This recent piece in the Huffington Post raises a rather frightening question: Would the US Military obey the orders of current Republican nominee Donald Trump should he be elected President in November and become the Nation’s Commander in Chief?
Keep in mind all of what Mr. Trump has promised on the campaign trail that he would do as president: Carpet-bombing cities in Syria, taking out the families of ISIS fighters, torturing detainees (doing “worse” than waterboarding) and disengaging from NATO, among other things. Of course, as MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mentioned not to long ago, the Republican nominee mused about why the US wasn’t making use of its nuclear weapons if they have them.
People within the military have expressed concern over Mr. Trump and the possibility of having to carry out orders that range from the highly questionable to the downright illegal (under US and international law). Whether or not they want to obey the Donald, unfortunately, they are duty bound to do as he say if he is Commander-in-Chief. As the Post piece points out, disobedience doesn’t have a great track record, and the military tends to ultimately obey orders regardless of how questionable they are.
The fact that this question is even being asked about a presidential nominee is depressing. I read this article a few weeks ago that asked essentially the same thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/science/donald-trump-nuclear-codes.html?_r=0
It would be extraordinary for the military to refuse an order from the president, but this question is not unprecedented. From the article I linked above:
“Then, in 1974, in the last days of the Watergate scandal, Mr. Nixon was drinking heavily and his aides saw what they feared was a growing emotional instability. His new secretary of defense, James R. Schlesinger, himself a hawkish Cold Warrior, instructed the military to divert any emergency orders — especially one involving nuclear weapons — to him or the secretary of state, Henry A. Kissinger.
It was a completely extralegal order, perhaps mutinous. But no one questioned it.”
What we see here now is a crisis of confidence in a potential candidate and for me this should incite change. Current presidential candidates have released letters from their medical physicians declaring their physical health status, but largely missing is their mental health status. Shouldn’t we know if the future of our country and others, when nuclear weaponry is taken into consideration, is in safe hands?
As a result of a magazine survey during the 1964 presidential election where candidate Barry Goldwater was said to be mentally unfit for the presidency by nearly 50% of the queried psychiatrists who responded (these psychiatrists never formally evaluated Mr. Goldwater), pretty much tarnishing his name, the Goldwater Rule was put into effect by The American Psychiatric Association. The rule prohibits psychiatrists from offering opinions on someone they have not personally evaluated. I completely support the Goldwater rule, however the operative words in the rule are “personally evaluate”. Strong consideration should be made to have presidential candidates’ mental capacities evaluated. This would require both time and assurance that the evaluating psychiatrist was not bias. I would suggest evaluations be done over the course of the campaign trail: 1. Prior to primary elections 2. After respective DN/RC conventions and 3. Lastly after 1st general election presidential debate. In terms of selecting a psychiatrist, only one psychiatrist must be used, the selection process can be mimicked directly after the “voir dire” jury selection method where essential constituents of each candidate’s administration can have input.
Hopefully we can have this established in time for the 2020 election and hopefully we won’t have to worry about any misuse of military power from any of the candidates in the coming 4 years.
Being older during the first election of G.W. Bush, I still remember vividly his first presidential campaign. Despite his family’s background, many of his supporters saw him as a plain-spoken, average joe that told it like it was, and a Washington D.C. outsider. Being a liberal, I along with my kind made fun of him and his gafees, much like most do Trump. After his election I felt like our country was going to be a laughing stock, but really not much more than that. Fastforward a few years and the U.S. invades a nation on lies and misinformation. We also went on to create a new type of person that is neither a war prisoner nor a criminal. Instead we created the term “enemy combatant” which when applied to any person, it would strip them of all rights. Our military followed it’s orders into a bad war and into torturing people as we saw in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. So, to answer your question, yes I believe they will.