National Issues Candidates Should Address — May 2000

The one issue where the word risky is appropriately applied is the Clinton-Gore plan to keep the American people totally vulnerable to a nuclear missile attack. This policy is truly risky in a world where 20 unstable, unpredictable, anti-American dictators possess or are developing weapons of mass destruction.

Russia still has almost 6,000 nuclear warheads deployed on strategic ballistic missiles, has 10 of its most sophisticated ICBMs on “combat alert,” continues to modernize its arsenal, and exports missile technologies to countries hostile to the United States. China has 300 nuclear warheads already deployed on ballistic missiles and has 13 ICBMs targeted on U.S. cities.

The list of Third World countries developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, plus ballistic missile delivery systems, includes North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The risk comes not only from intentional use but from accidental or unauthorized launches.

Nevertheless, the official policy of the Clinton Administration, which candidate Gore fully supports, is to keep Americans like sitting ducks in the face of this danger. To achieve this incredible goal, Clinton is using all his executive-branch powers, and his friends in the media are cooperating to downplay the danger.

On March 18, 1999, the House passed the National Missile Defense Act, H.R.4, by 317-105, stating that “it is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense,” and the Senate passed it unanimously on May 18. However, when Clinton signed it on July 22, making it Public Law No. 106-38, he arrogantly said it is not the intention of his Administration to deploy a missile defense system anytime in the near future.

The bipartisan Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, the Donald Rumsfeld Commission, unanimously reported in 1998 that the U.S would have “little or no warning before operational deployment” by rogue states of missiles capable of reaching the United States. North Korea, Iran or Iraq “would be able to inflict major damage on the U.S. within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability,” and we “might not be aware that such a decision had been made.”

The Cox Report released May 25, 1999 exposed China’s success in obtaining U.S. military technology through espionage, transfers of technology as part of all commercial transactions, and illegal political donations especially to Clinton’s reelection. This strategy gave China’s nuclear program a ten-year leap.

It’s been 17 years since President Ronald Reagan went on national television and showed the urgent need for a system to shoot down enemy missiles coming at us. He repudiated the dangerous, potentially fatal policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and asked the ultimate question: “Isn’t it better to save lives rather than avenge them?”

To protect American lives and troops, as well as our allies, we need a layered, comprehensive missile defense, starting with sea-based anti-missile capabilities. It makes good sense to deploy a sea-based system first because, being mobile, it could be dispatched to any trouble spots anywhere in the world and some of the infrastructure already exists aboard Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

The arguments against deploying an anti-missile defense system don’t pass the straight-face test. It doesn’t work? Well, with the American can-do spirit, we can make it work. It costs too much? It would cost only one percent of the defense budget.

It violates the old 1972 ABM Treaty that forbids us to build an anti-ballistic-missile system? That treaty is defunct because the country we signed it with, the old Soviet Union, doesn’t exist any more, which means that under international law the treaty no longer exists, either. The Soviets consistently violated the treaty anyway, particularly with their construction of a giant illegal radar.

The Clinton Administration tried to breathe new life into the old ABM Treaty by signing new agreements with the Russians in New York on September 26, 1997. These agreements make a bad treaty worse by replacing the Soviet Union with four new treaty partners: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and also by extending its restrictions to defenses against short-range missiles.

The Clinton Administration has been engaged in what the New York Times called “intensive meetings” with the Russians to work out a deal to extend the ABM Treaty and “couple” it with the Start III Treaty.

The Senate hasn’t, and won’t, ratify these agreements, but Clinton is trying to implement them anyway. The Senate should declare the 1972 Treaty null and void and repudiate the outrageous notion that any other country can exercise a veto over U.S. ability to defend our own people.

If Republicans are serious about winning the Presidency and Congress this year, it’s time to orchestrate a full-scale attack on the risky Clinton-Gore plan to keep Americans undefended against nuclear attack from Communist or other rogue dictators. Ask all this year’s candidates what they will do to build an anti-missile defense system immediately.

Don’t Kowtow to Communist China 
President Clinton’s Chinese benefactors and the multinational importers are demanding that he bully Congress into continuing China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status, already renamed Normal Trade Relations (NTR). Now the plan is to grease China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) by making this favorable treatment permanent (PNTR).

It’s not necessary for Congress to vote at all until after the WTO admits China, and China’s WTO accession agreement with the other WTO members hasn’t yet been written. But Clinton’s Beijing and corporate backers are pressing for an immediate vote in order to assure China’s WTO membership and eliminate Congress’s controversial annual review. If this happens, it will be a big feather in the cap of former China lobbyist Sandy Berger who had been demanding that Republicans lock arms with Clinton in the “bipartisan center.”

