As Trump’s War shambles on with no end in sight, President Trump asks us to put his “little excursion” “in perspective.” Compared to Vietnam and Iraq, Trump says, the Iran conflict has lasted “not very long at all.”

Does anyone find comfort in comparing the Iran disaster with two of America’s previous catastrophic wars?

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.

The Iraq war was just a few days shy of two months old when Bush proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished!” Years of chaos, mass death and wasted trillions of dollars followed.

But neither the Vietnam war nor the Iraq war revealed its calamitous stupidity as swiftly as Trump’s war. Two months in, the American people and our standard of living, along with the entire world economy, have taken body blows.

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 – on top of Trump’s tariffs and the shortage of farm workers because of deportations.

Trump insists, however, that all will soon be well. Gas prices will “drop like a rock” after the war ends, says the president.

Can there be anyone left in America who believes Donald Trump’s promises on prices? This is the man who vowed in 2024 that if he were elected, “prices will come down and they’ll come down fast, with everything.” “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down.”

The same man who last year kept saying prices were down when everyone knew from their own experience that prices were up.

Can there be anyone left in America who believes Donald Trump’s promises on prices?

Two problems with his latest promise: First, Trump has no plan to end the war other than demanding Iran “cry uncle” and “give up.” But the Iranians are not convinced they lost, and few owners of $100 million dollar oil tankers, carrying up to $200 million worth of petroleum, are prepared to rely on Trump’s assurances of safety.

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, oil prices “go up like a rocket and fall like a feather.”

World-wide oil inventories will have to be refilled, and oil industry experts point out that “high demand caused by replenishing the lost oil stock will keep prices elevated.”

Persian Gulf oil production suspended during the conflict will not immediately resume when it does end. Qatar, for example, provided 20% of the........

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