he would be immediately arrested for treason.
-
generalusgrant — 14 years ago(December 31, 2011 06:10 PM)
What a puerile mindset to think the President would be "arrested for treason" for resorting to this as a LAST resort. Only an infantile mind would think otherwise and someone who was too young to have lived through the Cold War.
-
jetlag31 — 13 years ago(January 29, 2013 09:54 AM)
<
And who, pray tell, would have the authority to arrest the president of the United States? After all, has not the president the power to fire on the spot any military officer or executive branch civilian official (eg from the FBI) who did try? So who do you imagine would have the effrontery to front up to do it? And on who's initiative, especially when such an act could itself be construed (or misconstrued) as an act of treasonin the sense of being part of an attempt to take over the government of the United States (eg as in the scenario depicted in, say, "Seven Days in May").
The only one with the power to remove the president is Congress; and even then only via the impeachment process, a power which is expressly limited to removing him from office. So arresting him (and thus, presumably throwing him in the slammer), would have to wait until AFTER the impeachment process had run to completion.
Anyway, think about it. If President Obama has been allowed to get away with murder through the use of SEAL team assassination squads and drone attacks in order to stop the evils of terrorism why would anyone arrest a president who slaughtered people to prevent a nuclear war?
Would he be arrested if the bomb was dropped on (say) Teheran? Or London? Or Tokyo? President Truman dropped not one but TWO atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 to save the the need for an invasion of Japan. Was he arrested? Or is it that American lives are somehow more sacred than anybody else's?
<Don't you mean "stupid conservatives"? They seem to be the sort who typically make "redneck comments".
<Are we talking about the same President George W Bush who started not one but two wars on pretty much just his say-so, resulting in the loss of thousand if not tens of thousands of lives (albeit most of them non-Americans like Afghanis and Iraqis)?
Assuming it isSo what exactly is your argument with this? That President Bush offers no evidence whatsoever of his prevention of a war with China, let alone calls upon any of his officials who witnessed the events to give supporting testimony. He just simply issues the equivalent of a press release.
If it was just his word and nobody else's I imagine he would not be the most popular guy of the US hit parade. On the other han, if he had all the evidence we see in the movie, or which we may safely implyeg SAC records, testimony from senior generals, and civilian officials, tapes of conversations with the Chinese president over some equivalent of the hotline.what do you think?
<Is that the latest theory on why America went to war with Iraq? I seem to remember a time when it was because of all the WMDs that Bush et al reckoned was stockpiled there, just waiting to be used. Then it was to rid the world of Saddam and bring democracy to that corner of the Middle East.
Sojust how many terrorists did America find there? Or is it like with all those ever-elusive WMDs: they're still looking? -
drivenkick43 — 11 years ago(April 07, 2014 11:52 PM)
Of course, in the events of Fail Safe, they do have evidence: the smoking pile of dust that used to be Moscow.
So if Bush were in a similar situation, we wouldn't have to depend solely on testimony and records. A nuked-out Bejing would offer pretty good evidence that he wasn't making it all up. -
Kroyall1962 — 14 years ago(January 23, 2012 11:47 PM)
It is the "last resort" only in the minds of the filmmakers. It is a false choice. There are other ways to provide restitution to the Russians for accidentally attacking them. No way does killing millions of additional innocent people make any sense whatsoever. The Russians would be better off by accepting billions in restitution and aid. What benefit would they get out of Americans dying by the millions?
Who is to say the attacks would even have parity? We would certainly lose more lives than the Russians would. Nuclear bombs aren't exactly precision weapons. The fallout would harm other nations not even involved. The entire notion a president would do that to his own citizens is asinine. Nobody would bother with arresting him for treason, he would be gunned down like a dog in the street.
A final note is that no military man at any rank would ever obey an order to bomb NYC. They swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Nuking NYC wouldn't exactly fit within that. -
Alek_Hidell — 14 years ago(January 30, 2012 01:39 PM)
The reason for what the President did, and when he did it, was because both sides had hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at each other, ready to go off at a moments notice. If the situation were reversed, would you sit around for weeks while the Russians debated how much to send us if they nuked NYC, even by accident? Unless something concrete was done immediately, we would have retaliated. No reason to think the Russians would have done differently.
I'm just a patsy! -
Kroyall1962 — 14 years ago(January 30, 2012 04:26 PM)
You don't kill your own people under any circumstances. Whats to stop the Russians from attacking anyway even after NYC is blown up? It would never come down to that anyway. The "deal" made to destroy NYC was an idiotic plot device put in by the screenwriters, who probably knew nothing about national security.
The Russians would either retaliate fully or demand restitution for the accidental attack. No member of the joint chiefs or armed services would ever obey an order to kill millions of Americans. The Russians would have had to do it themselves. -
jetlag31 — 13 years ago(January 29, 2013 11:22 AM)
<
"ANY" circumstances?
What do you imagine a president is doing when he sends American troops off to fight a war? Some of them are almost certainly going to die. Those deaths may have come from enemy fire, but they would nevertheless have also been a consequence, albeit less directly, of the president's decision to send them off to wage war in the first place.
(BTW, isn't there an old Russian(?) folktale that bears on this? About a sleigh being pursued by a pack of hungry wolves and the passengers having to be sacrificed one by one to save the rest?)
