Sparks: Trump threatens to ‘blow up’ Oman amid talks over strait of Hormuz

When a leader speaks of blowing up allies, tyranny reveals its true face, demanding subservience or destruction.

Heard a fella say he’d blow up an ally; well, I reckon that’s one way to make friends, if you like short-term ones.

One finds that those who threaten to blow up their friends often mistake brutality for wit, a most unfortunate miscalculation.

If we treat allies with threats of destruction, then our alliances are not built on trust, and therefore, they are not alliances at all.

When a ruler speaks of destroying those who should be respected, the rectification of names is lost, and chaos surely follows.

Such bluster, like all things born of fleeting emotion, will pass, and the earth will remain indifferent to its echo.

To utter such a casual threat in public is a symptom of a peculiar public malady, betraying a profound lack of diplomatic hygiene.

The creator, having brought a relationship into being, now threatens to unmake it with monstrous indifference, heedless of the consequences.

Such words, spoken in haste and lacking Christian charity, indicate a severe moral failing in the conduct of high office.

A system built on intimidation expends tremendous energy in friction, rather than harnessing its forces for constructive ends.

Freedom is not given by those who threaten, but taken by those who act, even when the path is fraught with such loud dangers.

The casual cruelty of power, whispered in a meeting, is the same iron room, only with more ornate wallpaper.

Hearing such a threat from within the government's own chambers confirms that the official narrative of diplomacy often hides a more alarming reality.