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Americans to pay millions for UN's standing army
By Cheryl
Chumley The timing is most uncanny. Scarcely did the Group of Eight announce its decision to create a global peacekeeping force but Congress was already in full swing to fulfill its end of this U.N. agenda. Introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Chair Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on June 9 was S. 2514, The Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative Act, allowing for “the transfer of funds for foreign countries to participate in international peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations.” Coincidentally, June 9 is also the day reports floated from Sea Island, Ga., that the meeting Group of Eight the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, Russia and Italy set plans to create a 50,000-plus group of global peacekeepers by 2010. This plan comes with a hefty price tag; Americans will provide $660 million over the next five years for training and equipment. Senior administration officials briefing reporters at the scene of the G-8 summit said justification for this global force stems primarily from Africa, where tribal conflicts have raged for years. But "even though it's about Africa in the first instance," this official said, "it really is global in its ultimate scope, because the idea is to train peacekeepers and equip them and enable them to get where they’re needed all over the world"
It would be more honest if the G-8 just announced its intent to create a standing global military, absent the flimsy excuse of concern for Africa and the unlikely promise that world-wide peacekeeping operations would remain unchanged, with volunteering nations maintaining operational control. The United States already involves itself with formal aid to Africa via the African Crisis Response Initiative and its morphed African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program. ACRI changed to ACOTA under President George W. Bush, but what remained the same was its mission: It "trains military trainees and equips African national militaries to conduct peace support operations and humanitarian relief" using State Dept. funds. That mission sounds suspiciously similar to the reasons touted for creation of a global peacekeeping force. That a senior administration official attempts to downplay the significance of America’s participation in this new global force by saying “ACOTA continues to be a centerpiece of this initiative, of the training and equip,” and “ACOTA is being folded into this initiative,” should not deter Americans from seeing the true agenda at play here. The path still leads to America’s formal support of a new U.N. military force. The existence of physical peacekeeping training centers, in Italy to start, and the promises of administration officials that the number of trainees will ultimately “be much more than 50,000” only solidifies that this global power grab is real, and it results in a heightened risk to America’s sovereignty -- its constitutional authority to select, control and command its own congressionally approved military operations. As insulting to the American intellect as this half-heartedly hidden agenda seems, what’s worse is the simultaneous betrayal by our own duly elected congressional representatives, sworn by oath to uphold the nation’s “of, by and for the people” form of government. Lugar, the same man who brings before our nation a U.N. measure relinquishing U.S. sovereignty over 70 percent of the earth’s mass with the Law of the Sea Treaty, and who successfully pushed for passage of an agreement with the U.N.-family’s International Atomic Energy Agency that could one day compromise our nuclear and national security systems now unabashedly gives us S. 2514, a bill he has no qualms introducing solely as a means of supporting the president’s global peacekeeping plans. What ever became of the notion of supporting the American constituent? It seems doubtful that the American people, besieged by media reports of an ever-escalating national deficit, would favor the siphoning of more tax dollars for overseas expenditures, especially those that strengthen foreign militaries at the expense of our own. “The need for additional peacekeeping troops, particularly in Africa, is growing,” Lugar said, after introduction of his bill. Is that so? It seems more to point that what’s really growing is the United States’ penchant for catering to the United Nations, as evidence by the dual attacks by Congress and the president on our country’s sovereignty to commit with funds and pledges our national support for something so unconstitutional as this global body that aims, rather ridiculously, to instill peace using force. More to point here, too, is that the only real need in this scenario is for Americans to rein in their political leaders, before these instances of U.S. legislation mirroring U.N. agenda become so commonplace as to render useless the entire concept of elective government. © 2004 Cheryl Chumley - All Rights Reserved Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale
Cheryl K. Chumley is a former award-winning reporter and columnist. Her coverage has ranged from the 2000 presidential election, on scene for the Democrat National Convention in L.A. and for election night in Nashville, Tenn., to small town courts and police. Cheryl is a regular contributing columnist to several Internet news sites including www.thedailycannon.com, www.pipelinenews.org and www.newswithviews.com, and may be reached at ckchumley@aol.com.
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