Epic Failure

Donald Trump is making a powerful case as the biggest foreign policy failure in generations. That is not hyperbole. It is the natural conclusion when a president seems more focused on manipulating a news cycle than managing a crisis. The evidence suggests he misled the American people Friday morning by implying the Strait of Hormuz had been opened in a meaningful and lasting way. It looked less like serious statecraft and more like an attempt to juice markets, claim an instant win, and create the appearance of control. That may be useful for a few hours on television, but it is disastrous as foreign policy.

The deeper problem is that the mission itself now looks confused, reckless, and strategically empty. After all the escalation, all the rhetoric, and all the damage, the apparent goal now seems to be getting the situation back to something close to where it was before this mess began. That is the hallmark of failure. When a country unleashes chaos only to circle back toward the status quo, it has not demonstrated strength. It has demonstrated incompetence.

George W. Bush foreign policy was an epic failure, one we thought would stand as the worst of a generation and an all-time disaster for the history books. But the overall cluelessness of this endeavor is making Bush look like Churchill. That is not praise for Bush. It is an indictment of how astonishingly shallow, impulsive, and poorly managed this Trump operation appears to be.

The United States now looks like an international embarrassment. Allies are moving on without us. Adversaries see confusion where they once saw strength. Our weakness has been exposed, and it is happening under obviously incompetent leadership. Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance consistently look overwhelmed and outclassed, like men playing dress-up in the middle of a real geopolitical crisis. This is not strength. It is a humiliation wrapped in bluster.