Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Obama pushes START fecklessly and recklessly.

***There are manifold flaws in this. Obama will reduce US nuclear weapons without verifying that the Russians are doing the same. He will not test weapons snd so the (reduced) stockpile will not reliably work if every called on...and our adversaries know it. The Russians are not the only nuclear adversaries we have to worry about: Iran and rogue states, largely in the Islamic world are more worrisome than Russia. Russia can, at least, be deterred by mutual destruction; Twelvers in Iran are not deterred by any such considerations and only total annihilation might give them pause.
Conjoin this with an unwillingness to develop the anti-missile systems already started, and there is a recipe for American catastrophe. ***

The Left Pushes START with Blinders On

As he did with Obamacare, the President is aiming to pass his most important foreign policy goal, the New START treaty with Russia, at any cost necessary. In this case, the cost of passage is the security of the American people and the sovereignty of the American government.

In April, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the treaty, which now requires Senate ratification. To pass, the treaty needs support from a two-thirds majority. And The Heritage Foundation has fought from the beginning of the debate to ensure lawmakers have the facts about how bad New START really is.

Congressional conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) have come out strongly against the treaty, stating that it is a throw-back to Cold War-era foreign policy, where America's only enemy was the Soviet government. The treaty requires that America reduce its nuclear deterrent, without any verification that the Russians are keeping up their end of the bargain.

In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Examiner, Heritage's James Carafano, a leading foreign policy expert, notes:

A deliberately self-weakened United States will exert little influence on the nuclear inventories and programs of other nations...Rather, potential competitors will feel emboldened. They'll step up their programs. Allies will feel increasingly insecure and take matters more into their own hands.

Obama has told Senate conservatives that the new treaty will not weaken the American strategic position, and has promised increased funding ($100 billion over the next 10 years) for strategic systems. But we've seen a number of promises go stale under the President's watch. And Senators should remember that as they contemplate signing away our national security.

— Bethany Murphy

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