Where Is the Switch?

While we’re discussing Presidential races and the truly-important issues like whether Hillary Clinton can tell children’s poetry from sniper fire, whether Barack Obama is secretly a black supremacist, and whether John McCain is too old to be President, I wonder if we could take a break to discuss the fact that the next President will be in control of the USA’s nuclear arsenal. We don’t want someone who is asleep at the switch.

To be honest, I’d like to know that we will have some sort of control over where that switch is.

In case you missed the story, the US apparently shipped nuclear triggers to Taiwan back in 2006. This follows the news that a B-52 flew cross-country carrying live nuclear missiles, and the flight crew didn’t know, back in September.

The problem?

We’re not watching our weapons. I used to work in banking, certainly a lower-risk situation than storing nuclear weapons. When I transferred money from one branch to another, we counted the money, sealed it, and gave it to the courier, who knew exactly what he was carrying. On the other end, the receiving branch would open it, verify it, and take possession. Why are we taking better care of cash than nuclear weapons?

Of course, don’t worry, we’re told. There’s no security risk. After all, the live missiles were in Air Force custody the whole time, and the triggers could only be used for a specific model of nuclear device.

The real problem, of course, is what else don’t we know? What else have we misplaced? Would we know if we had misplaced something else? Might there be something missing now, and we don’t know it? The nuclear triggers sent to Taiwan were missing for over a year, and apparently no one was noticing.

We have a massive arsenal of weapons capable of dealing a whole lot of destruction over the earth. I happen to be of the opinion that it’s important that we know where every single one is, at all times. Each component, each weapon, each everything. Apparently, that isn’t the case right now.

To be honest with you, I’d like to hear Presidential candidates talk about that.

It might not get the fun sound bites, but it would have the advantage of being an important issue that should interest voters.

I’d like to hear serious discussion of this, rather than endless replaying of Jeremiah Wright clips or Rush Limbaugh’s ego trips over “Operation Chaos.” Of course, there is a problem doing so …

For one thing, the handling of nuclear arms is generally not a transparent process. We don’t get to know how that’s done, and so truly meaningful conversation is difficult.

Also, we clearly have military errors. Thanks to idiotic stunts like the “General Betray-Us” ad, we have galvanized two camps — one attacks the military and is made up of Code Pink, MoveOn, and Cindy Sheehan; the other loves the military and won’t dare question anything for fear of being lumped with the other.

Let’s be honest, though … a B-52 was supposed to be carrying disarmed missiles, and had live ones. Taiwan was supposed to receive helicopter batteries and got nuclear triggers. Someone screwed up, and at least some of those people were military.

I view this as more important than illegal immigration, frankly. We’re told that sleeper cells might come across the Southern border … but losing control of our nuclear arsenal is a much-greater threat. It’s not as fun to discuss, and it might require some embarrassment and real soul-searching on the part of Presidential candidates.

And why, after all, would we want to discuss something of vital national security concern when we could, instead, just call each other names and play some incendiary remarks over and over again?  To a public that thinks that “in-depth news coverage” means having people yell at each other on TV, maybe it’s too much to ask that this kind of issue be explored.

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