CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Image by Ivan Rohovchenko.

Hey, here’s a question for you: What American president ever said publicly that this country was going to “bomb the shit” out of another country? Could that have been Abraham Lincoln? No, I don’t think they even had planes in the Civil War years. How about Dwight D. Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy? Hmmm… Kennedy at least did begin the American war in Vietnam (even if he wasn’t yet bombing the shit out of that country).

The president after him, Lyndon Johnson, who had a knack for vulgarity, launched the major bombing campaign there (while at one point strolling the White House grounds, insisting, “I don’t know what the fuck to do about Vietnam”). President Tricky Dick Nixon followed up charmingly in Vietnam by insisting that, “if, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.” And then, of course, he did indeed bomb the shit out of another country by carpet-bombing Cambodia.

Still, none of that was broadcast publicly to the entire world. It simply came out later. Donald Trump, however, represents a first when it comes to so many things and that includes a recent violent form of presidential cursing in public, while threatening war with — don’t doubt it for a second — so much more to come.

Yes, leave it to “our” president to have employed such language publicly in an interview with a reporter at (big surprise!) Fox News when he said, in the midst of his war on Iran, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

Of course, the question, when it comes to that Gulf monarchy and longtime ally of this country in the Strait of Hormuz, is: in the way of what? Perhaps Donald Trump’s plummeting approval ratings? After all, they recently dropped from a distinctly less than spectacular 37%........

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