In a 227-179 vote Monday, the House passed an amendment to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) specifically forbidding any spending to carry out a nuclear weapons test. President Trump is reportedly keen to conduct such a test.
The vote passed heavily on party lines, and will set up a fight to reconcile this NDAA with the Senate version, as the Senate’s version has an amendment from Sen. Cotton (R-AK) that sets aside $10 million specially to reduce the time required to conduct the test.
The US hasn’t conducted a test in decades, but President Trump sees a quick test as leverage to try to get his way on nuclear arms limitation talks, which have been stalled on US demands that China agree to participate.
A nuclear test is likely to fuel a strong international backlash, and provoke other nations to test. It will also make it difficult for the US to criticize other nations for their own nuclear development, when they are flagrantly ignoring international norms.
The ONLY time democrats oppose war or anything related to war, is when a republican is in office. Same with Code Pink. Thankfully libertarians are principled regardless of who is in office.
That’s wonderful news. And how many real libertarians are there in Congress? And I’m not talking the fake “Tea Party” libertarians, who only want to lower taxes on the rich. 3? Less than that?
Slamming the Democrats too, when it’s a bootlicking toady named Senator Cotton who wants to set aside millions of dollars more to *accelerate* such a test. That part wasn’t worth mentioning?
There’s one partisan Libertarian (Justin Amash of Michigan) in Congress. Whether he’s a “real libertarian” is a matter of opinion. The only other one who’s really even close would be Tom Massie of Kentucky.
Interestingly, Tom Cotton has no Democratic opponent for re-election this November. He’s in a two-way race with the Libertarian nominee, an African-American prison chaplain by the name of Ricky Dale Harrington.
I wouldn’t call myself Code Pink’s biggest fan, but it’s not nice to lie about them. They conducted protests against Obama’s wars and even interrupted him personally with protests at his speeches. They’re anti-war regardless of who’s in office.
You can say the same about republicans when a democrat is in office.
As shown in this article, the United States has recently indicated that it is in favour of a “flexible first use policy” when it comes to nuclear weapons:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-growing-threat-of-nuclear-war-with.html
It would seem that Washington has completely forgotten history and that fact that there are no winners in a nuclear exchange of any size.