Kosovo Can Destroy Us - Here's How

By Linda A. Prussen-Razzano
Tlrazz@cyberramp.net
Featured Rightgrrl April 1999
April 10, 1999

People mocked former President Reagan because he spent so much money on security and defense. Between his defense budget and the Democrat-controlled Congress, our national debt soared to outrageous heights. In the end, his unusual method of cold warfare worked; the Soviet Union collapsed, many communist countries became either democratic or socialist, and Germany reunited after decades of separation.

In 1988, our national defense readiness was at its highest point.

Now, it is at its lowest.

Last year, military officials sadly advised Congress that the turn-over rate for personnel was nearing alarming proportions. They begged for more money, believing that pay increases would be the perfect incentive to keep people in the ranks.

They were wrong. Military personnel are demoralized. They have seen fellow patriots stripped of their rank or discharged for committing the same offenses as their Commander In Chief. If they speak out against this double standard, or voice their indignation against a President who "loathes" the military, they are punished.

Our supply of conventional weapons (i.e., non-nuclear bombs) has been all but expended. President Clinton stopped production of conventional bombs in his first term; it will take at least two years to complete production if we started making them today. New reports indicate that because of his various bombing campaigns, we have only 100 left. In a mad scramble to sustain the NATO bombing of Kosovo, the military has asked Congress for several million dollars to convert our nuclear weapons to conventional weapons. If this request is granted, we will be slowing stripping our country of its ability to pose a counter-nuclear threat.

We are, in essence, opening ourselves up to a nuclear attack from unfriendly countries. Even if Congress concedes, military experts advise that the "objectives" of this campaign will not be met without ground-troops. Expect ground troops. Expect our young men and women to be shipped to Kosovo, at the cost of some $2 to $3 billion dollars a year. A protracted campaign, such as the one we encountered in Viet Nam, could cost America some $8 to $15 billion dollars, not including the invaluable loss of lives. Our little excursion has already cost a reported $3 billion; we have only made a bad situation intolerable.

Nevertheless, our greatest threat may not necessarily lie abroad.

In an April 23, 1993 White House Press release, President Clinton promised to "expeditiously" examine the elimination of COCOM (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), calling it a "Cold War Institution." COCOM was a NATO guideline which allowed for the transfer for "dual-use technology" to other countries. On March 31, 1994, COCOM was allowed to expire.

On April 4, 1994, the Commerce Department listed GLX, a new "transfer license" onto the Federal Register.

Several years later, we learn that under GLX, the Commerce Department sold "dual-use" technology to the Communist Chinese which later became part of their military operations. Without the COCOM guidelines to hamper them, or the State Department to stop them, access to our military secrets no longer needed to be "stolen", it could be bought.

We now know that some of the most damaging thefts of nuclear secrets occurred during the Clinton Administration, not the Bush Administration. We now know that the Communist Chinese did, in fact, buy access to the White House, the President, and top security clearance meetings. We now know that out of some 2,000 requests for wire taps, the Reno Justice Department denied only one - that of suspected Los Alamos spy, Wen Ho Lee. We now know that China has advanced weapons capabilities, and news reports suggest they currently have 18 ICBMs capable of reaching America's shores.

We must question the wisdom of a man who, against the expressed advice of his senior military advisors, engaged in an overt action against a sovereign nation with disastrous results. We must question the foresight of a man who would ignore the undeniably serious threats to his own country, while waging undeclared war against another. We must question how far we are going to go, and how many lives are going to be sacrificed, to restore this man's "legacy" for the history books.

Finally, and most importantly, does character matter yet?

This article copyright © 1999 by Linda A. Prussen-Razzano and may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of its author. All rights reserved.

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