Today’s Manila Bulletin has it’s usual supplement from the New York Times, and the headline blares:

A Nuclear Free Vision.

In the Depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Colombia University wrote…about the vision of a “nuclear free world”.

It seems that President Obama was promoting nuclear disarmament in the 1980’s.

That in itself is strange (most students dropped out of the peace movement years before, when they stopped drafting guys).

So what was big about the early 1980’s?

Jimmy Carter had downgraded the US military at many levels, while the Soviet block increased their weapons and nuclear capability.

The Utopian idea back then was if America unilaterally disarmed, the poor Soviet Union would no longer feel threatened, and do the same.

Of course, what actually happened was that the USSR saw this as weakness.
So when  some Polish shipyard workers tried to strike, Russia destroyed the Solidarity movement, and had their proxy take over the Polish government. They also invaded Afghanistan, and give money to a lot of liberation movements that are still around today decimating much of Africa.

The elites “protested” by giving Walensa a Nobel Prize, but three people went on to do something practical: They increased pressure on the Soviet Union, John Paul II by his moral teachings, and President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher by “speaking truth to power”, and by rebuilding the ability of the west to defend itself.

As a result, the left went haywire in anti American demonstrations.

But Reagan’s gamble worked, and now the Berlin wall is a distant memory.

But somehow, the NYTimes articles all are breathless on the wisdom of these naive ideologues, and breathlessly gush that now their vision of a nuclear free world has a chance, because apparently President Obama now has plans to implement those dreams.

All of this brings up several subjects.

One: Not once during the campaign of 2008 did anybody bring up the article.
Presumably, someone at the New York Times was aware of it, yet it was kept quiet.

Question: Exactly when did the NYT become aware of this information?

Was the New York Times hiding information that would have helped the campaign of Hillary Clinton– or, later, the campaign of war hero John McCain?

Two: If we believe the NYTimes article, Obama has made disarmament a goal.

Question: the President is not a dictator. Such decisions have to be discussed by the public and approved by their representatives. Am I missing something? Did the discussion get lost in all the news coverage of Michael Jackson’s funeral?

Three: From the NYTimes articles, it appears that the way President Obama plans to disarm the world is to use international organizations:

“by pushing for new global rules, treaties and alliances that he insists can establish a nuclear free world”…

Question: When was American sovereignty given away to global rules, treaties, and alliances?

Doesn’t the US Constitution demand that the Senate ratify treaties?

This stuff about “global rules and treaties” is familiar to those of us who are pro life Pinoys. There is a very active campaign here in the Philippines to push a eugenics/abortion agenda, and one form of pressure is by by telling us that by refusing to legalizing abortion “the Philippines government is in direct violation of its international legal obligations”.

Is this the way that President Obama plans to dismember the American nuclear defense capabilities? By a flat “fiat” by some big multinational treaty?

Does Obama really think he can get around a public discussion of this issue (which will be strongly opposed by both Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats) by getting some global institution to pass a rule which requires  Americans to give up their sovereignty and ability to defend themselves to international agencies?

All one can do is hope that his Secretary of State can pound some common sense into his brain.

It’s enough to make me believe in Art Bell’s conspiracy theories..

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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket.