As it turns out, Donald Trump's "secret" and "foolproof" plan to destroy the Islamic State entails asking for help from the generals he often denigrates.

The same generals who don't know as much about ISIS as Trump claims to know. The generals who ostensibly have been "reduced to rubble" by the Obama Administration's refusal to follow their advice. The generals who "don't know much because they're not winning." The same generals he now says he'd fire if he didn't like the plan they are required to submit within 30 days of President Trump assuming office.

That was the head-scratching and worrisome takeaway from the Commander-In-Chief Forum Wednesday night, when Trump went all Dr. Strangelove again. The only new piece is that he'd "get different generals" if the current brass didn't deliver an ISIS eradication plan he liked, but nobody knew that he'd consult them at all until he unveiled his 30-day challenge the night before in Greenville.

Until then, he only spoke occasionally about his secret plan, and it was clear that nuance and secrecy were not crucial elements.

In fact, the obtuse strategies he's revealed are like something out of a Mad Libs game: He said, in no particular order, that he would pauperize ISIS by "bombing the hell out of the oil fields," take their oil, invite Exxon to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, shut down their internet access, kill families of jahidis, sanction torture, send in massive amounts of troops, or, on second thought, not send in any troops at all.

He has also said - more than once -- that he wouldn't rule out nuclear weapons, because "we need unpredictability."

The image of a squinty autocrat playing with toy soldiers on a giant diorama in his rec room now haunts the national conscience.

Trump tends to overlook the complexities of most issues, but the challenges of the Middle East seem to elude him. Those same generals could tell him that superior firepower doesn't work as well as he wants to believe, that the Obama administration is already pushing Arab allies to carry the ground war, and that invasion and nation-building is another open-ended quagmire that would only fuel the chaos that ISIS thrives on.

Accordingly, Trump's performance aboard the USS Intrepid was surreal, awkward, and largely incoherent. He lied about his opposition to the Iraq War (yet again), he was reminded about his opposition to women in the military as recently as 2013, he repeated his cloying affection for Vladimir Putin, and he claimed that he learned during his intelligence briefings the officers were "not happy" with current leadership, which he discerned from -- he really said this -- the body language of the men briefing him.

If you wonder why former CIA director Michael Hayden -- a George W. Bush appointee -- predicts that a Trump presidency would trigger "civil military crisis," there's a clue.

True, Hillary Clinton wasn't exactly letter-perfect. She vowed that "we are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again" and "we're not putting ground troops into Syria." Nobody thought to remind her that we already have 5,000 troops in Iraq and 300 special ops forces in Syria.

But Trump has elevated pride in ignorance and incuriosity to an art form

Let's remember why this is important: The U.S. has roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons, and 2,000 of them are deployed, which means they can be launched within 15 minutes on the authority of one person. So the notion of Trump being in possession of the nuclear football should cause sleepless nights for all of humanity.

It also gives comfort to enemies who are eager to trigger Armageddon. If ISIS has its own secret plan, it probably involves infiltrating swing states and stuffing ballot boxes.

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