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National Insecurity: Obama/Kerry Gun And Missile Policies To Disarm America Are Indefensible

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In 2008, and again in 2012, a majority of American voters elected a President who is legally bound to protect our constitutional rights. Under that same authority he serves as Commander in Chief who, above all, is responsible to protect our national security. In doing so, the electorate selected an individual with a well-known anti-gun and anti-missile defense philosophy. Acting through his newly-appointed Secretary of State, Defense Department and a blizzard of executive orders, that ideology now drives civil agendas and military policies which are literally disarming our nation.

One case in point revolves around gun control implications of the Obama administration’s support for the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Another has to do with appeasement of China and Russia in addressing a belated response to North Korean and Iranian nuclear ballistic missile threats… after allowing our intercept and retaliation capabilities to deteriorate.

First, a Little Background:

President Obama has a long, active history of anti-gun rights sentiment. From 1994 until 2002 he served along with retired terrorist Bill Ayres and his current senior advisor Valery Jarrett on the 10-member board of the radically anti-gun Joyce Foundation in Chicago. Later, as Illinois State Senator, he voted four times against legislation to grant gun owners an affirmative defense against home invaders and burglars. As president, he quietly banned re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectable antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that remained in South Korea following the Korean War.

Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry isn’t known as a strong gun rights supporter either. With a “F”-rated NRA voting record, he said during the 2004 presidential primary debate (October 27, 2003): “There’s a story in today’s Washington Post that says that Democrats are going to run away from the issue of gun safety. I don’t think that we can get elected nationally if we are not prepared to stand up against powerful special interests. Too many people die each year from guns. I am for the assault weapons ban. I’m for the Brady Bill.”  As senator, Kerry even voted in favor of a proposed 2004 bill to block certain civil lawsuits against manufacturers, distributors, dealers and importers of firearms and ammunition, mainly making them liable for gun violence.

On October 15, speaking with CNN foreign affairs correspondent Jill Dougherty in Tokyo, Kerry said that students in other countries assessing where to study abroad are increasingly scared of coming to the United States because of gun violence. Noting Japan's restrictive gun laws which prevent private ownership of nearly all firearms, including handguns, he said that the country was safer "where people are not running around with guns."

President Obama’s and Secretary Kerry’s long-held views on missile defense are as clear as those on gun-rights defense.  Seven years before winning the White House, Obama told a Chicago TV station: “I don’t agree with a missile defense system.” One month before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, then-candidate Obama said: “I will cut investments in unproven missile systems. I will not weaponize space.”  He has kept that promise.

Thirty years ago on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced his commitment to develop and deploy an advanced, multi-layered defense capability, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), to protect America from a Soviet missile attack. The Soviet Union recognized that they couldn’t compete, and SDI has been credited with hastening their decline. Yet in 1985, and again in 1986, then-Senator Kerry attempted to cut funding for SDI, calling it a “cancer on our nation’s defense.” He said: “This is the time we must say ‘no’ to the president’s dream, a dream based on illusion, but one which could have real and terrible consequences.”

Fast Forward to More Recent Missile Defense Developments:

On the missile defense front, North Korea launched a rocket last December that went into orbit, demonstrating a rapidly-emerging capability to target sites virtually anywhere. The Pentagon believes that North Korean missiles can already reach Alaska and Hawaii, and will soon be able to deliver nuclear warheads to Seattle and San Diego. Following that long-range missile test, the demonstration of a mobile missile launcher, and some successful nuclear device demonstrations, the Pentagon now recognizes that North Korea’s technical programs are advancing faster and earlier than predicted.

Meanwhile, as North Korean (along with  Iranian and Russian) programs advanced, President Obama had cancelled G.W. Bush administration plans to deploy 14 more ground-based interceptors (GBIs) in Alaska, bringing the 2009 total to 54. Another 10 were to be deployed in Europe next year.  Now, following a reversal of that decision, the Pentagon has finally announced plans to deploy 14 more GBIs in Fort Greely, Alaska to supplement the 30 already existing on the West Coast. Due to Obama’s delay, they won’t be in place until 2017.

President Obama also mothballed or killed several other missile defense development programs. This included a scale-back of the Airborne Laser program to enable enemy missile interceptions during their early launch phase, along with the elimination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor which uses small warheads on a single rocket to handle decoys and offer a better chance of success. Obama’s 2010 defense budget cut $1.4 billion from the Missile Defense Agency.

In addition, planned replacement of the Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine has also been delayed, and no decision has yet been made on whether the U.S. next-generation strategic bomber force will even be capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

A comparison of 2010 and 2013 budgets submitted by the Energy Department and National Security Agency indicates that 5-year budgets for nuclear and missile program modernization has been cut by $4.4 billion, the same amount the president had agreed to add to secure Senate support for his New Start treaty with Russia. This is ocourring as Russia prepares to field a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one type that can carry up to 15 warheads.

Never mind that as Russia expands and modernizes its nuclear rocket arsenal, the Obama administration has delayed funding for GBI and radar sites in Poland and the Czech Republic for defense against Iranian missile launchers. That shield is also regarded as a sign of NATO’s commitment to protect Europe and former Soviet satellite states against a belligerent Russia. The policy was implemented after Moscow objected, threatening to target the sites and withdraw from the New Start treaty.

