Sir Win­ston Churchill avowed that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on;” The lies, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and fan­tasies Don­ald Trump spouts and texts, go all around the world only slight­ly quick­er than con­tra­dic­to­ry ones follow.

It is repet­i­tive­ly obvi­ous that tak­ing the man at his word on any­thing is an ill-con­ceived leap of faith. Yet what­ev­er he says, the stock and oil mar­kets react at knee-jerk speed, the inevitable result of putting algo­rithms and humans with the atten­tion spans of six year-olds in charge of mat­ters of world-wide importance.
Report­ing Trump’s capri­cious­ness with­out caveats seems to be fol­low­ing the same pat­tern, and the cost is being mea­sured in ways
more impor­tant than mak­ing or los­ing money.
Among sev­er­al rea­sons Trump gave for the Iran war was that it would  give the peo­ple of Iran a chance to “…seize con­trol of your des­tiny and to unleash the pros­per­ous and glo­ri­ous future that is close with­in your reach.”
Now into the fourth week and count­ing, a war he “won in the first hour”, has become a dis­tant also-ran to his ephemer­al idea of “a deal” that will include the Iran­ian lead­er­ship agree­ing to for­sake, in per­pe­tu­ity, the nuclear pro­gramme that Trump says  “…in Oper­a­tion Mid­night Ham­mer last June, we obliterated…”.
The “deal” also envi­sions Iran re-open­ing the Strait of Hor­muz with­out conditions.
It seems help­ing the Iran­ian peo­ple free them­selves from oppres­sion won’t top the list  if oil flows again.
Think­ing that what­ev­er peace even­tu­al­ly ensues will uni­ver­sal­ly turn even Ira­ni­ans who have repeat­ed­ly shown, with great brav­ery and con­sid­er­able cost in blood, how bad­ly they want the aya­tol­lahs gone, into instant lov­ing friends and allies with Trump’s Amer­i­ca, is on a par with the pipedream that U.S. troops would be uni­ver­sal­ly wel­comed in Iraq with flow­ers and open arms.

                         THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Over the course of a num­ber of report­ing trips to Iran, I nev­er encoun­tered a non-offi­cial Iran­ian who whis­pered, nev­er mind shout­ed the regime’s “Death to Amer­i­ca” catch phrase.
On the con­trary, I was con­sis­tent­ly intrigued, and impressed, by how many risked talk­ing to for­eign jour­nal­ists to make it clear they did not hate America.
They were also at pains to stress their nation’s rich his­to­ry and mil­len­nia-old culture.
Inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions led by Wash­ing­ton that bat­ter Iran’s econ­o­my and stan­dards of liv­ing  have blunt­ed admi­ra­tion for the West. But  the biggest imped­i­ment to win­ning their hearts is the U.S. com­bat part­ner­ship with Israel.
What­ev­er, if any, peace deal wor­thy of the name emerges from Trump’s vac­il­lat­ing and wool­ly efforts, it will not erase the dam­age that has been inflict­ed on the lives of ordi­nary Iranians.
Actu­al­ly, they have ample evi­dence that regard­less of what the U.S. says, the Trump administration’s acqui­es­cence  to the Israeli modus operan­di  and rules of engage­ment that include lev­el­ling homes, busi­ness­es and civil­ian infra­struc­ture, with­out regard for rules of war that specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it tar­get­ing schools hos­pi­tals and med­ical per­son­nel, will bor­der on the unforgiveable.
In short Wash­ing­ton will be seen as hap­py to treat Ira­ni­ans the way Israel does Gazans.
Trump and Defence Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth imme­di­ate­ly blam­ing Iran­ian forces for  a mis­sile strike on a school, and not accept­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and apol­o­gis­ing after it was proven to be a U.S. tar­get­ing error, only serves to rein­force that..

                          LIES ABET THE MYTH

 Since the end of World War I,  Amer­i­ca has strode through a world of its own imag­i­na­tion, con­vinced its will and way are irrefutably the envy of the world, to be copied and if nec­es­sary, imposed.
Trump’s trum­pet that Iran’s lead­ers “…will soon learn that no one should chal­lenge the strength and might of the Unit­ed States Armed Forces” was sour-not­ed by his rant in response to NATO’s refusal to join the Iran war: “…we will pro­tect them, but they will do noth­ing for us, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a time of need.” 
Hurl­ing abuse at allies and chan­nel­ing the Hol­ly­wood-but­tressed myth of irre­sistible mil­i­tary might may help Trump and his blink­ered sup­port­ers get through the news cycle.
But the effect of Trump’s con­stant flow of inco­her­ence on the rest of the West­ern world was suc­cinct­ly wrapped up by Prime Min­is­ter Jonas Gahr Store of Norway.
He described Cana­di­an inter­est in buy­ing weapon­ry joint­ly devel­oped by his coun­try and Ger­many as evi­dence of “…a very strong polit­i­cal inte­gra­tion between mature and trust­ed allies.”
What pass­es for Trumpian pol­i­cy and what the end result will be, is best summed up by the poet Sir Wal­ter Scott: “Oh, what a tan­gled web we weave…when first we prac­tice to deceive.”
Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.