The Incoherence of Trump

Recently Donald Trump gave a speech in which he blasted George W. Bush and Barack Obama for "nation building." In that same speech he said, "I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq."

Donald Trump seems to think the oil in Iraq is like the Hope diamond, locked up somewhere in a safe that we could just crack open and bring home.

Never mind that stealing Iraqi oil is a war crime, immoral and unethical, and a violation of the basic tenets of Christianity that forbid stealing and killing. Does it make any kind of economic sense?

Iraq's oil reserves are estimated to be 140 billion barrels. Crude oil production in 2016 was about 4.55 million barrels a day. In 2008 production was half that. The oil fields are spread out over tens of thousands of square miles of mostly desert.

If you do the math, it would take 84 years to implement Donald Trump's plan to steal all Iraq's oil. We would need to have hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq for the duration to fight the ongoing insurrection. Furthermore, we would need to embark on a huge ongoing nation building effort in Iraq to repair the infrastructure required to run the oil industry, which Iraqi insurgents would be blowing up constantly, as they did throughout the American occupation from 2003-2011.

For example, oil production requires large amounts of electricity, consuming about 10% of total Iraqi demand. That means you need a functioning electrical grid (one of the big "nation building" projects we spent so much money on in Iraq). This is a problem because power plants and power lines would be constant targets of the Iraqi resistance. No problem, Trump says. Just bring in generators and make electricity in the  field. Not so fast: generators need refined fuel (they can't burn crude). That means you need to haul in diesel fuel (refined in the United States, probably) along the highways that the Iraqi insurgents are blowing up with IEDs all the time.

The Iraqi petroleum industry directly employees thousands of workers. Thousands more are needed to provide basic services (truckers, sailors, mechanics, janitors, cooks, plumbers, electricians, blackjack dealers and hookers -- this is a Trump operation, after all). It was hard to find enough Iraqis willing to assist Americans when we were helping them. How many will collaborate when we're stealing their oil?

Without the Iraqis' help we would have to bring in hundreds of thousands of workers to replace Iraqi workers, which means we'd have to bring in hundreds of thousands more troops to protect the workers. In the end it could take half a million people to steal Iraq's oil.

And the cost would be prohibitive: we spent a trillion dollars on the eight-year Iraq occupation. Eight years of oil is 13 billion barrels. At $50 a barrel, that would be worth $664 billion. Stealing Iraqi oil would cost twice as much as it's worth.

And that cost would likely be much higher, because Americans working in Iraq would get paid 10 to 20 times more than Iraqis. Plus, there's the lifetime medical costs for medical care for the troops. Speaking of which, an 84-year occupation of Iraq would mean the end of the volunteer armed forces. Who would volunteer to die in Iraq to steal oil for Donald Trump? We'd need a draft (imagine how the vote in Congress for this would go down), or we'd have to hire mercenaries on the world market, which would be really pricey.

What kind of an idiotic businessman would go for a deal that costs more than it's worth? No wonder Trump declared bankruptcy so many times.

Now, I assume that Trump doesn't mean any of this. He's just saying stupid stuff because it gets applause at his rallies. His own supporters don't believe he would actually steal Iraq's oil. Nor do they believe he would build the stupid wall, deport all the Mexicans, or ban all the Muslims.

He's just venting anger and hate, and his supporters love anger and hate more than anything else.

Thus, Trump's supporters have absolutely no idea what Trump will do if elected (he doesn't either, it seems). You did get some sort of an idea when he trots out his economic plan: tax cuts for billionaires and the businesses that have been stiffing American workers for decades.

For decades Republicans have succeeded by getting their voters to vote against their own economic self interest by appealing to religious, sexist and racist sentiments. Trump supporters have finally wised up and are mad at establishment: they realize they've been fed a steady diet of Republican bullshit.

But Trump has just repackaged the the same bullshit in an angrier package. Just like his supporters know he won't steal Iraq's oil or build the border wall, they should realize he's not going to stop trade deals or bring back factories back from China and Mexico.

Because after you listen to any Trump speech, after you brush away all the asides, the contradictions, the sarcasm, the insults, the wild tangents, the misplaced adjectives and unintelligible ejaculations, the only thing Trump ever really says is that he's a businessman, and that he would negotiate a "better" deal.

Which is a completely empty promise. What's "better" for Trump and American CEOs is not better for the people who work for Trump and American corporations.