Trump has earned the nickname TACO, (“Trump Always Chickens Out,”) for his cowardice and proclivity for backing out of both threats and promises. Like most cowards, Trump likes to call out cowardice in others to distract from his own.
On Sunday, Trump implied that tankers were not transiting the Strait of Hormuz because they are cowards. Trump is demanding that oil tanker crews “show some guts” and sail through the strait.
Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade that “These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of. …They have no Navy, we sunk all their ships.”
I think I am going to start referring to Demented Donnie as the Scarecrow. The one thing that both the Wizard of Oz’s scarecrow and Trump lack is a brain.
Trump clearly lacks a brain. As David A. Graham points out in the Atlantic, Trump can’t say why the United States went to war with Iran, and he can’t say what the goal of the war is. Trump can’t even decide whether the war is still going on.
And now, Scarecrow Trump doesn’t understand that the Strait had effectively shut down the moment the US and Israel started bombing Iran.
Trump bizarrely does not understand that tanker operators are not transiting the Strait because they lack “guts.” Trump, a failed businessman himself, doesn’t seem to grasp that shipping is a business. Businesses cannot operate without insurance. Trump’s reckless decision to start a war of choice immediately caused maritime underwriters to cancel war risk insurance.
The cancellation of war risk insurance is enough to limit traffic in the strait, but that is just the beginning. The risks of operating near the strait are very real. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) listed on its website Friday a total of nine attacks on ships in the strait in one week. Since the beginning of the recent conflict, close to 20 ships have been attacked by Iranian forces.
The Iranians have also begun mining the strait. The United States Central Command said Tuesday evening that it had attacked 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. In the 1980s, Iranian forces laid mines in the Persian Gulf that required clearance by U.S. Navy minesweepers. In April 1988, an Iranian mine severely damaged — but did not sink — an American frigate, leading to U.S. forces launching retaliatory strikes.
The stakes in this conflict are huge, with global economic implications. The strait normally sees 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas transit through it, but tanker traffic there has dropped by 90 percent in a week. Between March 1 and 9, 39 cargo vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz, dropping from 98 on just Feb. 28 and seven on March 2. For the bulk of the first 10 days of March, daily cargo vessel transits have been in the single digits.
Scarecrow Trump’s ignorance and arrogance is doing major damage to economies around the world. What began as an attempt to distract from Trump’s crimes detailed by the Epstein Files has metastasized into a conflict with no clear justification, no strategy, and no idea of how long the United States intends the war to last.
The old song comes to mind, “If he only had a brain.”