The easiest side to see for many of these issues being debated in the senate now is the liberal side of the argument. You really have to stop and think to understand why there is opposition to a treaty that on face value seems to provide only good intentions. The START Treaty (for STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty) when first looked at is about reducing arms between the US and Russia and starting up inspections between the two countries again. So what',s wrong with that? Well the problems start as you begin to look at the actual wording in the treaty as Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona did with his proposed amendment that was voted down (59-37). The specific wording in the bill that comes into question is:
“Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties.”
This wording is very ambiguous to say the least. This raises some very important questions. Such as who is getting more out of this treaty? What is this interrelationship that will become more important? And how will this link between our offensive arms and defensive arms impact the defensive ones?
Defensive arms can incorporate many things, the most obvious would be weapons we have in our country to defend ourselves against different possible attacks. But what the treaty is more likely going after, which could potentially be even scarier, is shutting down and dismantling our Missile Defense Systems in Eastern Europe. For those that don't know, this system was set up so that if Russia were to attack, the system would counter-attack target key areas in Russia, terminating their Second Strike capability. This ensures that they can not continue to attack us if their surprise first strike takes out all of our defenses within our country. All this is likely because our capabilities greatly reduces Russia's world prestige and makes them feel bad. The most recent NATO summit agreed with our placement of these defenses, meaning this is just another way Obama, the Democrat led senate, and even some GOP senators are trying to lead us down the road to submission, which as Regan said so well is not a choice between peace and war, but a choice between freedom or slavery.
We can all agree (or I hope we can) that the world would be a better place if nuclear weapon stockpiles could be reduced or even better eliminated. But is there a possible way to do this? Are we fooling ourselves thinking that by us making all these concessions it will make other countries see how we are stepping up to reduce our nuclear stockpiles, so they should reduce theirs? It might be just me, but I don't think North Korea and Iran are going to do that, they are going to laugh and continue to increase their ever expanding arsenal.
Many say the GOP are just trying to delay for the sake of delaying and kill the treaty. But the truth is, something with such huge ramifications needs more than just a glancing over before it is passed. We know very well that Obama will not be one to go through and make sure everything is satisfactory. At this point he just wants a couple of things checked off in his very large "to do" list, with very few checks so far.
In reality the most important question of them all is why are we taking the time to go through this? Our economy is in shambles, we in the middle of massive government take overs with rising unemployment. Why are we worrying about Russia? Russia is not important anymore!!! Out of all the foreign threats to our country I believe we can all agree Russia would not even be put in the top three. We have Iran and North Korea developing Nuclear programs, we have China buying/developing who knows what. And Mexico taking over more and more of our country. Why is Russia such a top priority?
