On Monday I saw on CNN how Trump handed out medals to American war heroes and their family members in a live broadcast from the White House. He was in his most jovial element: a joke here, a pat on the back there in front of an audience that gratefully adored him. The underlying message: those who wanted to sacrifice their lives for him and his regime could count on his eternal mercy.
I thought of all those happy Iranians, who once fled their country, who can now be seen crying understandable tears of gratitude for the liquidation of their feared despot, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Whatever you could say about Trump, he had finally eliminated their tormentor. This joy also initially dominated among some Dutch commentators. The writer Leon de Winter praised it WNL on Sunday even “Trump’s genius team”. This after he had accused discussion leader Rick Nieman of saying “too much.” The New York Times weld.”
No one initially wanted to be a spoilsport, so reservations only slowly surfaced over the next few days. Trump helped by continually coming up with different explanations for his attack on Iran. What made me especially suspicious was his reference to nuclear danger. Didn’t he claim at the time that he had put an end to this for good with last year’s attack? And why did he suddenly drop the word ‘regime change’?
“Let’s drop the big one,” Randy Newman wrote around 1970
In the columns of the same New York Times that Leon de Winter hates so much, the doubt about Trump’s good intentions grows stronger every day. Ben Rhodes, national security adviser under President Obama, writes: “Trump now regularly uses the military as an extension of his personal instincts. (…) Rather than representing a break with America’s imperial instincts, Trump has personalized them.”
Rhodes fears a disruption in the Middle East that could last years. He considers Trump’s call for the Iranian people to rise up to be risky. “And then? Those who do may be slaughtered. Some version of the regime could still remain in power.”
Regarding those “imperial instincts” of America, I was once again reminded of the unforgettable song that Randy Newman dedicated to them around 1970: Political Science.
No one likes us, I don’t know why,/ we may not be perfect but heaven knows we try./ But all around even our old friends put us down./ Let’s drop the big one and see what happens.
We give them money, but are they grateful? No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful,/ they don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them,/ we’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.
Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old,/ Africa is far too hot and Canada’s too cold,/ and South America stole our name. / Let’s drop the big one, there’ll be no one left to blame us.
We’ll save Australia,/ don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo./ We’ll build an all American amusement park there/ they got surfin too.
More than fifty years later, Trump proposed turning Gaza into a ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.