PNTR would mean that Congress would henceforth be denied the opportunity to vote up or down on trade relations with China. PNTR would forfeit Congress’s constitutional power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

Congress has been renewing Most Favored Nation status for China for two decades, and every year we are promised that our good faith actions will make China more democratic, more free-market oriented, and more humanitarian toward its own people. We gave China 18 years of MFN to prove this theory and China flunked the test.

The advocates of PNTR for China argue that trade with China is a vital factor in our prosperous economy. That’s only true for the multinationals that are importing $83 billion a year of China’s products, many of them made with slave labor. But those who want to export U.S. products, including farmers, manufacturers and American workers, are losing out big time. They can sell only $13 billion of U.S. goods to China because China won’t reciprocate and open its markets to us.

The Clintonian response to this inequity is to predict that these problems will disappear after China joins the WTO. Those who spout such fairy tales can probably be counted among those whose pockets are being lined by the Chinese through political contributions, lobbyists’ or consultants’ fees, or taxpayer-guaranteed investments.

With China’s long history of thumbing its nose at trade agreements, it is unlikely that China will obey WTO rules. It’s just as unlikely that the WTO will make any rulings in favor of the United States since it has already ruled against us repeatedly.

As to why we should have normal trade with Communist China but not with Communist Cuba, we are told another fairy tale that China is progressing toward capitalism and an entrepreneurial system. In truth, China is ruled by a government-underworld alliance in which sales of weapons and human beings, theft of Western intellectual property, drug trafficking, smuggling and prostitution have merged with legitimate enterprises, all owned by former Communists and their princelings who have grabbed control of former state-owned industries under the guise of privatization.

As Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) points out, China subsidizes its industries massively through its state-directed banking system, which is not open to foreign competition or inspection. It is ridiculous to allow China-subsidized industries a free ride to compete in America.

Meanwhile, the $70 billion a year ($83 billion minus $13 billion) profit which China rakes in through its imbalance of trade is going right into China’s military-industrial complex. Not only does China have 13 intercontinental ballistic missiles targeted on U.S. cities, but Beijing is selling weapons to our enemies all the way from AK-47 assault rifles to Los Angeles street gangs to helping Libya build long-range missiles.

China has more people in jail today than 11 years ago when the students were massacred in Tiananmen Square, and religious persecution continues to be a world scandal. Even the U.S. State Department’s 1999 Human Rights Report on China says: “Elements of the security apparatus employed torture and other degrading treatment in dealing with detainees and prisoners. . . . officials used electric shocks, prolonged periods of solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse against detained men and women.”

Voting for PNTR would abandon forever our ability to checkmate China’s inhumanity, thefts and belligerent behavior. No longer would we be able to challenge China’s record on human rights abuses, religious persecution, forced abortions, espionage, illegal campaign contributions, trade imbalances, threats against Taiwan, potential threats against the Panama Canal, or other challenges to our national security.

Clinking glasses with Communists two years ago, Clinton signaled to the world whose side he is on. If Congress awards Permanent Normal Trade status to an undeserving China, Congress will give the Beijing Communists a blank check to rule, trade, and threaten as they please.

Whose side is Congress on? The vote on MFN for China is a great deal more important to truth, justice, morality and the rule of law than last year’s vote on impeachment.

More Questions For Candidates 
The problem isn’t just that the media try to tell us what to think. Media bias is even more deceptive because the media tell us what to think about. Some of the biggest questions that are meaningful to the American people, and that go to the heart of our culture and the survival of our country, are never asked by reporters or discussed by candidates. Here are some issues on which Americans would like to see the differences between the candidates defined.

Defending America: What are you going to do, specifically, to remedy Americans’ unnecessary vulnerability to a nuclear missile attack? We’re tired of promises and delays; we want presidential and congressional candidates to address this issue directly and forcefully with a specific plan to build an anti-missile defense system to protect American lives.

Clinton’s Wars: Do you approve of Clinton’s 78 days of bombing Yugoslavia? Are you going to let Clinton get by with initiating a war without Congress’s approval and in violation of the War Powers Act? What will you do to keep the tragedy from happening again?

How do you propose to deal with Clinton’s two disastrous foreign policy failures, Kosovo and Bosnia, and bring home our troops? Clinton has been calling up U.S. reserves to keep a permanent force there and impose a multiethnic regime against the wishes of the locals, but the Europeans (who are reducing their troop commitment) are demanding that we send in more troops to quell the continuing violence.

Will you stop sending U.S. troops to play global cops and global social workers in phony peacekeeping expeditions all over the world?

