Sovereignty

This week, early November 2003, when the WTO granted the EU permission to put retaliatory tariffs on American goods because of our own steel tariffs, they threatened to target products in swing states that had decided the last election in favor of George W. Bush.

A case was recently brought before the International Criminal Court accusing British Prime Minister of war crimes for his role in the Iraq War. He has likewise been accused, as has Bill Clinton, of war crimes for actions related to Allied military action in the Balkans in the 90s.

In 2002, with America in the midst of the war on terror and preparing to confront Saddam's Iraq, his fellow Ba'athists in Syria took a seat on the UN Security Council. In 2003, Libya was elected chair of the UN's Human Rights commission.

The United Nations passes an estimated 30 resolutions a year (40% of its resolutions in its history?) condemning the state of Israel, but none condemning the PLO or Arab regimes in the Middle East.

The Kyoto Protocols, on greenhouse gas emissions, would have required the United States to undertake 30% or 40% cuts while rivals like China and India would not have had to reduce theirs at all.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent refuses to admit Israel's Magen David Adom to its organization, although negotiations are under way to do so if they'll agree to drop the Star of David as their emblem.  Meanwhile, ambulances bearing the Red Crescent have been used for terrorist attacks in Palestine.

What unites these disparate and disturbing stories?  They are just some of the better publicized and most egregious examples of the way in which multilateral/transnational treaties and institutions are being used to erode the sovereignty and threaten the national security of America and her closest allies.  We've been fairly lucky so far, the Bush administration ignored the UN--and critics in Europe and on the American Left--and deposed Saddam without its approval. The Senate expressed its opposition to Kyoto by a vote of 95-0, although the Democratic Senators numbered in the 95 now suggest they might try to join the accord.  The Bush Administration kept us out from under the auspices of the ICC.  And America has traditionally vetoed the worst of the UN's anti-Israel resolutions.  But clearly there is a vast and systematic attempt to shackle America and circumvent our democracy, by getting us to submit to these kinds of rule-making bodies, in order to achieve through world governing bodies the kinds of restrictions on American liberty and power that voters here would never stand for if allowed a say in the matter.

When you put all of these discrete images into one frame and look at the big picture, it seems fair to say that the Republic is under attack, but few are sounding the klaxons and nowhere near enough folks are listening.  The collection you hold in your hands represents an effort to spread the alarm to every corner of America, "For the country folk to be up and to arm."  We are at war on two fronts, not just one, and the second front, the quieter front, may represent the greater danger.  The terrorists are trying to kill enough of us to get us to turn our back on friends in the Middle East, which is bad enough, but the transnationalists both within and without, are trying to take away our capacity to govern our own country, and they must be stopped just as surely as the suicide bombers must.