Just Say No to START Treaty

While we focus our scrutiny on President Obama's domestic agenda nightmare, we'd best not take our eyes off another big ball: Obama's frantic effort to get the New START ratified during the Senate's lame-duck session.

As usual, Obama is engaged in a full-court press, pretending that there is some urgency to formalizing this ill-conceived nuclear arms treaty with Russia, when the sole urgency is the upcoming change in the Senate's partisan composition.

To his credit, Republican Sen. Jon Kyl announced his opposition to a vote on the treaty this year, which sent Obama into overdrive. He dispatched Defense Secretary Robert Gates to buy off Kyl's opposition with an illusory promise to spend an extra $4 billion on nuclear programs.

Kyl was wise to see through this sham, understanding that Obama has no authority to fulfill much of this spending commitment, which would occur in later years after his term or terms expire. Plus, we've now seen ample evidence of Obama's cynical approach to dealmaking with his confession that he knew there were no real shovel-ready jobs at the time he promised otherwise in order to push through his stimulus bill. Add to that Rahm Emanuel's recent admission that the administration hasn't been sincere in its overtures toward bipartisanship. This is a confirmed group of Alinskyites who will say and do whatever they have to do to get their agenda implemented.

For Obama, every policy pursuit is an emergency as he frantically presses forward in his singular quest to fundamentally change America — a goal the American electorate resoundingly rejected Nov. 2. There's never time to thoroughly and adequately examine a proposal because the sky is always falling. That's why we end up with such outrageous consequences as the administration's arbitrary issuance of 111 waivers from Obamacare to employers, insurers and unions and the reported acceleration of hospital job losses because of Obamacare, to name just two. But Obama well understood that he could never get the bill passed if people truly understood what was in it.

With START, we've got déjà vu all over again. Obama apparently thought he could slip this through under the radar, before Sen. Kyl wisely decided to stand athwart his madness. So Obama summoned all kinds of dignitaries to the White House for a Thursday meeting in a flagrant PR move to gin up support for his plan. Attending were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Sen. Richard Lugar, former Sen. Sam Nunn and former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, James Baker and Henry Kissinger.

At least Obama's guests did not wear white lab coats in the manner of his rent-a-doc photo op preceding his final push for Obamacare.

No matter how many heavyweights Obama trots out to support his plan, it will still be contrary to the national security interests of the United States. As critics of the treaty have noted, it would place severe restrictions on U.S. missile defense, and its verification measures are wholly inadequate. It would leave Russia with a decided advantage in tactical nuclear weapons with nothing accruing to our benefit in return, and it ultimately seeks to disarm the United States at a time when rogue nations and terrorists are getting ever closer to acquiring nuclear capabilities, not to mention the dangerous regimes that already possess them.

In addition, Obama's meaningless promise to add $4 billion more toward our nuclear arsenal is not only unenforceable; it would come at the expense of other important defense expenditures. Plus, as The Heritage Foundation has noted, "the billions in 'modernization' are actually being dumped into federal labs and universities without spelling out a clear military mission for their activities."

This is all about Obama's effort to take America down to size and to show the rest of the world that we are no longer the big bad evil aggressor we were before he took office. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs let the cat out of the bag when he admitted that passing this treaty is crucial to international relations.

Obama is already on record lamenting that we are still a military superpower, is Mirandizing terrorists on the battlefield, has changed the war on terror to "overseas contingency operations," refuses to consider Islamic radicalism to be the driving force behind many acts of domestic terrorism, and is insisting on trying terrorists in civilian courts (already with disastrous results).

We mustn't close our eyes on this one, folks.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His new book, "Crimes Against Liberty," was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction for its first two weeks. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his website at www.DavidLimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.