Only Clinton offers sane national defense

By this time you have heard it all. Donald Trump is dangerous, morally repugnant, unqualified and unfit to be president. Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate we have ever had seek the office and will work to create jobs for the middle class, improve the Affordable Care Act, protect women’s healthcare rights, and keep her hand steady on the tiller of national security. That steady hand is so preferable to Donald Trump’s impetuous and undisciplined behavior.

Trump’s musings on military policy, e.g., “I know more than the generals,” are well known. Not so well known, however, is his ignorance about what he perceives as mistakes in the Iraqi/Coalition effort to retake Mosul. Trump says we should surprise the enemy instead of broadcasting our offensive launch. What he doesn’t understand about military tactics is that Mosul is not a walled city that you simply strike as a single target. Rather Mosul is surrounded by smaller outlying communities that you must attack, one after another, on your way. The geography simply does not allow for surprise attack. I wonder why Trump’s supporting retired admirals and generals didn’t share that with him.

Meanwhile, even more dangerous for our children and grandchildren, is Trump’s naive attitude toward nuclear weapons, e.g., “if we have them, why don’t we use them?” He wants to share nuclear weapons with countries that currently do not possess them such as Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea. Both Republican and Democratic national security experts have spent years working on nuclear non-proliferation and Trump wants to proliferate willy-nilly.

Trump’s penchant for heaping praise and acting as a puppet for Russian President Vladimir Putin is well known. He publicly urged Putin to hack into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and repudiated the assessment of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russians were hacking in an effort to influence the presidential election.

Putin is enamored with Trump’s threats to NATO countries who may not have fully paid their share of alliance participation. By doing so, Trump has given Putin an opportunity to threaten countries such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Needless to say, our allies are apprehensive over the possibility of a Trump presidency.

Clinton is rightfully worried about North Korea’s provocative bombast and ongoing testing of missiles that could hit the U.S. Again, Republican and Democratic experts have dealt with this threat for decades. Trump is clueless about its ramifications.

While the U.S. and multiple other nations have reached a nuclear accord with Iran, there are many continuing and potentially escalating issues between the U.S. and Iran. Clinton knows how to deal with Iran, including its proclivity for imprisoning U.S. and other Western citizens who travel to Iran. And, contrary to Trump’s lies about the U.S. giving millions in ransom to Iran following the nuclear deal, we were only returning what was rightfully Iran’s and what the accord required us to do.

Clinton is right on all the key issues, including treating women and all people with respect. Trump has no moral compass; through his words and actions, he has continually degraded women, people with disabilities, Hispanics, Muslims, African-Americans. He plays the law and order card as a codeword for oppressing blacks. He wants to divide us. Hillary believes we are “stronger together.”

For the sake of our future generations, the strongest reason to vote for Clinton and against Trump is her steady hand on the nuclear issue and his complete ignorance and contempt for sane national defense.

This story was originally published November 1, 2016 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Only Clinton offers sane national defense."