Conrad Black Trump’s Supporters Want the President To Up His Game

It is almost impossible for people not privy to the ultimate insider information to judge, or even express a serious opinion about, the best American tactics for the Iran War. 

The president has never forcefully explained, as only the president can, why it is absolutely essential that the present regime in Iran does not arm itself with nuclear weapons. Most Americans are not particularly interested in foreign affairs and don’t often, if ever, leave the United States. 

Explaining why it would be a disaster for that regime to attain a nuclear military capability would be much easier than President Franklin Roosevelt’s task in explaining why the United States had to assist Britain and Canada with all aid short of war in 1940.Or President Truman explaining why America had to supply Berlin, resist the Communists in Greece, assist the reconstruction of Europe and defend South Korea, in the early days of the Cold War. President Kennedy had a more complicated task in explaining the Cuba missile crisis, as did President Nixon in asking for the support of the silent majority of Americans in executing an honorable retirement from Vietnam.

This is leadership, and this is what presidents do. A rigorous address with no snide references to former presidents, explaining in a nonpartisan way how he is serving the national and international interest in following this course would have placed President Trump substantially higher in public approval ratings. He has already referred publicly to the fact that the principal item in the cost of gasoline is taxes, and those could be temporarily alleviated. As the United States is an energy self-sufficient country it does not have the cost of gasoline dictated by the world oil price.

It may be that the greatest pressure on the president is from friendly countries such as Australia and South Korea and Japan that are severely inconvenienced by the closing of the Hormuz Strait. This raises another distasteful mystery of why the president and other administration spokespeople waffle back-and-forth about opening the Strait unilaterally. 

There can be no doubt that the United States Navy possesses the resources and the capability of doing that; it started to do it with Project Freedom but stopped after two days, supposedly at the request of Gulf allies. Yet no real reason has been given to the public, upon whose approval and support the effective conduct of official policy depends, of why having said countless times that America could open the Strait without any help from anybody else, and having started once to do so, it is still not open. More perplexing is why it appears that discussions are taking place by which the American sea blockade of Iran will be suspended in exchange for Iran, which really does not have the ability to close the Hormuz Strait, promising not to close it.

Iranian shore artillery and rocket launchers could easily be silenced. Its mine-laying capacity is extremely limited, and the United States Navy does possess the ability to sweep mines up. Large tankers are not very vulnerable to mines. They’re large ships divided by bulkheads into zones and one or two penetrations of the hull below the waterline would not seriously compromise a giant tanker, as was demonstrated 40 years ago when President Reagan flagged and convoyed up the Persian Gulf a variety of tankers to frustrate the Iranians. If sweaty-palmed insurers at Lloyds, at London, are the problem, have the owners of the vessels or their governments insure themselves, and add any repair bills to the price of the oil.

It is universally recognized that no agreement with Iran other than one that capitulates to its every wish, provides any possibility of being honored by that country. While these questionable negotiations with Iran have proceeded, more than a month has been lost that could’ve been used to round up Iran’s floating oil reserve on the high seas that still brings it revenue, and tighten the blockade on Iranian ports, while clearing the Strait for legitimate international commerce.

Perhaps the president is setting his opponents up: drawing the Democrats farther and farther into their claims that the war is a failure that has achieved nothing, prior to a sudden sharp escalation to which Iran would be very vulnerable. In the meantime, even though his termination of the political careers of Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn and Congressman Thomas Massie have been an impressive show of strength, the president is suffering congressional slippages, especially in financial support for innocent victims of the Biden persecution of alleged wrongdoers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many hundreds of people were detained in disgraceful circumstances for an unconscionable time and resisted the customary corrupt prosecutorial pressure of a soft sentence and a guarantee against charges of perjury if they would inculpate higher-ups in the departed Trump administration. It appears that the Republicans are complicit with the Democrats in calling this equitable proposal “a slush fund.”

This was a calumny when it was applied to a small campaign expense fund of the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1952, Richard Nixon. The resurrection of the phrase in these circumstances, particularly in the mouths of Republicans, is an outrage. Nixon was innocent of any impropriety. The president has seemed uncharacteristically torpid in the last month and his supporters are anxious for him to raise his game.

First published in the New York Sun

https://www.newenglishreview.org/trumps-supporters-want-the-president-to-up-his-game/