Donald Trump’s dangerous posturing increases risk of nuclear terrorism

Trump’s “program” for defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, combining torture with mass bombings which would decimate civilians — not to mention his musings about using nuclear weapons against ISIS or in a European ground war. The net effect is a mushroom cloud of radioactive ignorance from a man incapable of better.

Given the gravity of nuclear proliferation and the menace of nuclear terrorism, this dangerous posturing underscores the seriousness of the job he seeks. In any area, but particularly this one, the presidency must be reserved for those who are knowledgeable and stable.

This captures the fatal contradiction between the Republicans’ report on national security and their nominee

No Time For Trump, Part Two: Nuclear Proliferation, ISIS And The Threat Of Nuclear Terrorism, Huffington Post, Richard North Patterson 06/21/2016 Twelve days ago, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans introduced a report on national security harshly critical of President Obama. “America,” they warned, “faces the highest terror threat level since 9/11.”

Let’s take them at their word. And so, a question. Of all the threats we face, what fear most haunts our national security community?

It is not massacres like those in Orlando or San Bernardino, as monstrous as they are. It is a threat which, while more remote, would be infinitely more devastating: a nuclear attack — including by terrorists like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

This existential danger drives America’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, and to keep our country safe from a nuclear holocaust. And here lies the irony in the Republicans’ warning. For it is yet another compelling reason that a man as ignorant, irresponsible, unstable and unprepared as Donald Trump should never become president.

True, Trump’s nativist scapegoating of all Muslims — including millions of loyal Americans, many of whom have served our military — increases the danger of more mass slaughters like Orlando, breeding alienation while attacking those whose vigilance could help prevent such horrors. But his xenophobia and lack of basic knowledge also enhances the most terrible prospect of all — nuclear terrorism.

While the nuclear threat is horrifying to contemplate, its greatest dangers are little understood, or even discussed in public. In recent years, the public’s worry about nuclear proliferation has focused most particularly on Iran — a frequent subject of Trump’s crude and self-preening attacks on Obama’s supposed “weakness” in confronting threats to America. But it is unlikely that Iran would start a nuclear war: however aggressive, its regime has a return address, and a reprisal could annihilate Tehran.

That is why nuclear terrorism by non-state actors is America’s ultimate nuclear nightmare.

As debilitating as the mass slaughters we have suffered can be, only terrorism by nuclear means has the potential to destroy our economy, our security, our system of civil liberties, our commitment to democratic ideals, and our very trust in each other. In short those things which, at our best, make us who we are.

This is why countries which could spawn nuclear terrorism are the greatest threats to our way of life. It is why Pakistan — not Iran — is the most dangerous place on earth. It is why our next president must have sound judgment, a stable temperament, and a sophisticated understanding of the of nuclear threat posed by Al Qaeda and, more recently, ISIS. It is why that president cannot — must not — be Donald Trump.

The facts which make this so are as little-known as they are sobering.

To start, Al Qaeda has long been obsessed with acquiring nuclear weapons, and Pakistan has always been its focus. Just before 9/11, bin Laden met in Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist and an engineer, drawing up specifications for an Al Qaeda bomb. And after 9/11, bin Laden announced Al Qaeda’s intention to kill 4 million Americans in reprisal for the Muslim deaths he attributed to the United States and Israel, and issued a fatwa calling for the use of nuclear arms against the West.

Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is not. And a new force has emerged with the same apocalyptic desires — ISIS.

Granted, perpetuating nuclear terrorism would require a high degree of organizational and logistical sophistication. But intelligence officials believe that ISIS is scouring Iraq for nuclear and radioactive materials for use outside the country. Indeed, it is known that they have already seized lower-grade nuclear materials from Mosul University. And the tragic attacks in France and Belgium have a disturbing nuclear coda…….

This captures the fatal contradiction between the Republicans’ report on national security and their nominee…….http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/no-time-for-trump-part-tw_b_9625282.html

June 22, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA elections 2016

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