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Women voters can make a big difference

The International Day of the Woman has come and gone. It encouraged me to finally write this editorial. It has been many decades since I filed for divorce in Flathead County. I entered into the system so innocently, believing that justice would prevail. My attorney did not call one witness, either personal or financial, in my behalf. The opposing attorney repeatedly referred to me using an extremely derogatory and demeaning two-word profanity reserved only to strip away pride and bring shame to women. The effects of his behavior upon my family and friends continue to hold an influence in our lives.

I filed a complaint against this opposing attorney and he replied by writing, ”Yes, I called her a ____ ______ and, if you want to know why, I will tell you.” He was disciplined and Gov. Marc Racicot wrote me a letter of support. I went on to graduate from law school and to write and lobby into Montana law a statute that mandated the availability of mediation in family law cases.

For many years, the Montana legal system has not generally been a friend to women. This will only change as good women candidates win their way into positions of power in the justice system and in state political systems.

Only three women have ever served on the Montana Supreme Court but I understand that half of Flathead County District Court judges are now women. So there is progress. And this will continue if Montana women stand with one another to support the honest, qualified, hard-working women and men who sacrifice to run for local and state positions of power. If you cannot run for office yourself, please commit your support to those women who can. —Gretchen Otto, Northfield, Minn.

Trump’s Korea posturing may be dangerous

President Trump’s State of the Union speech to Congress and the American people was both dull and terrifying. Dull until about the one-hour mark, when he presented a heroic defector from North Korea, and said the following: “North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland... Experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this very dangerous position.”

The Korean defector waving his crutches was Ji Seong Ho, a recent convert to Christianity, who has argued that “believers have a duty to destroy the North Korean regime, so that North Koreans may begin to worship and find joy.” This suggests that Trump is trying to recruit his evangelical base for a crusade against North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Ignoring the fact, for a moment, that regime destruction often means killing millions of people — not a very Christian act — and the fact that the North Koreans may not like foreigners telling them what god to worship, if any, Trump’s rhetoric is very, very scary.

It’s made scarier still by this: a few days before the speech, the Washington Post reported that Trump’s nomination of Victor Cha as ambassador to South Korea had been withdrawn, after he expressed doubts about a “preventive” American strike on North Korea. Cha had also been asked by Trump aides whether he was prepared to manage the evacuation of U.S. citizens from South Korea. Cha was a hawkish member of the Bush administration; in a Post op-ed just before the State of the Union, he estimated the number of Americans at risk in a U.S. attack at around 300,000. (We have 35,000 military personnel in South Korea, 40,000 in Japan, and thousands more in Okinawa and Guam; the rest, civilians). Put another way, Trump would be risking the lives of the number of Americans equal to the population of Pittsburgh or Cincinnati.

Would Trump order a first-strike nuclear attack on North Korea? During the Cold War, the prospect of mutual assured destruction acted as a deterrent against a surprise attack by either the U.S. or Soviet Union. No comparable situation exists today.

Perhaps Trump and Kim are rational actors, employing Richard Nixon’s “Madman Theory,” in which a leader seeks to convince his adversary that he is crazy enough to launch a nuclear war. Nixon tried this dangerous game against the North Vietnamese, without success. But Nixon had an aversion to the use of nuclear weapons, which is not shared by Trump. Trump has expressed admiration for their “power,” and their capability to cause “tremendous devastation.” In June 2016, on Fox News, he said “I love war in a certain way, including with nukes, yes, including with nukes... but only if we win.”

Trump is known for lashing out when cornered or attacked. Suppose members of Trump’s family were indicted by Robert Mueller and faced jail time, or Trump himself charged with impeachable offenses, or worse. What more effective distraction than starting a war?

Trump should not be entrusted with the nuclear button. The Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war, so one approach would be a law requiring that the Joint Chiefs of Staff approve of a nuclear first strike. But perhaps the best strategy would be for the secretary of defense, James Mattis, to quietly tell the top military brass not to obey a first-strike nuclear launch order without checking with him or the national security adviser. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger did this in the last week of Nixon’s presidency, when Nixon appeared depressed and was drinking heavily. This strategy was made possible by international law put in place after the Nuremberg trials, which gave an officer the right to refuse to execute an unlawful order, punishable as a war crime.

I was just entering my teens. Hiroshima had been bombed a decade or so earlier, and I still remember the air-raid drills, diving under your desk at school. I helped a neighbor dig a backyard bomb shelter. But I’m now afraid that many younger Americans who did not experience those years are becoming blase about nuclear war: just war with bigger bombs. It is not. It is an existential threat to humanity and the planet itself. Once war starts, no one can predict its course.

A passage from John Hersey’s classic “Hiroshima,” first published in the New Yorker magazine in 1946, one year after the bombing, paints a vivid picture of the horror of nuclear warfare. “A shadow on the side of a building, of what was once a pedestrian, his body vaporized — the ghostly outline of his living form the only remnant of a human being’s existence. Horribly burned survivors, clothes gone, their skin hanging from them like rags, moaning in pain, crying for help which would never come. Many threw themselves into the Ota River to relieve the pain, only to drown, their bloated corpses floating down the river on their slow journey to the sea. Friends — dazed, bleeding, burned — could not recognize each other.”

A leader who casually threatens nuclear war has no regard for humankind and is thus unfit to wield such tremendous power. We need checks on Trump’s ability to initiate a nuclear strike, since it is highly likely Kim Jong Un has the capability to launch a counterattack that could take millions of American lives. We have seen how poorly Trump controls himself around the “tweet” button. We must take away his access to more devastating buttons before the world as we know it vaporizes in the flash of a madman’s eye. —George McLean, Kalispell