{"id":10516,"date":"2017-08-25T12:29:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T19:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10516"},"modified":"2017-09-07T16:09:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T23:09:11","slug":"the-fire-and-fury-of-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fire-and-fury-of-presidents\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fire And Fury Of Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by <\/span>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Defining Ideas<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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Image credit:Barbara Kelley<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals<\/em>.” \u2014Barack Obama, April 2016<\/p>\n

The media recently went ballistic over President Trump\u2019s impromptu promises of \u201cfire and fury\u201d in reply to the latest North Korean threats\u2014and even more so when he later doubled down under criticism and claimed he had not been tough enough. But American leaders have always resorted to such blunt talk in exacerbating circumstances such as the current one.<\/p>\n

Recall Bill Clinton\u2019s now widely quoted remark that it would be \u201cpointless\u201d for North Korea to develop nuclear weapons because using them would mean \u201cthe end of their country.\u201d Likewise, President Harry Truman once promised Japan a \u201crain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth\u201d after dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Japan apparently got the message that there was no way out but unconditional surrender. President John F. Kennedy referred publicly to an \u201cabyss of destruction\u201d during the Cuban crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To read more: http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/research\/fire-and-fury-presidents<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Defining Ideas \u00a0 Image credit:Barbara Kelley \u201cWe could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals.” \u2014Barack Obama, April 2016 The media recently went ballistic over President Trump\u2019s impromptu promises of \u201cfire and fury\u201d in reply to the latest North Korean threats\u2014and even more so when he later doubled down under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1124,1092,978,346,59,846,116,285,99,46,150,1,524],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2JC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tar-pits-abroad\/","url_meta":{"origin":10516,"position":0},"title":"The Tar Pits Abroad","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Defining Ideas \u00a0 As missiles fall on Syria in retaliation for Bashar Assad\u2019s medieval use of chemical weapons\u2014and as voices call for the use of some American ground troops to expedite his removal\u2014we might reflect upon American military interventions in the post-Vietnam era. 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They should not interrupt more natural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9959,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moving-forward-the-need-for-innovations-in-technology-and-strategy\/","url_meta":{"origin":10516,"position":4},"title":"Moving Forward: The Need For Innovations In Technology And Strategy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Kiron K. Skinner \/\/ Strategika Two broad sets of U.S. military strategies during the second half of the twentieth century combined ideas, innovation, and technology in ways that offset Soviet conventional (and later nuclear) superiority in arms and military forces. These strategies also contributed to the overall state of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Strategika"","block_context":{"text":"Strategika","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/strategika\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10436,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/miracle-at-dunkirk\/","url_meta":{"origin":10516,"position":5},"title":"Miracle At Dunkirk","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Defining Ideas Wednesday, August 2, 2017 A quarter-million troops of the British Expeditionary Force, together with about 140,000 French and Belgian soldiers, were safely evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, France between May 26 and June 4, 1940, in one of the largest successful maritime\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UK"","block_context":{"text":"UK","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10558,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516\/revisions\/10558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}