How to End the War

In the movie, Inglourius Basterds, SS Colonel Hans Landa presents Aldo the Apache with a way to end the war – World War II – that very night. In exchange for a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for his crimes, Landa will allow Aldo’s men to detonate their bombs in the theater where all the National Socialist big-wigs (including Der Fuhrer himself) are gathered to watch a film.

A similar in principle opportunity presents itself to Donald Trump. He could end this stupid, evil war he embroiled the United States in tonight (or tomorrow morning). All he’d need to do is make a public statement accepting – officially – that Iranians are in control of the Strait of Hormuz. Why not? The Iranians already control it. There is very little – as a practical matter – that Trump can do to wrest control of the Strait away from them, shy of a major escalation of the war that will probably require tens of thousands of American ground troops and that would very likely result in the Iranians punching back in a way that will not have good results, for Trump. For America. For the world. Or even for Israel, for that matter.

It’s tough to accept a loss. But it’s preferable to continuing to lose, isn’t it?

And what would be so terrible about accepting the loss? The Iranians have an interest in seeing the Strait open. They may charge for the privilege of transiting it but that’s a small cost relative to the cost of this war continuing. Of the Iranians closing the strait again – which they have shown they have the power to do.

The problem is that Trump has extreme difficulty accepting a loss. He has a pathological need to be seen as “winning.” He is also little more than a spray-tanned Golem of the Israelis. He may, to be fair, actually be one of them (so to speak) in that he genuinely sees Israel as Our Greatest Rally and Zionism as the duck’s guts. In either case the result will probably be the same.

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