Echo opinion about nuclear codes oversight

"..the only way to win a nuclear war is to not have one" ~Ted Diadiun
A discussion about the dangerous and potential misuse of the USA's nuclear codes is essential. This access by one man, meaning the US president, regardless of the authority that's attributed to the responsibility, must periodically be evaluated. 

Senator Bob Corker called an important Senate hearing on this subject. His inquiry was a "not so subtle" warning to Donald Trump. Summary of this editorial echo (meaning, a re-blog of newspaper opinions as selected by MaineWriter) is this:

"Listen up Donald Trump, we are worried about you."
Given Donald Trump serial propensity for "making stuff up" (or outright lies), the nuclear codes subject raises our level of diligence about his irrational judgement.

This round table opinion echo is a re-blog from Cleveland.com

President Donald Trump and the nuclear launch codes: editorial board roundtable

CLEVELAND OHIO- Ever since President Harry Truman ordered the devastating atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during (MaineWriter- ie "ending") World War II, U.S. presidents have been in charge of the nuclear launch codes. (In other words, US Presidents can launch a nuclear war.)

Should that change?

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on this issue -- the first in more than four decades. 

Convened by committee Chairman Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee and a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, the committee raised questions about Trump's authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.

The hearing came after months of Trump trading insults with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un, who has been trying to weaponize his military's missiles. Fearful that North Korea might attack the U.S., Trump has vowed to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea. He called Jong Un "Rocket Man," and more recently, "short and fat" after Jong Un called Trump old. 

The verbal sparring by Trump and Jong Un has unnerved U.S. allies and nuclear experts who fear that Trump's taunting of the notoriously thin-skinned dictator might spark a nuclear war.

Corker, who has called the Trump White House "an adult daycare," pushed for the hearing because he said Congress should explore "the realities of this system." He said he wasn't just pointing the finger at Trump, but at any president in charge of the launch codes.

Democrats at the hearing were far more blunt about their lack of confidence in the bellicose president's ability to make such a decision. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, said the president is "so unstable" that he might order a nuclear strike. Some Republicans have been just as worried about Trump's temperament.

But Corker didn't have any answers when he emerged from the Senate hearing, saying that he didn't see a legislative solution.

So what do you think? Should the U.S. change its policy and make the president seek the approval of Congress before ordering a nuclear attack? Or should the U.S. allow Trump and other presidents to make that fateful decision?

Sharon Broussard, chief editorial writer, cleveland.com:

We ought to have the conversation but Congress does not appear to have the authority to change the rules. A Washington Post story pointed out that the White House decided decades ago that the nuclear football should be in the hands of the president instead of a squabbling Congress or war-crazy generals. But put all of that aside -- killing millions of people is a decision that no man or woman has the right to make.

Ted Diadiun, editorial board member, cleveland.com:

Most details on how a nuclear strike would be authorized are classified, for obvious reasons so we really don't even know what we're talking about. The president must retain the authority for any nuclear strike (can anyone really imagine a Congressional debate about such a thing?), but the only way to win a nuclear war is to not have one. And the best way to restrain a president we can't trust with nuclear authority is to not elect one.

Trump political party push back by Republicans

This is dangerous stuff!  Conservatives have been pushed out of the Republican party. It's now the Trump Party.

The Daily Iowan echo about Donald Trump

From the growing archives of opinions I've collected by randomly cruising the newspapers throughout America.

By Constance Judd

Donald Trump was recently called out by two members of his own party for degrading American values. 

Senator Jeff Flake said there is no place for him in the newly formed Trump party

However, this challenge did little to scare Trump and instead only raised his ego.

Following Sens. Bob Corker’s and Jeff Flake’s denunciation of his character and presidency, Trump responded as if it was nothing more than a simple inconvenience for him. These incidents call into question where the GOP stands if its own members are beginning to turn on one another.

It draws attention to the definite split among members of the Republican Party: You’re either with Trump, or you’re against him.

On CNN’s “New Day,” Corker said, “I’m sorry, I think when the president is wrong, you have to call him out, and sometimes he’s wrong. And that’s what I tried to point out in the speech yesterday.”

Corker was drawing attention to the reality that those who oppose Trump are simply not welcomed in the newly formed Republican Party.

Alongside Flake’s announcement of retirement, he said there is no place for him in the newly formed Trump party; he believes his values of free trade, pro-immigration, limited government, and conservativism did not match that of the administration’s. Flake said we as a country must never accept the “sundering of [the] country, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons.”

Clearly, the Trump administration is not sitting well with not only the American people but members of the GOP. Is it time for us to finally ask, when is enough going to be enough?

In March, a CNN poll found that 63 percent of Republicans said they were “angry” at both the Democratic and Republican parties. However, when the same poll was given in September, one in four Republicans had added the GOP specifically to their “angry” list. Additionally, a quarter of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the GOP, while a majority disapprove of GOP leaders in Congress. Finally, many believe that Trump is not moving the nation in the right direction.

