Donald Trump Again Shows That He is a Danger to National Security
Many things occurred in Trump’s appearance on the Commander-in-Chief Forum that show his lack of understanding of the military, and his lack of plans for the nation’s international future.
Let’s start with the really important issue of nuclear security with Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. Its really impossible for Putin, while watching the campaign, not to realize that Donald Trump is unstable on a time scale of 10 minutes. Trump also has a cavalier attitude about the use and spread of nuclear weapons. Trump does not recognize the value of the nuclear prevention treaty with Iran, which is on the Caspian Sea along with Russia. Trump is fine with carpet bombing. As protector of Russia, Putin has to realize that he cannot live securely knowing that Trump has the nuclear button case following him around 24 hours a day.
Putin and his comrade oligarchs have become among the richest men on earth, controlling the resources of the Russian people. Besides protecting the Russian people, they also want to protect their great privilege and wealth from destruction. As international investors, they also do not want the international economy disrupted by the loose Trump cannon. Whatever animosity Putin has with Clinton and Obama, that is minor compared to the nuclear threat.
Even if Russia hacked and released the DNC files and published them, it is highly unlikely that Putin will do enough to guarantee the election to Trump. It has become clear that Putin’s supposed compliment of calling Trump “brilliant” was really calling him “flamboyant”, which is related to “flammable”. Putin’s agent of Paul Manafort is no longer influencing Trump, and Putin can no longer imagine that he can control Trump. I really doubt that there will be a Halloween surprise against the Clinton campaign, unless it is arranged by Wikileaks from material that they already have.
The press has caught many of Trump’s lacks of understanding of the military. I have a few to add. The script that Trump was reading quoted military procurement goals down to the ship, troop, and airplane. The script writer attributed this to the Heritage Foundation. You might wonder why a private organization would have such a detailed estimate of what the military needs were, and not the US military itself. The scriptwriter did not read the Heritage Foundation website with any understanding. The website merely quoted the Pentagon budget and procurement request. The script should have directly referenced the Pentagon request, unless the campaign was trying to pretend that the Generals and Admirals could not be trusted. Trump’s campaign also made a nonsensical mistake of comparing our naval ship count to that after World War I. Marco Rubio also quoted this in the primaries. With nuclear weapons, 10 aircraft carriers, and precision weaponry, the US Navy probably has a million times the power that it did at the end of World War I. In fact, if his script writer had studied the naval requests, he would have noted that about 50 of the requested “ships” were just shore patrol boats. Many of the others were probably for the 11th carrier group. The script writer and Trump never stated what mission the increase in weapons and troops were to be used for. Normally, when you pull troops out of two wars, you need fewer troops.
The press has noted that you do not fire the generals, as Trump implied he would do, for no apparent reason. They are not political appointees. Generals are usually fired by dictators who want to install their own loyalists so that the military does not oust them in a coup. Is it possible that Trump is paranoid about such a possibility? What actions is Trump considering that he is worried about a coup? Is it nuclear related? We know that Trump is already asserting a paranoia that if he loses, it must be because the election is fixed.
Now, consider Trump’s plan of giving the generals only 30 days after he takes office to lay out a plan to defeat ISIS. Trump has not even specified what limits or goals of military or other action he is considering, that the military can use for planning. Trump’s own plans are “secret”. Secret from our military which keeps secrets all the time? Trump will then decide who’s plans are best, not the military or a joint consultation? In fact, the military has spent years planning and defeating ISIS. Trump never acknowledges the contributions of the Iraqi military, the Kurdish military, the Turkish military, the rebels, and the international coalition that Obama has helped organize, which have been doing the actual work of defeating ISIS. Trump cannot defeat ISIS without these forces, and we know Trump is unusually talented in demeaning and destroying any coalition.
Finally, I was wondering how long it would take Trump to reveal what was said in his security briefing, in order to demean Obama and Clinton. It didn’t take long. To an international audience, Trump said that he read body language of the CIA to see that they disagreed wth Obama’s policies. Don’t you think that should have remained top secret information? That has been doubled down on by Lt. Gen. Flynn, the Russian reporter, who Trump took along for the briefing as his military expert. Flynn said that by the presentation he could tell about this disagreement. Somehow it was also leaked that Gov. Chris Christy was trying to restrain Flynn from asking questions. In fact, the President has the responsibility and knowledge of what actions the allies, the Congress and the people of the United States would approve, that the CIA itself is not responsible for weighing these to make final decisions.
I expect a lot more leaks from Trump in the near future, since he does not respect the generals or probably even the intelligence agencies. Remember, Trump knows better than they do. This is such an irony, since Fox News and the Congressional investigating committee have spent several years trying to convince us that it is Clinton’s email server that was the greatest security leak ever, but it turns out that there is no evidence of this.
