from the Congress Action newsletter

Save The World

by: Kim Weissman
September 10, 2000


The whole world — or at least the whole world's media — is in a swoon.

"When Heads of State and/or Government of the Member States of the United Nations converge on the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York to participate in the Millennium Summit from 6 to 8 September 2000, it is likely to be the largest single gathering of Heads of State and/or Government ever held in the world. The Summit will be a historic opportunity to agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of, and challenges facing the United Nations in the new century."

That is from the United Nation's announcement of it's "historic" Millennium Summit that convened this week. According to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the megalomaniacal goal of the Millennium Summit is nothing less than "to chart a course for humanity at the start of a new millennium." It's no wonder that the socialist left is beside itself with joy with this Millennium Summit — what could be better, from their perspective, than to have the whole of humanity directed by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the United Nations, in total disregard for national sovereignty, national laws and constitutions, or the will of the free people those bureaucrats propose to command.

According to an editorial published in the Washington Post (aptly titled "The New Left Takes on the World"), written by the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and the Chancellor of Germany, the task before the illustrious gathering is to establish "the right framework to build a global order based on equal worth and social fairness." Those writers claim to be "…greatly strengthened by the new progressive [the current politically correct and less emotionally charged name for what used to be called "socialist"] network that has come into being. … And as we meet tonight in New York at the invitation of President Clinton to develop our ideas further, it is important to acknowledge the role he has played in fostering the new progressive dialogue. Few presidents have so effortlessly bridged the Atlantic." That's our president, all right. Right at home amongst the global socialists of the "new left".

The London Times reports that the grandiose plans are for the Millennium Summit to "…conclude with a formal declaration calling for the eradication of poverty, the promotion of education, the spread of democracy and renewed combat against the Aids virus." U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hopes to reinvigorate, in the face of notable recent failures, the "Annan Doctrine", which holds that the "international community" must intervene in internal civil and ethnic conflicts, disregarding borders and national sovereignty, whenever the United Nations believes that human rights are being abused.

That intervention, it should be pointed out — since the U.N. is not about to get its own military force any time soon, despite Bill Clinton's advocacy of precisely that — will be implemented primarily by American military men and women wearing American military uniforms, and American military assets, all paid for by American taxpayers. The Secretary-General's military plan, put forth at the Summit, avoids the specter of an independent United Nations army loyal only to the U.N. by calling for the development of military units of approximately 5000 troops each, spread around the world within existing national armies, that would be available for deployment to the world's hot spots at a moment's notice. These "ready brigades" would be trained for their duties at a training center in Britain that Prime Minister Blair has already agreed to establish. But unless these "ready brigades" are detailed to fight relatively close to home, the long-range overseas deployment and logistical support, not to mention carrier based air support (essential in any warfighting endeavor) of significant combat ready forces, is beyond the capabilities of all but a very few nations — among them, Britain and the United States.

The protection of human rights is indeed a lofty goal, and the Millennium Summit gave the United Nations the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to those high-sounding principles this very week at their own summit. Communist China, never a friend to religion, has begun a major crackdown on religious freedom in China. The Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, released by the U.S. State Department this week, said that "During…the last 6 months of 1999, the [Chinese] Government's respect for religious freedom deteriorated markedly." And as reported in this newsletter last week, China's coercive "one-child" population control policy has resulted, beyond it's routine abuse and corruption, in the deliberate murder of a newborn infant by government officials enforcing the policy.

Did the United Nations use the imprimatur of this "historic" gathering of world and religious leaders to condemn China's pervasive violations of human rights, suppression of religious freedom, and the murder of that innocent child? It did not.

Did the World Peace Conference of religious leaders that preceded this "historic" Summit include the Dalai Lama of Tibet, in defiance of China's demand that he be excluded? It did not.

United Nations officials, following instructions from China, asked the Dalai Lama not to show up at their summits. So in reality, all those high sounding words emanating from the pusillanimous potentates at the United Nations this week amounted to nothing more than useless hot air from a bunch of overly self-impressed global bureaucrats. But then again, communist China is a member of the United Nations Security Council with a three million man army and nuclear missiles, not easily overawed by Kofi Annan's pontificating. And if China ever tries to carry out its veiled threats to invade Taiwan, it will be the aircraft carrier battle groups of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet — not Kofi Annan's blue-helmeted peacekeepers with sidearms — that confronts the Chinese military in the Taiwan Straight; just as it was American military power — not anguished diplomatic hand-wringing from U.N. headquarters — that kicked Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards out of Kuwait.

