4684

WaPo headline: John Kelly, Trump’s new chief of staff, ‘won’t suffer idiots and fools’

Ummm, I’m gonna have to disagree.

4685

Pretty much going to be nonstop suffering.

IMG_0399

4686
4687

Jesus Christ

That was glorious.

4688

4689

Good lord, that was savage … and I like it.

4690

That’s hilarious. “Suffering idiots and fools” is part of the job description. If Kelly is true to his word, he’ll be out faster than Priebus.

4691

This is terrifying.

4692

The thing is, the military command chain is sacrosanct. You want civilian control of the military and not military control of the civilians? Well, this is it. By law, Cheeto is the president. If he gives a lawful order, the military command has no choice. THIS IS WHY ELECTIONS MATTER.

4693

Nuclear war with China or military junta!

There’s a nice pair of options for ya.

4694

Nuclear war with China would destroy this country far more than a general breaking the military chain of command. I understand your point, but any military officer ready to enter that engagement without question is unfit to serve this country, in my opinion.

4695

You can’t expect an officer to go on record and say he’d ignore a command from a ranking officer.

Now, when it’s for reals would he push the button? I’m guessing probably, but I think there’s room for doubt.

4696

I mean I’d go for the junta at that point, but either way there would be lots of dead people.

4697

Yeah, it’d be terrible for an Admiral to reassure humanity that he’s not going to destroy the f’ing world because an immature moron decides he wants to launch his nuclear penis.

Man the fuck up, Admiral.

4698

Exactly this.

Blockquote As the audience tittered at the premise, the admiral smiled and said, “So far, these were yes and no answers.”
“The answer would be yes,” Swift went on. “Every member of the U.S. military has sworn an oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the officers and the president of the United States as the commander in chief appointed over us.”
“This is core to American democracy and any time you have a military that is moving away from a focus and an allegiance to civilian control, then we really have significant problems,” Swift added.
While the admiral’s affirmative response to that nuclear scenario might sound like cause for alarm, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet said the premise of the question was “ridiculous.”
“It was posed as an outrageous hypothetical, but the admiral simply took it as an opportunity to say the fact is that we have civilian control of the military and we abide by that principle,” Pacific Fleet spokesman Capt. Charlie Brown told Reuters.
“Admiral Swift answered the question the only way a serving military officer could,” Rory Medcalf, who heads the National Security College and hosted the talk, told The New York Times. “It would have been a lot more controversial if he had said, no, he would not obey the commander in chief.”

4699

Radiolab did a really great episode on exactly this topic.

4700

I get that the guy had to answer the question that way, but it is absolutely appropriate for members of the military to question orders. “Just following orders” doesn’t get accepted as an excuse after the dust settles.

4701

Since the H-Bomb the idea has been out there that an exchange between two nuclear powers would essentially be the end of civilization, so really any officer would have been in the same boat when given such an order. The trick of course is that even if an officer’s humanistic obligations would, in that moment, override his military oath, the deterrence capability of a nuclear arsenal would be nullified if people thought in advance that he wouldn’t obey the order.

It’s why they made WOPR, after all.

I understand that Trump is a particularly bad president, but still, nuclear war is nuclear war, and dead is dead.

4702

Where’s that tweet thread consolidator? Anyhow, this is a good tweet thread on the subject.

4703

It’s at https://www.dscho.com/threadbare/

Ugh. I keep seeing people say this, and… don’t count on it making a difference. It’s a legal principle that comes into play in prosecution https://t.co/YijnWJOGEM

In the heat of the moment, military protocol, training, and instinct are: all orders are lawful orders.

There might be a context where someone says “[ORDER]” and the recipient is free to say, “Sir, I believe that’s unlawful.” “Well, okay.”…

…but do not, do not, do not count on that to be the guardian angel that saves us from a live fire exchange, especially a nuclear one.

Our entire nuclear apparatus is built in the cold war mindset where anyone stopping to question the orders KILLS EVERYONE ON THE PLANET.

A lot of our generals and admirals, even if they think the launch is wrong, would authorize it because they see the alternative as worse.

Because the alternative is, they create a precedent where individual conscience can override “the ultimate deterrent”.

At which point it ceases to be “the ultimate deterrent”.

Complicating all this?

The president’s nuclear strike authorization is not an unlawful order.

A lot of people say, “Don’t worry, Mattis has to verify it!” All he’s empowered to do under law is verify the identity of the issuer.

If Mattis refuses to ceritfy a nuclear strike because he disagrees with it, then he, not Trump, is in violation of the law.

“But he could trigger the 25th Amendment!”

No career military general will start the precedent that using nuclear force = unfit for command

We had close calls during the Cold War, times when a false positive almost triggered nuclear war.

But what we’ve never had a test of is, the president of the United States just straight-up ordering a missile strike.

If someone refuses to launch in that situation, it’s not reactive. The crisis won’t pass. They will be relieved and someone else will launch

And if the replacement refuses, it just goes up the chain. Sooner or later we have a nuclear strike or a military coup.

Because if the president’s trying to get a nuke off during relative peacetime, either the whole military refuses the order, or it happens.

And my guess is: it happens. Because what’s the brass going to imagine China will do if it gets wind of what’s going on?

You can’t have China finding out that the commander in chief is trying to nuke them and hope they’ll wait to see if we can overthrow him.

Which, again, is what it would come down to. No one’s got the lawful authority to countermand the president on nuclear force.

So if he orders a nuclear strike not based on a radar shadow or anything else that can be debugged and debunked… trust it’s happening.

Previous launches were averted because they were based on data that could be questioned. A direct order is not data.

This, by the way, is 90% of the reason I would rather have Trump gone and Pence as president. We’d still have to fight him just as hard…

…but we’d have a reasonable assurance he would trigger a nuclear inferno because he’s feeling extra put-upon today.

Trump’s reasons for doing almost anything are not falsifiable. They can’t be disproven. They can’t be argued against or reasoned with.

If he gives the order to light up China, “let’s wait a few minutes to see if we can get sensor confirmation.” isn’t going to save us.

The military will either find someone to turn the key or relieve Trump of command.

Which would be a coup.

And the coup would be better!

But unlikely.

And it would herald terrible things for our future.

Sorry for the downer thread, babies. This is never far from my mind, though I prefer not to dwell on it.

But “Don’t worry! The world court says we don’t have to follow unlawful orders.” is not going to save us from Trump’s nuclear ambitions.
https://www.dscho.com/threadbare