Purported attack in Gulf of Oman has Trump acting like it’s Gulf of Tonkin
Is the Strait of Hormuz incident on Friday going to be another Gulf of Tonkin, an inflated or invented event used as a pretext for a U.S. attack on a hated nation? It worked in 1964, when president Lyndon Johnson, hungry for a war with North Vietnam, used dubious evidence of a torpedo attack on U.S. destroyers to get a head start on the Vietnam War.
The U.S. does have a history of not learning from its mistakes.
An attack by Iranian boats on two petrochemical tankers near the crucial Strait of Hormuz might have happened. Iran might or might not be wholly or partly responsible. There is no evidence that it is, little agreement on what happened — and scant reason for Iran to do such a self-destructive thing. It’s the kind of story U.S. President Donald Trump might invent or indeed fall for.
It will never be clear whether the Tonkin attack ever happened as described, but even if not, the tale served its purpose in furthering the U.S. war on communism. And an alleged attack on the strait, a waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, would serve Trump’s purposes, as unclear as they often are.
For Trump wants a war, any war. He wants it to the point that he almost doesn’t appear to care which area or nation to target. It could be Venezuela for its post-Chavez hostility to U.S. preferences, or North Korea if Trump realizes that despite those meet-cute negotiations, Kim Jong Un holds him in contempt.
It could be an African nation, if manipulators like national security adviser John Bolton or crude Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decide to report some Chinese-African provocation, but Trump has little interest in what he calls “sh--hole” countries or the continent in general. It could be China, but Trump would have to get permission for that one, which makes it unlikely.
Trump wants war with Iran because he has been goaded into wanting it. Its history with U.S. subversion is part of his era. This makes the Hormuz allegations radioactively important, but it doesn’t make them true. Trump trades in false allegations and manufactured evidence, the same kind of Iraq-has-weapons-of-mass-destruction proof that the U.S. sought to justify its invasion.
If you look at a map of the Middle East, you see — yes, I’ll say it — dominoes. Syria is a catastrophe, Iraq a fantastically expensive victim and Afghanistan a profound defeat, thanks to American strategic failures and an inexplicable hunger for war. What would complete that geographic necklace of American-led disasters, the latest part of the Middle Eastern sandbox the U.S. plays in? Perhaps Iran.
Who might benefit from these accusations? American warmongers, check. Iranian hardliners, check. Oil-exporting nations seeking higher prices, check. Mischief-makers, check. The international arms industry drumming up business, check.
It is not clear — it may never be clear — if the attack was staged. This is one of the sideeffects of the U.S. becoming an untrustworthy former ally with a non-evidence-based structure and strategy under Trump. Only a fool would unquestioningly believe a Trump claim, especially one this flimsy.
And if it happened, and were indeed significant and proof of Iranian military intent, what then? If American foreign military ventures are a trail of grim, imagine one directed by Trump. Can the Joint Chiefs of Staff cope with his military fantasies, like his dream of parades? No one else has been able to.
This is what Trump said of the alleged attack: “Well, Iran did do it, and you know they did it because you saw the boat.”
He added, “I guess one of the mines didn’t explode, and it’s probably got essentially Iran written all over it. And you saw the boat at night, trying to take the mine off and successfully took the mine off the boat. And that was exposed. That was their boat. That was them, and they didn’t want the evidence left behind.”
This is how a little girl excitedly describes Avengers: End Game, a movie she is too young to follow.
After Tonkin, in the middle of the 1964 election campaign, Congress hastily gave Johnson a free hand in fighting “communist aggression.” The House voted unanimously in favour and only two senators, Democrats from Oregon and Alaska, voted against it.
They were proved right. It was not a good career move.
Post-Vietnam, the War Powers Resolution ruled that any president would have to consult Congress before major hostilities. That law is now routinely ignored. It has never been needed more with a president who wants to win a war as much as he wanted to drive that big fire engine visiting the White House in 2017.
It’s a truth that Americans don’t like to vote out a president during wartime. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Events will unfold, fast, as always with this presidency.
Trust nothing you see or hear.
“Well, Iran did do it, and you know they did it because you saw the boat.” DONALD TRUMP U.S. PRESIDENT