No excuses: now you know "what Reagan would do" on LOST

Today's political fallout; don't forget the House

By Wes Vernon

(See also "What's the rush?," Oct. 1, & "The World Dictatorship Treaty," Oct 8)

The problem here is the Law of the Sea Treaty, translated by this column as the World Dictatorship Treaty in everyday street language. If that is a little over the top for you, try LOST — an appropriate acronym and a word well understood by the public at large. Then you'd have a follow-up — i.e., if the treaty is ratified, we Americans will have LOST the right to security, safety, American constitutional rights, our economy (jobs), and our sovereignty.

LOST is supposedly zipping through the Senate on a "fast track," with sponsors saying not to worry about President Reagan's refusal to sign on back in 1982. His problems with the document have now been "fixed."

The Gipper would still say no

Senators are feeling the heat from the Bush administration and other treaty advocates on this one. Many lawmakers in fact are walking around in a fog on this issue (see last week) and depend on "experts" to help them make up their minds. All too often, alleged "experts" are only too eager to draft position papers for Senate committees, recommending the "enlightened" view that America must surrender its sovereignty so that everyone in the world will love us.

However, Republican senators no longer have an excuse for following that easy path supposedly to "repair the damage to our image."

In The Wall Street Journal of Oct. 8, two top officials of the Reagan administration told the world that President Reagan's objections to LOST had not been fixed in any way whatsoever.

William P. Clark and Edwin Meese — both close confidantes of the late president — wrote that before senators vote on LOST "after only the most cursory of reviews, we feel compelled to set the record straight."

And then this:

Ronald Reagan, according to Meese and Clark, "actually opposed LOST even before he came to office. He was troubled by a treaty that had, in the course of its protracted negotiations, mutated beyond recognition from an effort to codify certain navigation rights strongly supported by our Navy into a dramatic step toward world government."

Meese (Reagan's Attorney General) and Clark (Reagan's National Security Adviser) noted that James Malone, the ambassador chosen by the president to undertake the negotiations on behalf of the U.S., said the treaty provisions "were intentionally designed to promote a new world order — a form of global collectivism known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) — that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world's wealth through a complex system of manipulative central planning and bureaucratic coercion."

"Fixed"? No way

Clark and Meese say if anything, adopting the treaty would be even more contrary to American interests than it was when Malone said that the 1994 Clinton administration "fix" not only failed to address seabed mining provisions, but "the collectivist ideologies of a now repudiated system of global central planning still embedded in the treaty" prompt a "new and potentially serious concern."

Their Meese-Clark article notes the treaty leaves the U.S. vulnerable to such factors as "increasingly brazen hostility" of the UN and other international entities to American interests; the UN's ambition to impose international taxes; the world environmentalist drive to force the U.S. to adopt jobs-killing policies rejected by our elected officials; a worldwide "jurisprudence" that would "trump" American constitutional rights; and enabling adversaries of the U.S. military to impede American military and intelligence operations — in other words, tie our hands so we could not protect ourselves from attack. Just what we need when threatened by bloodthirsty terrorists who want to kill Americans — any Americans.

Political fallout

As we reported last week, only 3 of 12 Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee knew anything about LOST. GOP senators are now on notice. They have no excuse for falling for the line that Reagan's objections have been "fixed." That is at best a naiveté born of profound ignorance. At worst, it is an outright lie.

And they should consider the political consequences if they take the easy path and "go along to get along." The Bush administration — whatever its virtues — long ago lost its claim to "the tradition of Reagan." Its support of LOST is Exhibit A.

These senators should think of what happens when this international monstrosity's tentacles reach into our internal business, our own commerce, the inevitable loss of jobs, the buttinski provisions that allow international bureaucrats — including the UN Secretary General — to cripple our economy.

When those things happen, it won't do to say Democrats backed LOST, too — if with even with more enthusiasm than Republicans. If it happened on Bush 43's watch, Republicans will get the blame. Politically speaking, it will be No Excuses time. If you think the Republicans are in trouble now, just wait until this turkey comes home to roost.

Meanwhile in the House

Only the Senate can ratify a treaty. But the House has a responsibility to get very involved once the document is ratified. That involves appropriations, just for starters, and whatever legislation is concurrent with the implementation of the treaty's provisions.

Take the money away from them

With that in mind, the House has included in its passage of the Foreign Relations appropriations bill an amendment specifically saying, "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for the International Seabed Authority or the Enterprise of the international Seabed Authority [an integral part of LOST]."

The amendment — passed on a voice vote — was sponsored by House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) who, on more than one occasion, has pulled pro-American chestnuts out of the fire.

In introducing this provision, Congressman Blunt called the Seabed Authority "an obvious and very direct example of a UN effort to raise revenue without the input of the United States government" and an impediment to offshore exploration "which, in our current energy climate [i.e., high gas prices, reliance on terrorist states for oil, etc.], is something this Congress should be working to avoid at all costs."

And finally, the Missourian urged his colleagues "to consider the implications of ceding unprecedented authority to an agency of the UN without proper oversight, without legitimate safeguards, and without a whole lot of concern about the economic and security well-being of the United States."

Action alert

So the House is on record as opposing the use of your hard-earned money and mine to put us under the thumb of anti-American bureaucrats at the United Nations.

But much remains to be done. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and 10 other Senate committees need to hold more hearings granting equal time to treaty opponents. And the House counterpart committees should do likewise. We need to get this issue into dinner-table conversations all across America. Once that happens, the internationalists will be stopped in their tracks.

The number to reach your two senators and your congressman is (202)-224-3121.

© Wes Vernon