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A president can’t just “start a war”, muchless order air strikes. dozens of people are involved. Donald Trump yells and hollers all the time and people send Jar
by dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
A president can’t just “start a war”, muchless order air strikes. dozens of people are involved. Donald Trump yells and hollers all the time and people send Jared to calm him down. There have already been documented instances of this in the Trump admin, and it wasn’t over tweets.
- zestyping 6y agoOf course he can. He ordered the assassination of Soleimani in Iraq that could very well have led to a war. Wars are the result of a series of escalations. It doesn't take a lot to knock over the first domino.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y agoHe ordered it, and it was executed methodically with over a year of preparation. Everyone was on board, or at least enough people were convinced. On the contrary, take what happened when Trump wanted to bomb Syria, and people basically didn't let him. Presidents, especially weak, un-respected ones like Trump, can't just do things like that.
- computerex 6y agoThe president has the power to deploy the armed forces abroad without the approval of congress for a period of time.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y agoThat's on paper. Then there's reality. And in reality, not many people respect Trump and are willing to follow his orders. This happens constantly in the news. His own cabinet members openly work against him all the time. Most recently consider how Mark Esper publically publicly rejected using the Insurrection Act, right over top of Trump. Now you could say—what if we had some other president? Well, the same social rules would apply to that person as well. Even if they were incredibly charismatic and well-liked and respected, they'd need to clear many social and political hurdles before the airplanes took off.
- computerex 6y agoThe president is the commander in chief. In the armed forces following the chain of command is kind of a big deal and there are severe consequences for ignoring a direct moral order from a higher ranked officer.
- NateEag 6y agoA US president has the power to unilaterally launch the nuclear arsenal: https://allthingsnuclear.org/dwright/trump-and-the-nuclear-codes-how-to-launch-a-nuclear-weapon https://allthingsnuclear.org/dwright/trump-and-the-nuclear-c... Whether the military would actually carry out those orders when no one else has ICBMs in the air is debatable, but the president's defined role as the commander-in-chief and the sole arbiter of when to open the gates of hell on earth is not.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago> Whether the military would actually carry out those orders when no one else has ICBMs in the air is debatable It's not merely debatable, it's highly debatable. People aren't just going to launch nuclear weapons willy nilly, no matter who the president is, muchless for Donald J. Trump, who few people in his administration take seriously. Trump couldn't even get Mark Esper to deploy troops domestically. Now imagine the hurdles he'd face trying to deploy troops to another country.
- NateEag 6y agoI hope Trump wouldn't actually be able to nuke anyone while throwing a fit, and I think it's unlikely that he could. It is important to remember how the US launch system actually works, though, and that it's theoretically possible he could.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]