So, the world being such as it is, and the thuggish and despotic leaders around the world being far more impressed by, and being far more likely to restrain their depredations because of, the potential of military force; and with the core and backbone of that military force being fielded by the United States, all of the fancy rhetoric spewing forth from the United Nations this week should prompt rational policymakers and reasonable people to inquire about the current status of the American military.

Presidential candidates Bush and Gore have both addressed that issue. Gore, with the concurrence of the political generals at the Pentagon, has claimed that American military capabilities and readiness have not suffered in the least under his and Bill's administration. More accurately, Gore has taken the contradictory position that there was never anything at all wrong with our military capabilities or readiness, and that it has already been fixed. That would be the military equivalent of Bill Clinton's infamous campaign fundraising dodge — we didn't do anything at all wrong, and we promise never to do it again. George Bush, on the other hand, with the concurrence of many lower ranking military officers and enlisted personnel, has claimed that American military capabilities and readiness have suffered grievously under the command of Bill "loathe-the-military" Clinton.

Where does the truth lie? It is probably true, as anti-military leftists claim, that America spends more on its military than our next several potential competitors combined. It is also true that, barring a land war on the Asian continent, no other military force in the world can even come close to matching America's conventional military capabilities. And our nuclear capability — assuming that we ever had the will to use it — is also unmatched, even by the Chinese, despite their recent major advances made possible by technology transfers courtesy of the Clinton/Gore administration.

It is also true, however, that, as Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness writes, "The true crisis in the military is the credibility gap between Pentagon leaders and the troops they lead." There is "significant dissatisfaction with declining standards of merit and excellence, overly taxing deployments, and missions that seem predicated on some goal other than preserving the national security of the United States." According to a study quoted by the Center for Security Policy, "the nation faces nothing less than a 'defense train wreck.'"

The House Armed Services Committee found that in the years of the Clinton/Gore administration, the Navy has been cut by 36%, the Army and Air Force by 45%, and the Marine Corps has been cut by 12%. And while the operating budgets and force structure of the United States military has been slashed, our military's operational commitments have increased by 300%. Substantial overseas deployments of our military forces, in support of Bill Clinton's and Kofi Annan's risky international schemes, are greater now than at the height of the Cold War.

This problem will only grow worse if Al Gore is elected president, because the current drift of our military missions towards more non-military tasks, such as spending military budgets on the environment, will only increase. As will the social experimentation and feminization of those forces. U.N. directed international peacekeeping and "democracy building", if Secretary-General Kofi Annan achieves his dream of upgrading the U.N.'s military capabilities, will expand. And it will be the U.S. military that will be called upon to implement the goals of the Millenium Summit — eradicate poverty, promote education, spread democracy, and wage "combat" against AIDS.

Then there are the other schemes occasionally dreamt up by the big thinkers at the U.N. — a global tax on international financial transactions that would feed hundreds of billions of dollars every year into U.N. coffers; global gun control to disarm every civilian in the world, in utter disregard for national laws or constitutions; the advancement of radical population control in total disregard for the religious or moral opposition of vast numbers of people; and radical environmental policies in the absence of any scientific consensus. In short, the world-wide advancement of left-wing extremism and socialism by unelected bureaucrats who are accountable to no one. It's no wonder the leftists in this country love the prospect of a newly reinvigorated United Nations.

[Emphasis added by TYSK]

~~~o~~~

FOR MORE INFORMATION…

U.N. Millennium website:
http://www.un.org/millennium/index.html

Annual Report on International Religious Freedom:
http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/irf_rpt/irf_toc.html

Military readiness:

Center for Military Readiness:
http://www.cmrlink.org/

Center for Security Policy:
http://www.security-policy.org/


The above article is the property of Kim Weissman, and is reprinted with his permission.
Contact him prior to reproducing. 

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11 sep 2000