Newsletter: Opinion: Keep the nuclear codes from Trump — and get rid of nukes

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016. If a California Senate committee has its way, in two years you could receive this newsletter an hour later.

Here’s a look back at the week in Opinion.

Donald Trump should not have the power to order a nuclear strike — that’s the assessment of a former Minuteman III launch officer on The Times’ op-ed page this week. But Trump is still the second-most-likely person to succeed Barack Obama as president, and a duly elected commander in chief has the legal authority to put the United States’ enormous nuclear arsenal to use.

Better would be to eradicate nuclear weapons completely and keep them from ever falling into the hands of an elected strongman with a hair-trigger temper like President Trump. A second op-ed article in The Times advocating the removal of the country’s nuclear weapons reportedly stockpiled in Turkey drives home the point of how problematic the mere presence of these devices in the world is.

First, former Minuteman III launch officer John Noonan warns us about Trump controlling America’s nuclear arsenal:

Consider Trump’s words in a town hall event during the primaries: “Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” Or the words of Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, who also asked the unaskable on Fox News: “What good does it do to have a nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”

Having spent five years of my life as a Minuteman III launch officer, and a year as an instructor teaching young officers how to run that weapon system, I’m equipped to answer the Trump campaign’s question. The very point of nuclear weapons is that they are never used. We have them to dissuade hostile powers from attacking us, and vice versa.

Deterrence, as this policy is known, has been the backbone of U.S. national security for decades. That a candidate for the highest office in the land needs this explained to him, not once but thrice, should give every voter pause.

During my years in the Air Force, I worked over 300 nuclear “alerts” — 24-hour shifts 100 feet below the Wyoming tundra. I sat at my post believing, through both the Bush and Obama administrations, that the president was fundamentally rational and would never ask me to do my terrible duty. Not unless the country was in the direst of national emergencies.

With Trump as president, the young men and women who are assigned to our nuclear forces will have no such assurances.

» Click here to read more.

In a separate article, former White House staffer Steve Andreasen calls for removing nuclear weapons from volatile Turkey:

On Feb. 14, 1979, less than one month after the shah of Iran’s exile, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants. Within hours, it was returned to U.S. hands. Now on notice that our diplomats were stationed on a vulnerable outpost in a sea of anti-Americanism, the Carter administration considered, but rejected, closing the embassy. In October, President Carter permitted the shah — despised by Iranians and the regime that replaced his — to enter the United States. Days later, Iranians climbed the embassy gates again, took the Americans there hostage and demanded the shah’s return, beginning a 444-day crisis.

There are no do-overs in history, but there are lessons. The 1979 hostage crisis should have taught us the importance of proactively responding to obvious threats and removing vulnerable targets — a lesson that should be applied now if there are U.S. nuclear weapons based in Turkey.

After a faction within the Turkish military tried to overthrow the Turkish government last month, one of the many arrested for his alleged role in the attempted coup was a commanding officer at the Incirlik Air Base. That base — according to numerous media reports — is a major NATO installation hosting one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in Europe.

What if the Turkish base commander at Incirlik had ordered his troops surrounding the perimeter of the base to turn their guns on the U.S. soldiers that reportedly guard U.S. nuclear storage bunkers there?

» Click here to read more.

Serving in the military doesn’t make you special. Rosa Brooks, herself the wife of an Army officer, bemoans the “language of theology” used to talk about the armed forces, and calls for the desanctification of military service. “To call something ‘sacred’ is to insist that it’s beyond the realm of politics,” Brooks writes. “But the military — and the wars we ask it to fight, and the human pain that inevitably accompanies those wars — can’t be placed wholly outside the political realm.” L.A. Times

Another Republican for Hillary Clinton: Economist David Shulman knows “full well that she has more baggage than United Airlines,” but he plans on voting for the former secretary of State anyway. “Despite these serious flaws, Clinton believes in America and its values,” he writes. “Trump — who would establish religious tests for immigration and ethnic tests for judges — does not. She is open to the world; Trump is not.” L.A. Times

It’s the economy, Hillary Clinton. Brad Schiller, an American University economics professor, warns that Clinton’s continued trumpeting of the economic recovery (the weakest on record) could cost her credibility among voters still reeling from the recession, and possibly even the presidency. L.A. Times

Do some gun enthusiasts have to be so creepy and irresponsible with their speech? One anonymous activist in California published a list of the names and home addresses of legislators who voted for more gun control. Donald Trump suggested the “2nd Amendment people” could do something to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing anti-gun judges. Speech like this might be protected by the 1st Amendment, says The Times editorial board, but it is pretty irresponsible. L.A. Times

Charlie Beck and Connie Rice paint a rosy picture of policing in L.A. for the New York Times. The LAPD chief and the civil rights lawyer point to the improvement in crime rates in Los Angeles’ public housing projects as evidence of the effectiveness of community policing. Something tells me there’s a reason they don’t mention the ongoing protest by Black Lives Matter at City Hall or the names Ezell Ford, Charly Keunang or Redel Jones (despite citing police shootings of black people in other cities). New York Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com