<One answer would be to point to all those other atomic bombs and missiles the US has stashed away in readiness against just such a scenario. The ones which would blow up large swathes of the rest of the Soviet Union.
A second response would be to point out that it would be what's called a calculated risk. President Truman took that same risk when he had American planes drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such mass murder could have galvanised the Japanese to resist even more steadfastly than they had up to that point. Truman took the risk that they would not.
<Umthat "plot device" came NOT from the screenwriters but from the novel their screenplay was based upon. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_(novel)
That novel was written by two guys with Ph.Ds in political science, Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. One of them (Wheeler) was a full professor in that craft at Washington and Lee University. They presumably knew at least a little about national security.
<You do realise that there is a major difference between "retaliat[ing] fully" and "demanding restitution"?
Not to mention that one of themdoing restitutionis what Americans have a habit of doing anyway after destroying other countries. (You only have to think of all the billions America is spending to rebuild Iraq, an Iraq it helped to lay waste to.)
<And yet they presumably would have no problem firing missiles and sending bombers to kill millions of Soviet citizens even though they would surely know that, by doing so, they would provoke an attack from the Soviet Union which would result in the killing of millions of Americans (not to mention a few less consequential sorts like Britons, Frenchmen, Germans.)
Would it not therefore follow from that (and your own logic) that they would have refused to obey a presidential order to launch a first strike against the Sovietson the ground that hy doing so they would killing millions of Americans?
That's one response to your argument. Another would be to ask just what is the penalty for military officers who refuse to obey a direct order from a superior officer? For example, their commander-in-chief. Especially if, by doing so, millions of Americans get killed thanks to an atomic war that could have prevented had those officers obeyed that order.
Which, of course, begs another question: if it came down to a choice between wiping out one American city (New York) and having much of the rest of America wiped out by a vengeful Soviet Union retaliating for what they would doubtless see as an unjustified and unprovoked attackjust as America did following 9/11. Did America take it on the chin and do nothing in response to 9/11? -
Kroyall1962 — 13 years ago(January 29, 2013 11:58 AM)
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
There are no exceptions in the Constitution for accidental bombings. No American president or member of the military is going to drop a nuke on NYC.
I love Lumet but this movie was pure horsesh*t. -
jetlag31 — 13 years ago(February 14, 2013 05:40 AM)
<<"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.">>
How does this help your argument?
You seem to be assuming that an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the US Constitutionthat is to say the law and the governmental system of teh United Statesis the same as an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the PEOPLE and TERRITORY of the United States. Where in that oath you cite does a president swear that?
I ask that because in the past week or so President Obama has revealed to us that the lawyers of his Administration have crafted a memo in which they have concluded that it is perfectly legal and proper for a president to order the killing of US citizens, Hence he can order drones to go out and kill American terrorists in non-war zones like Pakistan and Yemen. All for the good of US national security, of course. If US law and national security priorities allow killings of that sort, what do you imagine that says about the legality of the president's action in Fail-Safe?
One thing you CAN be certain of: if such an action ever DID occur there will very quickly be a memo crafted by some White House lawyer assuring the nation that the president's action was all perfectly valid, proper, and legal. If George W Bush could draft the lawyers in to help him out on the torture issue and now Obama has done it with drone assassinations, a similar memo in the aftermath of such an action would be a certainty.
More to the point here, that memo of Obama's is a direct challenge to your own argument that "you don't kill your own people under any circumstances". As indeed was Obama's actions in using US drones to kill US citizens suspected of terrorism. If "you don't kill your own people under any circumstances" truly is US law then Obama's actions would be just as illegal as you claim the presidential action in Fail-Safe is.
<Hmm. So the use of drones in the Middle East to kill terrorist suspects IS illegal because they might (accidentally or otherwise) kill an American citizen?
After all, collateral damage from American bombings in the Middle East is rife.
<And yet the US military had no qualms about burning Atlanta in the US Civil War. Where does that put your claim that US presidents et al do not kill there own people "under ANY circumstances"?
<And yet you would appear to have no problems with a US president bombing Russkiesor with Russkies bombing Americans.
In fact you seem to be quite prepared to have tens of millions of Americans diejust so long as you can blame the perfidious Russians for their deaths. -
harold_forsko — 13 years ago(February 15, 2013 07:54 AM)
<
"Hmm. So the use of drones in the Middle East to kill terrorist suspects IS illegal because they might (accidentally or otherwise) kill an American citizen?
After all, collateral damage from American bombings in the Middle East is rife."
If I understand correctly, there were civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor caused by falling American AA ordnance. So, the Pacific Fleet's firing on the attacking
Japanese aircraft was illegal because of the collateral damage it caused. -
harold_forsko — 13 years ago(March 06, 2013 04:24 AM)
Anyone who believes that the President would not nuke NYC had better read this:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/holder-yep-obama-could-kill-americans-u-soil-213059085politics.html
Of course, Obama says he will only do it under "extraordinary circumstances."
The President faced "extraordinary circumstances" in Fail Safe. Sacrificing NYC was the only way he could avoid a nuclear war. Is that extraordinary enough for everyone?
As noted in an earlier post, the Attorney General would issue a memo giving legal sanction to the act. -
harold_forsko — 12 years ago(April 23, 2013 10:34 PM)
Again, for those who believe the President would never nuke NYC:
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/randpaulhypocrisy/
Mr. Paul believes that using drones to kill American citizens on American soil is perfectly legal.