The problem with the Bush administration is that not enough of its officials have read the U.S. Constitution. Take, for example, Section 2 of Article 2. When dealing with foreign nations, it says that the President “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur”.
So, why is President Bush and his administration seeking to establish a North American Union that would, in effect, abolish the borders between Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America?
Moreover, it would involve our government in so many common regulatory mandates with these two nations as to render the sovereignty of the United States a memory of what national self-governance is supposed to be.
The name of this effort is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and, guess what, it has not been submitted to the Senate for its oversight or concurrence because, by some magic of governmental definition, it is not a treaty. Instead, its administration is buried in the bowels of the Commerce Department.
It does have, however, the blessing of the political and corporate elites of all three nations. A visit to the SPP Internet website (www.spp.gov) says it “was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing”.
It is an attack on American sovereignty. In the smoothest and most soothing writing you will find anywhere, the website spells out the wonders of SPP. They include the North American Competitiveness Council, the North American Energy Security Initiative, the North American Emergency Management plan, and plans for “smart, secure borders”. And right now there are “working groups” whose purpose is to “improve productivity, reduce the costs of trade, and enhance the quality of life”.
And if you like snake oil, permit SPP to sell it to you by the barrel, by the boxcar, and by the tanker.
The SPP didn’t start out as an idea the presidents of the three nations started kicking around on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, but it became the official policy of the United States at a special summit convened by President Bush and joined by then Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Like so many really bad foreign policy concepts, SPP owes its origins to the Council on Foreign Relations; in this case, CFR’s Task Force on North America. Its report, “Building a North American Community” envisions the elimination of U.S. borders in just five years. Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
The Marxist majordomo of this task force is Professor Robert Pastor who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada but at the borders of North America as a whole”. Oh, yeah????
This surely explains why Mexico is doing such a great job of stopping the drug smugglers or the one million Mexicans who each year consider the U.S. border a mere fiction in their pursuit of jobs President Bush keeps telling us Americans won’t take.
It took a couple of years after 9/11 for Canada to discover it had some fanatical Muslims in its midst who were plotting terrible things against it and the U.S. Yes, these are surely the nations in which we want to place the responsibility for America’s security. Who needs borders when you have friends like these?
A North American Union promises not only security, says SPP, but prosperity too. Without SPP, however, the three nations already do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.
Surely the U.S. needs Mexico’s help to improve our economy? As the economist, Robert J. Samuelson, noted in a June column, “The subtext for the United States immigration debate is Mexico. Why doesn’t its economy grow faster, creating more jobs and higher living standards?” The answer to that has something to do with the endemic corruption that infests all levels of Mexico’s governmental and business sectors. Something is very wrong when Mexico’s economy must literally depend on the billions its illegal aliens send home from the U.S.
In 2002, the then-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castanega explained to the local press that destroying the border involved “the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant. Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants”.
Bush 43 is carrying out Bush41’s daft and dangerous “new world order” and his indifference to America’s illegal immigration crisis is symptomatic of the SPP objectives.
On June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba, and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. The objective is the promotion of “regional competitiveness in the global community.”
As if the floundering economies of the member nations of the European Union were not warning enough, it is proposed that the United States enter into a similar union.
A lot of corporations with global interests like this idea. Among those sponsoring the North American Union are FedEx Corporation, Mittal Steel USA, General Motors Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Campbell’s Soup Company, Gillette Inc., Merck & Company, and Wal-Mart Stores.
Since the United States is already a signatory to NAFTA and CAFTA, why is SPP necessary? Just how many treaties, agreements and protocols are necessary to promote trade and economic growth?
Just how many nets and norms, traps and snares, will ultimately undermine U.S. prosperity, drive down the wages of America’s middle class, and improve the ability of the Mexican drug cartels to deliver their goods?
Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme, hatched in some darkened cavern of the Council on Foreign Affairs, is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
It was been introduced by fiat, by executive action, by a “summit” of the three nation’s leaders, and the time is long overdue for the Senate to demand to exercise its Constitutional responsibility and right to determine if it wishes to give its consent to yet another “entangling alliance”.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. Merril Press has just published his book, “Right Answers”.
© Alan Caruba, 2006
6 comments:
Finally!
I was tired of being called an isolationist liberal. I hated Clinton for NAFTA an GAT, the WTO which destroys our sovernty as a nation. Bravo on finding this Longstreet. Fast track is wrong.
