There’s a scene early-on in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” where T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) takes a rhetorical shot at his soon-to-be ally Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) after Ali murders Lawrence’s Hazimi guide for drinking from one of Sherif Ali’s wells.
While the scene was a complete fiction (it made good “Hollywood,” so was included in the movie) it made a more-than-modest-impression on me when I first saw it as a high school sophomore, at the epic’s 1962 premier and the innumerable times I’ve watched it since.
And the power of O’Toole’s speech to Sharif, chastising him for the killing, “Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel as you are,” hasn’t diminished in the 60-plus years since Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson wrote the script.
I mean, Silly? Greedy? Barbarous? Cruel? Remind you of anyone?
How about the silliest, greediest, cruelest man to ever sit in the Oval Office: Donald Trump.
Now two of Trump’s “signature” actions have triggered my memory of that scene: the first is Trump’s “tribe against tribe” tariff war, with America pitted against her traditional allies, namely Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and a dozen other countries; the second is his incitement of warfare between brown and black and yellow people living and working in America and the white, ICEy MAGAs who are his base; plus the fighting he encourages between militant Christian nationalists and every other religion in the world; plus how he’s fighting on behalf of his tribe — the rich and powerful and wanna-be authoritarians – against our tribe of just plain folks who want to preserve the democracy we’ve fought for since 1776.
Just think, in seven months Trump has transformed the once-great United States into, “a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel.”
A quick diversion and a touch of irony: Donald Trump, the bellicose, belligerent bully, always ready with the threat of violence and more-than-ready to use America’s armed forces to intimidate, attack and pick up trash in D.C. parks is a coward; a draft dodger; a wanna-be tough guy who, when he had the chance to actually be tough and fight, pleaded bogus “bone spurs” to avoid military service and then outrageously claimed, “Dating (in the ’90s) is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.” “It (dating) is my personal Vietnam,” he said while calling women’s vaginas “potential landmines” and saying “there’s some real danger there.” “You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam; it’s called the dating game.”
Donald Trump is a complete buffoon.
A joke. A fool. A liar.
And president of the United States who just savagely attacked a boat, executing 11 people on the suspicion of drug trafficking. Without a trial. Without providing any proof there were actually drugs on board, or that the operators were gang members, or that they were linked to Venezuela.
All we have is Trump’s “word” they were.
And, as we all know, Trump’s “word” is worthless. He’s a proven liar 30,000-plus times over.
Now Vice President J.D. Vance says that, “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
Really? That’s a load of tripe.
And when confronted by a critic calling the killings a “war crime,” Vance retorted, “I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., broke with the administration on this, writing, “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”
And Vance had no response; no rejoinder; no defense for Trump’s killing 11 people on a whim and as a way to distract attention from his Jeffery Epstein debacle; his tariff failure; the declining economy; lousy job numbers; tanking poll numbers, and the Mar-a-Largo-ing of the White House.
Trump, on the other hand, is not one to let criticism go unremarked upon.
So when Illinois Gov. J.D. Pritzker excoriated Trump on his threat to send troops to occupy Chicago, Trump’s response was an AI meme of himself in the role of Robert Duval in “Apocalypse Now” saying “’I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” and again threatening the use of the U.S. military to conquer an American city, “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Department of War? What the hell is that?
That, gentle reader, is Trump’s latest chest thump (ridiculously) demonstrating how strong he is (and another attempt at distraction).
Renaming the Department of Defense as the War Department isn’t tough; it’s a meaningless gesture.
It has no effect on how our enemies perceive our armed forces.
It does nothing to enhance our military’s capabilities.
It has no effect on how we, the people, perceive our military.
The only thing it does is burden the services with a bunch of useless paper pushing to come into compliance over a name change Trump does not have to power to make.
Donald Trump was supposed to be a genius at “branding.”
But as his latest (sinking) poll numbers (52 percent of Americans disapprove of the president, according to Real Clear Polling) show Trump’s presidential brand is failure!
And for our last word, let’s give it to Pritzker, “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman; he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
And neither should you or I.
Slava Ukraini.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
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