President Bush deserves an "A" from Americans for his five-nation European tour because he stood firm for the U.S. positions on missile defense, the Kyoto Protocol, capital punishment, and non-involvement in expanded military engagements. For that, he had to endure lecturing by a finger-pointing King Juan Carlos of Spain and Swedish street demonstrators shouting “Toxic Texan, Go Home."
The leftist radicals who formerly demonstrated for the Communists are now using their street skills for the green movement. Alongside of carrying Bush in effigy, they carried pictures of has-been Communists Mao Zedong and Che Guevara plus typical Communist slogans such as "For a World Without Imperialism."
The International Herald Tribune even featured an op-ed editorial insulting our President in these words: "George W. went to Europe knowing only a bit more than Christopher Columbus did when he went the other way."
The impudence of the Europeans in objecting to our decision to protect American lives against an accidental or malicious missile strike from a hostile or irrational country is exceeded only by their ingratitude for our saving them from 20th century aggressors and then subsidizing the rebuilding of their countries. We should not have to get the approval of any foreign government before building the weapons we need for our own defense.
The Kyoto controversy, which brought out most of the demonstrators, proves the folly of signing United Nations treaties that are called voluntary. Any treaty called voluntary will surely morph into Other Countries' Great Expectations, which in turn will morph into demands by foreigners abroad and leftists at home that we meet our alleged "obligations."
The 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since it merely called for voluntary efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it was signed by President George Bush I and ratified by the Senate.
Buried in the verbiage was this sentence: "The developed country parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof." Now the UN propagandists are asserting that this alleged "international law" binds the United States not only to actually do what was called "voluntary" (cut our CO2 emissions), but to do it immediately regardless of when, if ever, other countries do anything to conform to the treaty's goals.
President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol because it would require the United States to drastically cut our CO2 emissions while exempting 130 other countries. His decision is proper and is fortified by a 95-0 vote on a U.S. Senate resolution passed in 1997.
It's a fiction that the United States alone is blocking the Kyoto Protocol; it hasn't been ratified by any industrialized country. Germany just announced that it is phasing out its nuclear power plants (which provide a third of its electricity), which must mean that Germany will use energy sources that produce greenhouse gas emissions.
The American people should wake up and realize that the purpose of most UN treaties is to slow economic growth and to redistribute U.S. wealth to socialists hostile to free enterprise. The Kyoto Protocol would penalize the United States by forcing us to reduce our energy consumption and transfer our industries to countries on which the treaty imposes no restrictions, such as China, India, Mexico and Brazil.
It's a mystery why prominent Americans continue to promote the European Union; a strong EU is not in our national interest. The EU believes in free trade among the countries admitted to the EU, but is highly protectionist when it comes to dealing with the United States, and the EU has 15 votes to our one in the World Trade Organization.
The current EU president, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, is blunt about this: he openly says that a strong Europe is needed to balance U.S. world domination. EU's antitrust authorities are using their power to protect EU industries against competition from U.S. companies.
While Bush was traveling in Europe, Macedonia officially asked NATO to disarm the vicious and violent Albanian guerrillas. Remember, just a couple of years ago these Albanians were the "victims" whom the Europeans asked us to protect from the Serbs.
Fortunately, the Bush Administration said No to participating in this widening conflict. Hopefully, we've learned the lesson that it's not America's duty to try to solve all European problems.
Bush's last stop was to meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Another lesson Americans should learn is that other countries sign treaties and then ignore them.
The Chemical Weapons Convention we ratified in 1997 committed Russia to destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons. Russia is now five years behind schedule, and is demanding $8 billion to comply.
