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The Manchurian presidency
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June 21, 1999 |
As a result of the calculated degrading of security controls at America's nuclear laboratories, the Chinese communists have been able to steal the designs of our arsenal of nuclear weapons, including our most advanced warheads. As a result of the 1993 Clinton decision to terminate the COCOM security controls that denied sensitive technologies to nuclear proliferators and potential adversary powers, the Chinese communists have been given the secrets of our intercontinental ballistic missile systems, along with previously restricted computer hardware. This allows them for the first time to target cities in the United States. David Horowitz David Horowitz's column appears on the News site every other Monday.
In the past few years, therefore, the Chinese communist dictatorship has been able to close a huge technology gap, and to destroy a security buffer that had kept America safe from foreign attacks on its territorial mainland for more than a century. Throughout its entire history until 1957, the United States was protected from such attacks by the natural barrier of the oceans surrounding this continent. In 1957, the Soviet Union acquired an intercontinental missile technology that threatened to close that gap. Since then, the only real protection the United States has enjoyed has been its technological edge in developing more sophisticated warheads and more accurate missiles than its potential opponents. The edge provided a possibility that America might prevail in a nuclear war, and discouraged preemptive strikes. The catastrophe that has occurred on the Clinton watch is summed up in the fact that this edge has now vanished, probably never to be regained. America's new vulnerability to nuclear attack is a reality now not merely in respect to China, because of the absence of an anti-ballistic missile defense system. This, the Clinton administration has steadfastly refused to develop, despite the emergence of rogue states armed by China or Russia. These two are the chief distributors of nuclear, missile and satellite technologies to other governments. The governments that have benefitted are notorious stockpilers of biological and chemical weapons and among the most dangerous and dedicated enemies of the United States: Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Yet, the attitude of the Clinton administration to all this has been one of hear-no-evil, see-no-evil. The official line, ritually repeated by the Democratic leadership in the sickeningly familiar refrain from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is thateverybody does it and it's no big deal. Far from acknowledging the catastrophe that has occurred or recognizing the dangers it creates, the Clinton White House has hurried to resume export sales of the same previously restricted technologies and to reassert the "strategic partnership" it promoted with the very dictatorship that has declared America its "No. 1 adversary" and has stripped us of our military shield.
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