{"id":99241,"date":"2026-05-05T18:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/99241\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T18:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:50:14","slug":"opinion-is-anyone-comforted-when-trump-compares-iran-war-to-vietnam-or-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/99241\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Is Anyone Comforted When Trump Compares Iran War to Vietnam or Iraq?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Trump\u2019s War shambles on with no end in sight, President Trump asks us to put his \u201clittle excursion\u201d \u201cin perspective.\u201d Compared to Vietnam<\/a> and Iraq, Trump says, the Iran conflict has lasted \u201cnot very long at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does anyone find comfort in comparing the Iran disaster with two of America\u2019s previous catastrophic wars?<\/p>\n

Once, US forces had been in Vietnam for only two months. Then our involvement became unlimited and the war did not end until millions were dead, over ten years later. <\/p>\n

The Iraq war<\/a> was just a few days shy of two months old when Bush proclaimed: \u201cMission Accomplished!\u201d Years of chaos, mass death and wasted trillions of dollars followed.<\/p>\n

But neither the Vietnam war<\/a> nor the Iraq war revealed its calamitous stupidity as swiftly as Trump\u2019s war. Two months in, the American people and our standard of living, along with the entire world economy, have taken body blows.<\/p>\n

Gasoline costs half again as much. Diesel has risen even more. Aviation gas has doubled. Food prices will soon follow because of shortages of key fertilizer ingredients \u2013 on top of Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a> and the shortage of farm workers<\/a> because of deportations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump insists, however, that all will soon be well. Gas prices will \u201cdrop like a rock<\/a>\u201d after the war ends, says the president. <\/p>\n

Can there be anyone left in America who believes Donald Trump\u2019s promises on prices? This is the man who vowed in 2024 that if he were elected, \u201cprices will come down<\/a> and they\u2019ll come down fast, with everything.\u201d \u201cWhen I win, I will immediately bring prices down<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

The same man who last year kept saying prices were down<\/a> when everyone knew from their own experience that prices were up.<\/p>\n

Can there be anyone left in America who believes Donald Trump\u2019s promises on prices?<\/p>\n

Two problems with his latest promise: First, Trump has no plan to end the war other than demanding Iran<\/a> \u201ccry uncle\u201d and \u201cgive up.\u201d But the Iranians are not convinced they lost, and few owners of $100 million dollar oil<\/a> tankers, carrying up to $200 million worth of petroleum, are prepared to rely on Trump\u2019s assurances of safety. <\/p>\n

Second, the previous level of oil exports from the Persian Gulf will not resume when hostilities do end, and prices will not promptly drop. As economists say<\/a>, oil prices \u201cgo up like a rocket and fall like a feather.\u201d<\/p>\n

World-wide oil inventories will have to be refilled, and oil industry experts point out<\/a> that \u201chigh demand caused by replenishing the lost oil stock will keep prices elevated.\u201d <\/p>\n

Persian Gulf oil production suspended during the conflict will not immediately resume<\/a> when it does end. Qatar<\/a>, for example, provided 20% of the world\u2019s supply of liquid natural gas. Their export facility was damaged by Iranian missiles, and will take three to five years to be fully brought back. Refineries throughout the region<\/a> have been damaged and oil wells that have been shut down will take months to ramp back up<\/p>\n

When will gas prices go back to pre-Trump War levels? Likely not any time this year<\/a>. It will require two years to recover lost energy output, says the head of the International Energy Agency<\/a>. And the rise in energy costs will ripple through the rest of the economy, pumping up inflation<\/a>. <\/p>\n

How did we get here? <\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a> and his government of feckless amateurs believed the US military<\/a> would easily compel Iran\u2019s unconditional surrender, as easily as American soldiers kidnapped the president of Venezuela<\/a>. Since Trump surrounds himself with pretenders who know they must tell him only what he wants to hear, he launched his war without weighing the actual risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump and his aides were caught unprepared,\u201d The Atlantic magazine reported<\/a>, \u201cwhen Iran . . . retaliated by targeting shipping in the Persian Gulf region and specifically through the Strait of Hormuz. . . The Trump administration<\/a> acknowledged in classified briefings, CNN reported last night, that it did not make provisions for a closure\u201d of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Iran struck back after being attacked? Who could have guessed? <\/p>\n

Iran had been a major source of military drones to Russia, and Ukrainian and Russian drones had transformed the war in Ukraine<\/a>. Hormuz was a known point of leverage<\/a>. Still it did not occur to Trump or to War Secretary Pete \u201cLethality\u201d Hegseth that American naval and air power might not suppress Iran\u2019s drones and mines, giving Iran a choke hold on the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

The perspective of Vietnam and Iraq has taught Trump nothing. But the American people have learned from those experiences, and are not swallowing Trump\u2019s lies. Sixty-one percent disapprove of Trump\u2019s handling<\/a> of the Iran conflict and sixty-one percent believe he made the wrong decision<\/a> in deciding to use military force in Iran. <\/p>\n

Can public opinion and political reality force Trump to reverse course? Trump\u2019s need to call his debacle a success make that difficult, and Trump may yet turn to committing war crimes<\/a> in a desperate effort to make Iran capitulate. <\/p>\n

If members of his own party will not join in attempts to restrain an increasingly frantic, erratic and likely impaired president, America\u2019s military may be forced to confront their duty to defy Donald Trump\u2019s illegal and immoral orders. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Trump\u2019s War shambles on with no end in sight, President Trump asks us to put his \u201clittle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[38,196,94,1684,2537],"class_list":{"0":"post-99241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-iran-war","10":"tag-iraq","11":"tag-iraq-war","12":"tag-vietnam-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116523474923335347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}