s war is direct cause of increasing prices, decreasing safety, and exponential expansion of terrorist activities
And of migration. If he wants to keep more immigrants out of the United States, perhaps he should never have attacked other nations initiating more displacement.
Now ex-pat Iranians in Iraq think Trump will put them back into power – how well did that work in Syria or Iran and Cuba?
More fools them.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