The Pentagon has also announced that the fourth phase of Eastern Europe missile shield deployment, if re-started, would not take place earlier than 2022. That proposed phase includes development of the SM-3II B interceptor, an advanced version of the missile currently provided aboard our Aegis missile defense warships.

In yet another olive branch offered to Russia, the Obama administration has indicated willingness to deactivate one-third of the U.S. nuclear arsenal unilaterally, without congressional approval. At the same time, a facility which is essential for modernization to extend the life of our aging ballistic nuclear warheads has now been delayed for at least five years, and some believe, permanently. That plutonium handling plant was included in the Treaty Resolution of Ratification which President Obama pledged to support upon entry of the treaty into force.

After caving in to Russian demands, the Obama administration has now offered to restrain U.S. missile defense activities in Asia in exchange for China’s help in reducing nuclear threats from North Korea. This includes cancelled deployment of two destroyers equipped with Aegis missile defense systems, along with terminating delivery of a second TPY-2 phased-array X-band long-range missile defense radar system for Japan. China had objected to these deployments, arguing that the assets would deepen regional tensions. Unfortunately, that American concession is unlikely to lessen tensions for our allies Japan and Taiwan regarding territorial and sovereignty disputes with China.

During an April 15 news conference following a meeting with top Chinese leaders, Kerry said: “Now obviously if the threat disappears…i.e., North Korea denuclearizes…the same imperative does not at that point of time for us have that kind of robust forward-leaning posture of defense.”

How likely is that to happen? Any illusions that North Korea can be trusted to honor an agreement should have been dashed long before now. Two decades ago the Clinton administration agreed to a 1994 deal which was supposed to freeze the North’s nuclear programs in exchange for food and energy aid, yet they continued to pursue a secret uranium-enriched initiative which led to a successful test in 2006.

Consider that only last year, just days after the U.S. again announced an agreement to send food aid to North Korea in exchange for closer international monitoring of its nuclear program, they launched a long-range missile in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Last week North Korea rebuffed an offer by Secretary Kerry to initiate talks if they would roll back its nuclear weapons program.

Then There’s the Matter of That U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT):

Secretary Kerry was among the vast majority of U.N. General Assembly voters favoring an agreement premised to “strengthen global security while protecting the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade.” And those who didn’t go along? They were all big arms traders who don’t want to be bound by it… North Korea, Iran and Syria voted against it, while China and Russia abstained.

The Obama administration purportedly signed on after securing a “red line” that the treaty specifies “non-intervention in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of signatories. Yet while ATT affirms states’ rights to self -defense, the text makes no mention of civilians’ rights to defend themselves. Since most of world’s constitutions don’t contain an individual right to bear arms, the likely result will be to strengthen the grip of governments in the international flow of arms.

In a test vote, a 53-46 Senate majority did reject ATT…and ratification would require two-thirds in favor. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who sponsored the non-binding budget amendment, said: “The U.N. Trade Treaty that passed in the General Assembly today would require the United States to implement gun control legislation required by the treaty, which could supersede the laws our elected officials have already put into place.” Of particular concern is a requirement that ATT signatories agree to establish a “national control system”, including a “national control list”, to monitor, track and regulate everything from tanks to gunships to small arms---and their parts.

Writing in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Yale Law professor John Yoo and coauthor former U.N. ambassador John Bolton warned that: “Gun control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban on certain weapons.” Such a treaty will then provide the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these “holy grails” through executive orders.

The President’s Imperious Reign Must Be Reined In:

When Congress placed a restriction barring the National Institute of Health from using any of its $30.7 billion stimulus funds to “advocate or promote gun control”, President Obama told them exactly what he thought about their authority. Upon signing the bill into law he stated: “I have advised Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress’s consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient.”

As it turned out, he didn’t worry a whole lot about congressional consideration at all. One of Obama’s 23 new gun control executive orders directs the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to study ways to reduce gun violence. This will end a 17 year congressional ban on CDC receiving federal financing to advance or promote gun control…exactly what CDC had done when they were funded before. All of the scores of CDC firearms studies that had been conducted since 1985 reached conclusions favoring stricter gun control.  This should have come as no surprise, given that ever since 1979, the official goal of the CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been “…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership”, starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century.

Don’t imagine that last week’s resounding Senate defeat of President Obama’s most recent national background check push is going to end his far more ambitious gun control agenda. As he pledged in the White House Rose Garden, “This effort is not over…I see this as just Round One.”

And with no more elections to face, don’t expect much deference to Congress regarding strategic missile defense realignment decisions either. Simply recall his famous conversation caught on an open microphone during a photo-op with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after a meeting in Seoul at the 2012 Nuclear Summit: “On all these issues, particularly missile defense, this can be resolved but it’s important for him [past and future Russian President Vladimir Putin] to give me space. This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” 

It is incumbent upon all those who value freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution to stand strong. Violence will never be prevented by robbing citizens of a right to self- protection.  No security, either personal or national, will be achieved through policies premised upon trust in mutually consensual disarmament of the virtuous and villainous. We can ill afford to allow these naïve and perilous strategies to continue unchallenged. To do so will constitute an abrogation of judgment and responsibility that will leave us truly defenseless.