Trump’s last card: the Gulf of Tonkin false flag justification

US President Donald J Trump looks more like President George W Bush, pensive and in deep thought just before declaring war on Iraq.

He is not alone. He finds himself in the same position as many US presidents before him, who had to authorise the military to go to war, rehearsing how the justification could be elegantly and persuasively announced.

The pacing up and down the lawn of the White House and in Trump’s case, the silliness of the diversionary tactics, including the hosting of two “big beautiful” poles on each side of the White House, is not a sign of preoccupation with whether or not to go to war. That decision has already been taken.

The White House resident is mulling over the speech that justifies the war he has already authorised, especially on how its impact would be felt by different constituencies that make up his political and financial support base.

President Trump has had a similar decision to make in his first stint as POTUS 45. He was required to authorise decapitation strikes against General Suleimani of Iran, who was on an official visit to Iraq. As provocative and illegal as the decapitation strikes are, there were no retaliatory measures or follow-up exchanges. The lesson was learnt. Pinpoint strikes against Iran will not have any consequence against the US nor its allies, for that matter.

In his second term, having authorised the military strikes against Iranian nuclear and oil facilities, including the killing of nuclear scientists and that country’s top military brass, it is difficult to imagine what, if anything… is Trump still waiting to decide in two weeks.

Along came deception. The second term of DJT, Elon Musk’s endearment for the Donald, is characterised by deception as the primary instrument of statecraft.

Briefing journalists both in the Oval Office and inside Air Force One, President Trump struck a note of confidence, convinced that he was the ultimate America First deal maker who would get the best nuclear deal for Israel first and America second. And so at the end of the fifth round of negotiations with Iran, his decapitation drones had already left Tel Aviv to decapitate the Iranian negotiators he was negotiating with. There could be no sixth.

Sometimes the deception starts with the US President calling the President of another country “my friend”. When such endearments gain currency, he is certainly planning something unsavoury against them.

While President Xi Jinping is a dear friend of Trump, with whom he got along very well, and in his words, with great respect, he was buttering him up for something nasty. On the 25th of April 2025, Trump’s administration produced a fact sheet that imposed a combined tariff rate of a whopping 245%. And this was just for a dear friend, he got along with them very well and with respect.

President Vladimir Putin has come to learn of this strategy of deception at great cost. Whilst Trump supported and encouraged a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators planned for Istanbul, the US president sat with Zelensky in the hall of the Vatican and discussed something pressing.

In full view of the world, they sat for 15 minutes discussing a sensitive subject which was mutually strategic for both countries, and exhilarating for the accompanying European leaders.

So soon thereafter, the nuclear bombers of the Russian Federation went up in billows of smoke from drone explosions launched from smuggled trucks into various parts of the Russian Federation.

The United Kingdom was quick to confirm that the success of this attack is owed to Operation Spiderweb, which had been in the making for 18 months, as far back as the time of Joe Biden. Only, Trump had to see it through as a negotiating pressure tactic against Russia. And it had plausible deniability of direct US involvement.

Of plausible deniability and false flags, the US always deploy them as two successive pages of the same war book. When one is used, the other will inexorably follow. Perhaps it is that script which has popularised the adage that in politics, there are no coincidences and in war, all coincidences are suspect.

The preeminent requirement for the US to refer to the war book in the first place is when a decision to go to war has already been taken. Thereafter, the usual blood-curdling rituals follow, with the demonisation of the target by the mainstream media leading the charge. Horrible things start happening to the said adversary without the US being perceived to be directly involved. That is enough plausible deniability.

Suddenly, without warning, the war mongers start yearning for more blood. Considering that the administration had long acquiesced to war, all they needed was an excuse to escalate.

But the war hawks know what the world knows already. They must provide their own justification in order to fully inhabit the theatre of conflict. That justification is on the very next page of the book. In the Vietnam War, it was officially called the USS Maddox incident, an infamous deception known to historians as the Gulf of Tonkin false flag operation.

This Gulf of Tonkin false flag operation marked a historic milestone. It eulogises every false flag justification with a name of its own. With the resolve to topple Saddam Hussein in a full invasion, the justification had a heavy title. “Weapons of mass destruction!”

For such a loquacious group, their vocabulary is disturbingly sparse. The titling of these justifications has limits, apparently, occasioned no doubt by the need to retain shock and horror and manufactured consent. In Libya, the justification that toppled Gaddafi is shockingly called “the weapons of mass destruction”.

President Trump may not need to worry about his MAGA constituency, nor his utterances of many years that the senseless forever wars must come to an end. So much proselytising was fair game in electioneering season and accordingly was meant for votes. No normal US president can ever imagine that they would finish a term without obliging some military adventurism or spilling of blood, however infinitesimally, in some small country or exotic island.

But this is deception’s open season. There are no two weeks within which to decide. The strike will be within days of the announcement by the White House spokesperson.

If Trump were facing re-election concerns and possible dethroning by his Democrat rivals, he would have shut this war down a long time ago. But he has been liberated from such psychological constrictions.

The trillion dollars of investments from Saudi Arabia are almost ready for purchase. So is the Palace in the Sky 747 aircraft gift from the Emir of Qatar. It is humming on the tarmacs of Doha. No matter. No business is more urgent than, nor competes in importance with, Netanyahu’s fabled wars with ubiquitous foes.

After all, the letter from his ambassador in Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, has confirmed that Trump is the second coming of the Messiah, to do what the Messiah is wont to do. The messianic to-do list may be a stretch for the Donald, with at least 8 billion people yearning for their reward for a lifetime of religious loyalty.

All he has to do is save only that sliver of humanity who are his allies and destroy everyone else. He has an amazing name for this messianic operation, composed of many false flags. Helped by the charismatic evangelists, its haloed name is shocking for its biblical end-of-time-ish fatalism.

The Gog of Magog.

* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

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