Communist China: What are you going to do about China’s sabre rattling about Taiwan, long-term leases at each end of the Panama Canal, and building up its nuclear missile force with secrets stolen from the United States? Do you support China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with permanent “most favored nation” trade status — without any quid pro quo except more promises like those China has been breaking for two decades?

How do you propose to address the fact that Communist China is pocketing at least $5 billion a month (by selling us $6 billion of their goods and buying only $1 billion in U.S. goods), and using this unprecedented profit to build up its military-industrial complex? Are you going to let trade trump national security?

Clinton’s Treaties: Are you in favor of continued U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization after those foreign bureaucrats impudently ordered the United States to change our tax laws? Where do you stand on the issue of whether the United States has the sovereign power to determine our own tax laws, or have we ceded that right to a foreign organization?

Will you oppose all Clinton’s treaties that restrict American sovereignty including the Global Warming (Kyoto) Treaty, the Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the ABM Extension Treaty, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Convention on Discrimination Against Women?

Health Care: When are you going to eliminate the gross discrimination in the tax law which allows corporations, but not individuals, to deduct expenses for medical insurance? We want to hear candidates address this persistent inequity (a major reason why 40 million Americans lack health insurance) instead of picking around the edges with new federal regulations.

Clinton’s Abuse of Executive Branch Powers: What are you going to do to expunge Clinton’s blizzard of overreaching Executive Orders? And to reverse his Administration’s surveillance of law-abiding citizen through electronic profiling of our financial, medical, employment, travel, telephone, and school records? And to stop the militarization of law enforcement? And to reverse his Presidential Decision Directive to assign U.S. troops to serve under foreign command? And to stop assigning U.S. troops to wear United Nations uniforms? And to prohibit federal gunmen from invading private homes, as in the raids at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Miami?

Education: What are you going to do to get the Federal Government out of the public school classroom through Goals 2000, School-to-Work, national standards, national testing, and other federal regulations? The American people know that education is our number-one challenge, but why don’t you level with them and truthfully say that federal money is not the solution?

Imperial Judiciary: How will you work to solve the problem of the activist federal judiciary, which has breached the separation of powers and unconstitutionally assumed legislative powers? Will you support the use of Congress’s constitutional powers to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts?

Questions on Military Policy 
The plans of the next President and Congress to address the dramatic falloff in military recruitment, and the decline in military morale and readiness due to controversial personnel policies, should be important topics for national debate. Are they going to continue or reverse the eight years of Clinton’s feminization and other social experimentation in the U.S. Armed Services? Somehow, these matters haven’t made it onto the media’s agenda.

To fill this gap in public knowledge, the Center for Military Readiness (CMR, P.O. Box P.O. Box 51600, Livonia, MI 48151, www.cmrlink.org), an independent public policy organization specializing in military personnel issues, has developed some excellent questions that should be answered by all candidates for federal office.

Do you favor or oppose coed basic training? Will you act to terminate it in the Army, Navy and Air Force and follow the successful example of the Marines who still use sex-separate basic training?

Will you oppose the assignment of female sailors to submarines?

Do you favor or oppose permitting open homosexuality in the military? Will you exercise the option to restore the question regarding homosexuality that used to be on recruiting forms, an option that is fully authorized under the 1993 statute that continues to ban homosexuals from the military?

Will you replace Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell regulation with Defense Department instructions that faithfully reflect the exclusion law passed by Congress in 1993? Contrary to popular belief, the 1993 exclusion law, which was passed by bipartisan majorities, remains the law of the land and Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was never enacted by Congress.

Do you favor or oppose assigning women to currently-closed positions that operate in close coordination with land combat units and involve direct engagement with the enemy with a high risk of capture; i.e., multiple launch rocket (field artillery) systems (MLRS) and special operations helicopters?

In view of negative consequences already observed from the recent assignment of women in or near previously closed combat units on land, sea and in the air, will you act to restore women’s combat exemptions to improve military efficiency and readiness?

Do you support the “New Strategic Concept” as adopted and affirmed by the previously-defensive NATO alliance, which was cited as authorization to bomb Yugoslavia without congressional approval and to conduct the air war under the direction of a NATO committee of 19 nations?

Do you agree with recent statements made by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the effect that sovereign borders should not be a barrier to the deployment of peacemaking troops between warring factions and that a standing UN force should be established for this purpose?

Will you disband the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) and similar tax-funded advisory committees that continue to promote a feminist agenda for the military such as affirmative action quotas, gender norming and careerism for women as a higher priority than military efficiency and readiness?

Will you oppose any reinstatement of the military draft?

Will you maintain the enforcement procedures and penalties for adultery and sexual misconduct in the military?

These are national issues of tremendous importance. Let’s hear answers from our presidential and congressional candidates before the November election.