Gas is edging back toward $4 per gallon again because the war is back on again. It is now about $3.88 nationally and trending in the wrong direction, just like this never-ending (and stupid, evil) war Trump refuses to end. He appears to think he can win it by blowing up more things in Iran. Nixon though the same thing about Vietnam more than half a century ago. Trump, who is currently much older than Nixon was when he ordered Linebacker II – the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam after a temporary pause – apparently does not remember the Vietnam War.
Perhaps because he avoided fighting in it.
That’s not a jibe. It’s a fact as well as an observation. There is an interesting congruence between supporting wars and not fighting in them. It is the phenomenon of the chickenhawk, a creature that is very gung-ho about you and him fighting. This is not say that wars are good when started by those who’ve previously fought in wars. They aren’t. But they are usually started (and supported) by chickenhawks, which is an interesting thing. The ancients had a policy that the men of the polis who voted to got to war would serve as front-line troops in that war. The result was they had fewer wars.
If this war goes on, it’s going to come home – not in the form of the usual explosions but rather in the form of price explosions. It is important to remember that the reason Trump agreed to Iran’s terms of surrender – the so-called Memorandum of Agreement – was probably that he’d been made to understand how close the United States (and not just the United States) is to running on empty. For the past several months, Trump has been using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a kind of shock absorber, to keep the cost of gas from rising to $6 (or more) per gallon. He’s been shipping American oil overseas, to prevent other countries from running empty, which would potentially collapse the world economy and ours along with it. The Iranians know all about it and that is why they have closed the Strait of Hormuz. It is the kind of leverage you’ve got in a fight when you have your hands around your opponent’s balls. The Iranians have been squeezing – and Trump has been howling.
Anyhow, desperate to avoid the July Reckoning that was looming a couple of weeks ago, he agreed to the Memorandum and the war scabbed over for a couple of weeks. The scab just got ripped off because the Iranians asserted their control over the Strait, which Trump pretended he’d not agreed to. Maybe he believed – if he believed hard enough – that the Iranians would just sort of eventually agree to give up the control over traffic through the Strait that they’d won in this war. The Iranians haven’t shown any inclination to do so, especially since they explicitly stated in the Memorandum that they weren’t going to. Trump’s social media posts for domestic consumption – red meat for the Red Hats – are not binding upon the Iranians, it seems.
Well, now what? The war – as of Monday morning – shows no signs of abating. The price of oil (and so, gas) is undoubtedly going to reflect this. We could very well be back to $4 per gallon by the end of this week. The real worry, though, is what may be coming in the weeks after that, if the war goes on – and the SPR runs empty and there’s no longer any way to absorb the shocks. It is – as the saying goes – nut-cutting time. The question is, whose nuts will be cut?
Trump could still do the difficult (for him) thing and end the war. All he has to do is stop it. He doesn’t even have to say anything publicly about accepting the reality of Iranian control over the Strait to get the oil flowing again (and the SPR filling up again). He just has to stop the war. Declare Mission Accomplished – and go back to work for America.
He might even recover some of his hemorrhaged popularity in time for the mid-terms, which are now just a few short months away. Since his party’s control over the Senate hangs by a thread, he’d be wise to do everything he can to avoid a mid-term wipeout for his party. And how about for America?
Does anyone remember Make America Great Again? It has become something like that saying Americans used to say about how it’s a free country.
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