David Frum

But it is Trump who seems to be showing more signs of panic and fear as he loses control of the situation and as he responds by making threats to escalate more in ways that create for him the alternative either backing away from threats made, maybe he doesn't take Karg Island after all, or escalating into a ground war with Iran for which he has no permission from Congress, no mandate from the American people, probably not the resources to do, and certainly no political permission to suffer the pain of.

Iran can read Western media as well as any of us can, and they can see the panic and terror of economic dislocation that is being broadcast by the Trump administration to the world.

If Trump wanted to fight a war in the Persian Gulf, one of the things you would think he would need to do would be to explain to the American people why the economic pain that must follow is worth it.

He's never done that.

He promised them no economic pain.

And every Sunday night before markets open on Monday mornings in Asia and the rest of the world, he tries to incant some formula to keep things at bay for at least a few minutes.

And as I said, at first that worked.

He bought a few minutes piece.

Recently, he seems to have stopped working.

He's no longer buying a few minutes piece.

But the economic realities are the economic realities.

And incredibly, the much weaker party to the war, Iran, seems to be able to inflict pain that the stronger party to the war, the United States and its ally Israel, and especially the United States, can't seem to bear.

Trump seems to think of wars as exercises in destruction.

He doesn't accept that there are exercises in politics.

And many of the people around him take pride in saying, we're not doing any nation building.

We're not thinking about what comes after.

We're not worrying about permanent regimes.

We're just here to kill bad guys.

But killing bad guys is very seldom an end in itself.

At some point, the killing has to stop.