U.S. Defense Policy, Not Trump, Needs Sanity Check, Says Physicians for Civil Defense

TUCSON, Ariz., Jan 10, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Trump's Twitter response to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's nuclear button taunt has a self-selected committee of psychiatrists led by Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., declaring a state of emergency that "could be the end of humankind," notes Physicians for Civil Defense.

"In reality, North Korea has been threatening the U.S. with nuclear attack and steadily building capacity for 20 years," states PCD president Jane M. Orient, M.D.

"President Trump simply articulated, without diplomatic niceties, the official long-standing U.S. policy of deterrence and retaliation only," she explained. "This strategy, which has the appropriate acronym MAD, is called Mutual Assured Destruction."

"This was Robert McNamara's idea, not President Trump's. Every President after John F. Kennedy has followed it, except for Ronald Reagan."

"And the destruction was never mutual," Dr. Orient added. "Russia, China, Switzerland, and others probably including North Korea, have defenses to protect their citizens. Only the U.S. declines even to disseminate the basic information that could avert millions of preventable deaths."

In 1966, Phyllis Schlafly pointed out that the U.S. had renounced the nuclear Nike X antimissile system, thanks to "Secretary McNamara's clique of gravediggers." The Soviets, however, built (and still have) a nuclear antimissile defense for Moscow.

Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with a centerpiece called Brilliant Pebbles, space-based kinetic-energy kill vehicles for destroying ballistic missiles in their boost phase. But SDI was mostly gutted—only a limited ground-based missile defense system remains," Dr Orient states.

"Physician organizations, such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, including many psychiatrists, have been leaders of the opposition to U.S. defenses. Instead they push for what amounts to unilateral disarmament," Dr. Orient pointed out. "Possibly some want President Trump removed from office to prevent a revival of Reagan's plan to 'make nuclear weapons obsolete.'"

"It is past time for Americans to question the MAD policy of non-defense," Dr. Orient concludes. "We clearly see a deranged national ruler who is actually firing missiles over Japan—from Pyongyang. What do the psychiatrists suggest?"

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, [email protected]

SOURCE Physicians for Civil Defense

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