Time for the 25th Amendment?

Professor Peter Kuznick thinks so.

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of numerous books and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States.

Trump’s statement this morning on top of his insane, expletive-laden threat on Sunday, shows a president who is completely unhinged and capable of anything.

Threatening to destroy a proud and ancient civilization is not only a war crime it is the ravings of a tyrant. We have already heard Trump threaten to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. He is increasingly desperate and knows on some level that this war is going terribly for the U.S. It is also going terribly for the Iranian people. There are no winners, except maybe for Israel, which has been trying to draw the U.S. into war with Iran for decades.

No other president was dumb enough to take the Israeli bait before Trump, who is egged on to using brute force by Steven Miller, Pete Hegseth, Rupert Murdoch, and Netanyahu himself. The U.S. is blowing up much of Iranian infrastructure, but it is not winning the war.

With regard to what may happen tonight: Trump is capable of declaring victory and walking away but he is equally capable of unleashing the worst violence we have seen in decades. How does one read the mind of a madman? A desperate madman for that matter. President Kennedy said in his brilliant commencement address at American University (where I teach) 63 years ago that “nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

But Iran didn’t put Trump in this position, he did it himself with the help of Netanyahu and his other enablers who I mentioned above. So all bets are off. Trump is capable of anything. The world is holding its collective breath and hoping that saner individuals intervene to put Trump out to pasture or that the military refuses to obey illegal and immoral orders.

Still worse there is a risk that the United States will use nuclear weapons (which I’ve been warning about this in several co-authored pieces on Al Jazeera that I wrote with Columbia Prof. Ivana Hughes, the head of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation). There are people advising him that he will go down as the greatest president in history if he has the temerity to break the nuclear taboo, the only taboo that he has not yet trampled on, and use nuclear weapons. There are also nuclear strategists who believe that a nuclear war can be won and that the U.S. can simultaneously defeat Russia, China, and North Korea if it strikes first. This is insanity and gambles with the future of life on our planet, but some see it as a great opportunity.

In the beginning, people tended to be skeptical about such arguments. Now, everyone seems to share these concerns. Impeachment is too slow a remedy, but the 25th amendment is quicker—if only some in the Trump regime would have the courage to act.