\n<\/p>\n
D<\/span>onald Trump has hung nine glowering portraits<\/a> of himself throughout the White House, each one projecting a variation on the theme of intimidation. But gazing into his narcissistic pool of grimacing images has not calmed him when in his mind\u2019s eye he stares into the abyss of the worst failure of his life.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s fiasco has inspired him to heightened performances of profane, vile and vicious threats. His grammar of atrocity has escalated from hateful rhetoric to threats of war crimes. What might have initially appeared as rage-quitting the video game that the White House communications department makes of his Iran<\/a> War has crossed an inviolable red line of international law. His pouting and foot stomping have led him into the gravest territory.<\/p>\n When Trump launched his war, he seemed to have convinced himself that it would be over within days, with the complete capitulation of the Iranians and its oil in his hands to auction off at his whim and self-enrichment. He had been warned by the chair of the joint chiefs<\/a>, however, that military hardware could not resolve the problem of geography. He waved away the caution as meaningless. The Iranians proceeded to achieve superior leverage by clamping a vise on the strait of Hormuz. The prospect of a lone drone or mine was sufficient to teeter the global economy. Trump had nothing to say to counter the fees of Lloyd\u2019s of London<\/a>, the shipping insurance firm, which declared the strait a \u201cvery high-risk area\u201d and raised the rate of its premium astronomically on a daily voyage-by-voyage basis. The traffic dried up. Trump had the bombs, but not the cards.<\/p>\n Less than two weeks after he had begun his war, on 11 March, Trump confidently said<\/a>: \u201cAny time I want it to end, it will end.\u201d He knew it would end \u201csoon\u201d because there was \u201cpractically nothing left to target\u201d. His greatest monument, greater even than his ballroom, more lasting than the glittering gold appliques<\/a> he slapped on every wall in the White House, would be rubble and ruin. Two days later, he said he would know when to end the war \u201cin my bones<\/a>\u201d \u2013 presumably not his bone spurs.<\/p>\n In his only significant speech<\/a> to the nation on the war, on 1 April, Trump blustered that he was \u201cnow winning bigger than ever before\u201d. He had \u201cbeaten and completely decimated Iran\u201d. The job already done, he passed on the task to \u201cthe countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz strait\u201d to \u201cjust take it,\u201d which \u201cshould be easy\u201d. He added brightly: \u201cIt will just open up naturally.\u201d Declaring victory, he waved the white flag.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s speech, the most confused and banal wartime address ever delivered by a president, was at best a stopgap. But for what? He did not even offer a sliver of Micawberism, the empty hope that something will turn up. But, in a phrase, he offered a rudiment of an idea. All at once, he expressed his exasperation, exhaustion and anger at his impotence.<\/p>\n The day before his speech, Trump had signaled his rhetorical escalation, speaking about<\/a> \u201cvery hard\u201d strikes and \u201cfinishing the job\u201d, despite having also talked about having \u201cwon\u201d and proclaiming \u201cvictory\u201d.<\/p>\n Now, he introduced a new trope. \u201cWe\u2019re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,\u201d he said<\/a>. His targets, it became clear, would be infrastructure: power plants and oil fields. His disinhibition had formed itself into a doctrine of war crimes. Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth posted the next day: \u201cBack to the Stone Age.\u201d Trump\u2019s words were reduced to a slogan for official messaging.<\/p>\n In his strategic vacuum Trump had swiftly spiraled down to Hegseth\u2019s primitive level. When Hegseth assembled the generals and admirals on 30 September last year, he lectured<\/a> them on his \u201cwarrior ethos\u201d denouncing \u201cwokeness\u201d \u201cbeardos\u201d and \u201cfat generals\u201d. He declaimed: \u201cNo more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters … You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don\u2019t necessarily belong always in polite society.\u201d His speech was an assault on the US Standing Rules of Engagement, which incorporated the Geneva Conventions. Hegseth\u2019s great crusade, which called him to Trump\u2019s attention, was to exonerate three men charged with war crimes, for whom Trump granted pardons<\/a>.<\/p>\n If there were to be a volume about the Trump national security team along the lines of James Mann\u2019s classic work of the group surrounding George W Bush, Rise of the Vulcans, it might be entitled Rise of the Flintstones, based on the 1960s cartoon about a Stone Age family and their pet dinosaur. Unlike Hegseth\u2019s vision, though, The Flintstones was a peaceable kingdom.