The people who want to dissolve or diminish American sovereignty and replace it with global governance never give up. Their modus operandi is to work toward their one-world goal incrementally through United Nations treaties.
We elected President George W. Bush to stand tall for America, and he did exactly that when he saved us from two treaties that would have driven gaping holes in U.S. sovereignty. He withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty (signed by Richard Nixon) that prevented the United States from defending our cities against incoming nuclear missiles.
Then he "unsigned" the International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty (signed by Bill Clinton) that would have subjected U.S. troops to political prosecution in a foreign court. Now we need President Bush to "unsign" another dangerous UN treaty that would massively invade American sovereignty: the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).
We thought we were rid of Bill Clinton (thanks to the 22nd Amendment), but his love affair with UN treaties and global integration has come back to haunt us. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) is now trying to get the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty that Clinton signed back in 1994.
Lugar knows that such a giant giveaway of U.S. power can't be publicly defended. So he held a quiet hearing at which only LOST proponents were permitted to testify, and he is refusing to allow other relevant Senate committees to hold their own hearings.
Lugar managed to get the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month to vote out the LOST unanimously. It's hard to see how the other Republicans could have voted for the LOST unless they were told that President Bush wants it.
But others who spoke to the President the same week say that he is opposed to the LOST, and we eagerly await White House clarification. Some speculate that Republican pressure is coming from Vice President Dick Cheney.
Lugar and Clinton (both Rhodes Scholars ever eager to toady to internationalist goals) know perfectly well that LOST was examined and emphatically rejected by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. When Reagan discovered it was due for signing right after his inauguration, he not only repudiated it but fired the U.S. State Department staff that had negotiated it.
Agitation for the LOST during Jimmy Carter's Administration caused alert Republicans to specifically condemn it in the 1980 Republican Party Platform and promise that "a Republican Administration will conduct multilateral negotiations in a manner that reflects America's abilities and long-term interest in access to raw material and energy resources."
The Law of the Sea Treaty can't meet that test because it cedes sovereign control over practically all the riches at the bottom of the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority. Its one-nation-one-vote governing setup assures control by Third World countries, while Uncle Sap is expected to pay all the technology and investment costs to bring the sea's minerals to the surface.
The LOST gives the International Seabed Authority the power to set production controls for ocean mining on more than three-fourths of the earth's surface, to control ocean exploration through permits and regulations, and to adjudicate disputes. Even worse, the Seabed Authority claims direct global taxing power and is touted as a model for other resource-related treaties that aspire to enjoy the power to levy taxes.
The LOST is a trap that would compel the United States to pay billions of private-enterprise dollars to an international authority while socialist, anti-American nations harvest the profit. Its international control and regulations would deny U.S. companies access to strategic ocean minerals that we need for our industries and military defense.
The International Seabed Authority has all sorts of extra rip-off powers. It can impose rigid production ceilings so the United States could never become self-sufficient with respect to strategic materials.
The LOST would be a sellout of American interests far greater than even Jimmy Carter's giveaway of the U.S. Canal at Panama. It would be a cave-in to the world-government advocates whose goal is global socialist governance in order to integrate American prosperity with Third World poverty until they are leveled.
The United States is a giant island of freedom, achievement, wealth and prosperity in a world hostile to our values. We have almost everything we need to maintain our safety and economy, but we lack some items that are essential to us in both war and peace such as manganese, cobalt, bauxite, chromium, and platinum.
The Law of the Sea Treaty would be a giant giveaway of American wealth, sovereignty, resources needed to maintain our economy, capacity to defend ourselves, and even our ships' and submarines' ability to gather intelligence necessary to our national defense. Tell your U.S. Senators to vote No on LOST.