This state, especially my county, was severely hurt by NAFTA. I was against it AND CAFTA. Hell, all of 'em! It just ships jobs to Mexico and, or, central American countries, at the expense of American workers.
NAFTA was something I disagreed with from the beginning - I'm not an isolationist, I'm a patriot.
If we the people are against this, why are all our candidates, (on both sides) for it? Why must they have that "common ground" when WE, US, the voters, the ones they supposedly WORK for, share an opposite common ground. It is time to clean house gentlemen, that giant flushing sound you hear should be congress getting the big flush in Nov. and the whitehouse in '08. Ralph Nader, Pat Buccanin, and Ross Perot were the only 3 Presidential candidates I remember being outspokenly against this stuff, and NONE of them could get Docratic or Republican support. In poorer nations in Central America, farmers and workers protest the WTO and CAFTA, and get no news coverage be the big 4, when truck drivers and enviornmentalists protested here (the W.T.O.) in Seattle, Rush Limbaugh called them, and this is a direct quote, "Left wing Anarchists" which anyone with half a political brain knows is an imposability.
Frank, someone once said we get the kind of government we deserve. It's difficult to argue with that. Ultimately, it is we, the voter, who put those turkeys in office!
As said, I was against all those treaties:NAFTA, Cafta, GATT, WTO, the whole nine yards, because I KNEW if would "cream" our state.
NC is an "Open Shop" state. Unions aren't welcome here... as a rule. (No offense intended!) So, textile companies, electronic companies, and such, could locate a factory here, which would employ 40 or 50 people, and in some cases, a few hundred people, and the company could expect their cost of operation to be much lower than in Union States. Those small factories provided jobs for much of the unskilled labor we have in the state. As a result there were small factories sprinkled all over this state. There were several, right here, in my small NC town.
When NAFTA passed, those factories began closing just like dominoes dropping. In many cases the first an employee knew he, or she, was out of a job... was at the end of the work day... the day BEFORE THE PLANT CLOSED! It happened like that several times right here in my town. ALL those plants went to Mexico.
It devestated the economy here, in my neck of the woods, and in the state generally.
The cash crop, Tobacco, was basically run off the market. When I arrived here, some 43 years ago, there were vast fields of tobacco waving in the hot, sultry, summer sun. Cureing barns lined the roadsides. HUGE tobacco warehouses were all over the county. (I am within spitting distance of three of those warehuses... all now closed!) When the crop "came in" it was a great time for celebrating because the economy was booming!
50 miles, down the road, is one of the largest cities in NC. For a long time... well into the 20th century, it was the largest city in NC. The economy, based on tobacco in my county, rivaled that of that big city. Per capita retail sails in the large city, and per capita retail sales in my rural county, ran neck and neck every year. It remained that way right up til tobacco was "creamed" by the federal government.
I tell you this to point out how important those small plants were to the people who had been raised on tobacco farms and knew no other trade. They were dependent on those jobs... and when NAFTA came along, and stole their jobs, the economy in my county tanked... and we have not recovered yet, Right now my county is, for al intents and purposes, broke!
I blame it all on the "after effects" of NAFTA, not to mention the lousy county leadership we have, of course.
So, whenever the government begins to talk about another trade agreement, I get my hackles up.
NC is an "Open Shop" state. Unions aren't welcome here... as a rule. (No offense intended!) So, textile companies, electronic companies, and such, could locate a factory here, which would employ 40 or 50 people, and in some cases, a few hundred people, and the company could expect their cost of operation to be much lower than in Union States. Those small factories provided jobs for much of the unskilled labor we have in the state. As a result there were small factories sprinkled all over this state. There were several, right here, in my small NC town.
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See, you thought it good to under cut labor matkets and now yours were under cut. Sad part is prices don't go down, only profits go up. and our standard of living drops, that's why i want strong unions to fight these coporate powerhouses and give voice to the voiceless "United we stand, even at the bargaining table!" on a side note, my neighbor complains all the time about making $7.50/hr. but everytime they want to organize, she always complains about it and won't even go to a meeting. Then she bitches because i told her what i make and i gotta hear, "no body should make that much" I just refuse to work cheap. I'll quit my job, sell my house and cars and move to the streets before I work for less than I am worth.
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