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s and Hegseth\u2019s evocation of the \u201cStone Age\u201d floated effortlessly out of the ether of a toxic past, echoed without reference to its author, air force general Curtis LeMay, who said that the correct strategy for the Vietnam War was to \u201cbomb them back to the Stone Age\u201d. LeMay was the most vocal of the critics within the military\u2019s high command of John F Kennedy, accusing his diplomacy that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis as \u201calmost as bad as the appeasement at Munich\u201d. JFK privately encouraged<\/a> the making of the film Seven Days in May about a rightwing military coup as a warning. It appeared three months after his assassination. LeMay became George Wallace\u2019s vice-presidential running mate in 1972 on the American Independent Party. At a press conference<\/a>, LeMay announced nuclear weapons would be \u201cmost efficient\u201d to be used in Vietnam. Wallace grabbed the microphone to disagree. LeMay was not heard from again, until his \u201cStone Age\u201d refrain was repeated by Trump.<\/p>\n Consumed with fear of losing his Iran War, Trump tweeted<\/a> on 5 April: \u201cTuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. Open the Fuckin\u2019 Strait, you crazy bastards, or you\u2019ll be living in Hell \u2013 JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.\u201d Trump\u2019s targeting of civilian infrastructure would be a war crime, his vulgarity starkly revealed his flop, and his mockery of Islam of a piece with his contempt for the Other. Trump\u2019s blast of hatred fit his early Muslim ban and thousands of statements<\/a> captiously describing immigrants as \u201cbloodthirsty killers\u201d, \u201cvicious monsters\u201d, \u201cbloodthirsty rapists\u201d, and \u201cpoisoning the blood<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n By Easter morning, the 37th day of Trump\u2019s Iran war, on 7 April, he had thoroughly terrorized himself. He ramped up his rhetoric to threaten genocide. His exit strategy was annihilation. \u201cA whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,\u201d he tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Trump\u2019s world crumbles, the world itself must end. The level of his threats measures the degree to which he feels threatened himself. If he threatens extinction, it is because he is frightened that he faces extinction.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s statement, an incitement to genocide, was by itself a war crime. He had violated numerous treaties ratified by the United States. The Geneva Convention, Additional Protocol 1, Article 48<\/a>, states: \u201cIn order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n The Geneva Convention, Additional Protocol I, Article 54<\/a>: \u201cIt is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n The Geneva Convention, Additional Protocol I, Article 51<\/a>, Paragraph 2: \u201cThe civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n The Genocide Convention, Article III<\/a>, which the US has also ratified explicitly, punishes \u201cdirect and public incitement to commit genocide\u201d.<\/p>\n The crime of \u201cincitement to genocide\u201d originated in the trial of the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, who was found guilty of \u201cincitement to murder and extermination\u201d at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg<\/a> in 1946 and hanged. The law on \u201cincitement to genocide\u201d evolved from Streicher\u2019s prosecution.<\/p>\n Robert P George, a professor at Princeton, a highly influential conservative legal scholar and political philosopher, and a preeminent figure in the Federalist Society, issued a statement<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t see any way to interpret President Trump\u2019s \u2018prediction\u2019 that \u2018a whole civilization will die tonight\u2019 as other than a threat to order the military to commit crimes against civilians. If he issues such an order, it will be the duty of military leaders to refuse to comply.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, with Trump\u2019s doomsday deadline approaching, rather than order Hegseth to re-enact the last scene of Dr Strangelove in which Slim Pickens as Major TJKong rides a bomb down to its target like a bucking bronco to trigger the destruction of the world, Trump abruptly stopped the movie. He blinked. A ceasefire was declared.<\/p>\n Calamitous at war, Trump has set out to prove himself dreadful at peace. He offered the Iranians a joint venture to charge tolls at the strait of Hormuz. He said<\/a> \u201cbig money\u201d could be made. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful thing.\u201d Will he seek to build an Arch of Triumph at the strait?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n