Obviously, the Trump administration is not presidential.

Taking everything into account, Americans are left to wonder when exactly our democratic system failed to the point where almost a new party is being formed — one that specifically opposes the current president.

In light of the newly formed Republican Party, you’re either with Trump or against him. Therefore, you’re either with the American people or against them.

Simply, when will enough be enough?

MaineWriter- This right wing polarization of the Republican party is a dangerous precedent and a threat to American democratic values.

Donald Trump - A danger to himself and others (opinion)

More trouble for Trump: Unfit to lead: "...military and intelligence agencies are learning new habits of disregard for presidential statements.."

The Problem With 'Containing' Donald Trump- by David Frum

When Bob Corker says officials are trying to “contain” the president, he’s pointing to a long-term threat to democratic stability.

Two interlocking constitutional crises are now gripping the United States. We are in a very precarious situation. One spectacularly visible and noisy; while the other is unfolding more quietly. Senator Bob Corker’s Sunday remarks to The New York Times brought the quiet crisis into full public view.

The noisy crisis is, of course, the presidency of Donald Trump. The quiet crisis is the response of the national-security system to the noisy crisis.

Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts.

“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview.

(In other words, MaineWriter asssessment, Donald Trump is a "danger to himself and others".)

This observation by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, has been seconded by other insiders.

Senator Bob Corker, R-TN will not seek re-election. He is speaking truth to power

“There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president,” then-White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci told CNN’s New Day in July.

 In April, an unnamed senior administration official praised the work of Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, and John Kelly, then still secretary of homeland security: “They realize this is a tumultuous White House, and they are serving as a leveling influence over fractious personalities … responsibly protecting the country from enemies both foreign and domestic.” The “domestic enemies” in this formula apparently included much of President Trump’s own senior staff.

Good news: The people containing the commander-in-chief have to a considerable extent succeeded. The United States has not launched a preemptive attack on North Korea, abandoned Estonia to the Russians, canceled NAFTA, or started a trade war with China—each and every one of those outcomes a seemingly live possibility if you heeded Trump’s own words.

Bad news: The national-security services are apparently coping with Donald Trump in ways that circumvent the president’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief. One example spotlights the ways Trump’s orders are shirked by his nominal subordinates. Trump tweeted in July that the “United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” 

The actual policy set forth in executive orders in August will be very different: It leaves discretion to the secretary of defense to determine whether “military readiness” will be assisted or impaired by allowing transgender soldiers to continue their service.

We’ve seen the president issue threats of imminent military action—only to be contradicted by cabinet officers and military staff assuring potential adversaries that the United States will not initiate the use of force that the president had threatened to initiate.

The military and intelligence agencies are learning new habits of disregard for presidential statements and even (?) orders that those agencies deem ignorant or reckless. By and large, those agencies’ judgments are vastly to be preferred to the president’s—but that does not make these habits any less dangerous.

Among other insights, Corker’s Sunday interview forces Americans to confront some tough questions: By what methods is the president being contained? Is he, for example, being denied sensitive information by agencies that remember how he blurted a closely guarded secret to the Russian foreign minister and the location of U.S. nuclear submarines to the president of the Philippines? Are allies and potential adversaries being signaled that presidential statements do not actually represent the policy of the United States government? That was how National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster dealt with Trump’s refusal to read aloud the endorsement of NATO’s Article 5 in the speech written for Trump to deliver at NATO headquarters in May. “He did not make a decision not to say it."

To what extent does the president remain in the military chain of command?

It seems incredible that the military would outright defy a presidential order.

But not hearing it? Not understanding it? Not acting on it promptly? Holding back information that might provoke an unwanted presidential reaction? White House insiders told a reporter Monday that Vice President Pence had made a mistake in telling Trump he planned to attend a game featuring a tribute to Indiana football great Peyton Manning on Sunday: It was that casual remark that goaded Trump into ordering Pence to stage his walk-out stunt.* Whether the story is true or not, it reveals the preferred method of managing a distrusted president:

In other words, deny him information that could have unwanted effects.

Thank you and congratulations to those officials struggling to protect American security, the Western alliance, and world peace against Donald Trump.

But the constitutional order is becoming the casualty of these struggles. The Constitution provides a way to remedy an unfit presidency: the removal process under the 25th amendment. Regencies and palace coups are not constitutional. I dare say many readers would prefer a Mattis presidency to a Trump presidency. But to stealthily endow Secretary Mattis with the powers of the presidency as a work-around of Trump’s abuse of them? That’s a crisis, too, and one sinister for the future. 

What if Trump is succeeded by a Bernie Sanders-type whom the military and intelligence agencies distrust as much as they distrust Trump: Will they continue the habits they acquired in the Trump years?

Bob Corker’s “containment” remark both reassures and warns: The “lesser evil” response to Trump’s challenge to the constitutional order—isolate and ignore him—remains a significant hazard in itself.

(MaineWriter: A danger to himself and others.)