Quaro
4704
Yes.
A lot of people rationalized voting for Trump because they said that ‘adults’ would still be in charge somehow. He can’t mess things up that bad! Someone would stop him if he did! Everyone else was screaming how terrifying giving such a person access to decide a nuclear strike would be.
Elections have consequences. It’s so disgusting and terrifying we have to get through this as a nation.
Zylon
4705
So what you’re saying is, we need someone standing by in the White House with a syringe of something fast-acting.
Timex
4706
EVERY general needs to be willing to act upon any legal order.
Otherwise, you have a general who is willing to do whatever he wants, regardless of the civilian government.
If you don’t want bad orders, don’t elect bad leaders.
But the answer isn’t for the military to ignore the President’s orders if they don’t like him.
Nesrie
4707
Yeah they ignore orders because they’re bad orders and potentially face the consequences later. I don’t see how any president ordering a strike though would be actually unlawful unless congress somehow manages to take away some of the power from that branch after years and years of just giving it more power.
rowe33
4708
Well, I didn’t. And yet my family and I will die along with everyone else because the moronic fucksticks in certain states voted for this imbecile, if he wakes up and decides he needs to teach China, or North Korea, or Russia, or whomever, a lesson.
Timex
4709
Yep.
That’s how democracy works.
I think we could get quite a few quality decades out of our democracy by simply disqualifying everyone who voted for Trump from participating in future elections.
That’s a false dichotomy. There’s a massive gulf of grey between being willing to follow ANY order and doing whatever someone feels like according to their own agenda.
Isn’t part of the oath to protect the country against foreign and internal enemies. Surely a president giving an order that would destroy the nation would be the definition of an internal enemy?
Also, then we’re back to “Just following orders”. If Trump orders the mass executions of muslims and mexicans, the army would just have to follow?
rowe33
4713
Well they’d have to publicly state that they’d execute all the brown folks, just to keep up appearances.
That article reads nothing like what’s being discussed. Petrov did not refuse an order from someone above him in the chain of command. He made a decision that was within his duties. It was a challenging call and he should be commended for it, but the circumstances are nowhere near the issue of a president ordering a strike and an officer refusing to enact that order.
RichVR
4716
My point is that it is reasonable to avoid nuclear war. Regardless of where the order comes from. Even the president. The alternative is madness.
Is anyone even arguing this? There’s a big big difference between answering a hypothetical question on stage and actually launching a nuke.
I’m not sure if I understand what you’re trying to convey. Are you saying that all officers should always refuse to launch nuclear missiles, regardless of orders, circumstances, etc.? If so, I’m certainly not on board with that being “reasonable”.
Again, Petrov did not refuse any orders. He made a call as to the accuracy of an alert system. That’s literally why he’s there rather than having the alert auto-update up the chain or auto-launch missiles. Unless you’re saying he refused “orders” from the alert system?
The correct response would be a military coup. It would be the end of the American experiment but hundreds of millions wouldn’t die. Unless the coup itself caused so much instability as to lead to a nuclear war anyway.
It is not the likely response IMO.
Put another way, WWJLD (What Would Jaimie Lannister Do).
A sane electorate wouldn’t have given Trump more than 5% of the vote.
Our nation failed to govern itself, in an age when mankind holds the power to cause its own extinction.
I have no more comment to make on it than I would on a super volcano erupting.
Not if the president obtained that position unlawfully or isn’t in their right mind. The fact we are even seriously discussing this is evidence of the latter. Of course, I won’t argue that having congress remove him would be the better option.
Clay
4723
The real threat here likely is more along the lines of Trump provoking NK into nuking or otherwise devastating Seoul. The proper response isn’t to nuke NK in return; most people there are starving to death and coerced into supporting Dear Leader (the alternative being torture and death). Nuking in return likely would not take out either the leadership or the nuclear capacity, since so much of their military infrastructure is built under mountains.
But Trump? … it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t escalate that into a full on regional or global nuclear conflict.
