Donald Trump is a risk taker. His fans speak these words with pride.
And indeed, what they say is true. Since Feb. 28, the world has been subjected to a giant risk in a war with Iran called “Epic Fury.”
Few would argue in favor of the Iranian regime. And yet, the risky business the president has now engaged us in imperils far more than his own interests. Sadly, this reveals a pattern repeated from early in his career.
David Jordan
Let’s take a look and remind ourselves of the nature of the president’s risk taking.
As a young developer, Trump had been successful in transforming the Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt New York (1980). His risk then was a $70 million loan; but that was guaranteed by his father’s money.
Atlantic City and the world of casinos was his next experiment. He opened Trump Plaza (1984) and Trump’s Castle (1985) in quick succession. While both casinos appeared moderately successful for a time, Trump was ready to take an even bigger risk. To great fanfare, he bought and renovated a new venture with extravagant excess: The Trump Taj Mahal (1990).
Barely a year after its star-studded grand opening, the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy in July 1991. The Trump Plaza and Trump Castle followed in quick succession, declaring respective bankruptcies by 1992. This wasn’t youthful inexperience. Trump was 45 at the time. He should have known better. His risky business was an epic failure.
The rippling collapse of these casino properties disrupted the fragile economy of Atlantic City for years. Contractors, vendors and countless individual workers were economically traumatized by this one man’s hubris.
Trump’s over-confidence and the risk taking his fans are so proud of resulted in disaster. Yet, as has been the case numerous times in Trump’s journey, he escaped his gargantuan triple casino collapse with few personal repercussions.
Now, tragically, these Atlantic City debacles serve as stark warnings for his huge risk in Iran.
Instead of broad economic and emotional damage to a mid-sized New Jersey city, Trump is dragging an entire region, along with our military and country, into a morass of unpredictable outcomes. This is risky business indeed.
Far from capitulation, Iran’s government has doubled down on clerical and militant extremism. More entrenched, infuriated and increasingly cornered, this hardline regime and the proxies it controls seem ready to unleash frighteningly unpredictable responses to Trump’s war gamble.
The president’s shape-shifting rationale for this war seems in part a hope that Iranian civilians will rise up and take on (again) the same militarized force that massacred tens of thousands of their unarmed Iranian comrades only a few weeks ago.
According to most Middle East experts, this expectation has no better chance of succeeding now than before the war began. Even with a highly degraded missile force and military infrastructure, the same well-armed forces remain poised for action to retain the power they wield so mercilessly.
Further, Trump and others in the administration voice a similar hope for the Kurdish minority in the north. Perhaps the CIA can arm them, they say, as a vanguard of positive change ushering their fellow Iraqis to a civilian, nonmilitarized clerical rule.
But the following demographics offer compelling reasons this, too, has little bearing on reality. Iran’s population of 90 million people remains a complex combination of ethnic backgrounds and divided loyalties.
- 51% to 61% are Farsi-speaking ethnic Persians
- 15% to 24% are ethnic Azerbaijanis (Azeris), Turkic speaking
- 7% to 10% are Kurds, (8 to 10 million people, mostly Sunni Muslims and a few Christians mostly opposed to and uncomfortable with the governmental dictates), Kurdish speaking
- 5% to 6% are Arabs, Baloch, Turkmen, Armenians (mostly Christian), Assyrians (mostly Christians), Georgians (mostly Christians), Circassians (Sunni Muslim and some Christians), Jews and Mandeans (Gnostic and distantly Christian related), speaking multiple languages
“Anyone can take risks when others are the ones to suffer.”
It’s not that a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society cannot safely work and coexist. Indeed, most statistics regarding Iran’s political landscape indicate a majority of the 90 million Iranians united (at least somewhat) against those currently in power and desirous of positive change.
Yet bombs smashing military complexes as well as homes, businesses, desalinization plants and schools will not translate into the kind of welcome embrace Trump apparently expected. What lies ahead for the Iranian people could well be a chaos this president unleashed but will have no interest in resolving.
Anyone can take risks when others are the ones to suffer. Currently, Trump’s risk increasingly blasts away at the lives and futures of the Iranian people, civilians in neighboring Arab countries, along with members and families of our own military.
Let us hope Trump’s Epic Fury does not face the same epic failure of his three Atlantic City casinos.
David Jordan serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga.
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