Clinton’s ‘Big Lies’ on the Senate’s Rejection of the C.T.B.T.

“The great masses of the people…will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small
one.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of Bill Clinton’s stinging repudiation by the Senate over the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last week, the President, his subordinates and their
allies outside the administration have responded by repeatedly smearing Republican opponents
of this accord with what can only be called “big lies.” This practice was much in evidence in the
course of Mr. Clinton’s press conference last week where he declared that the GOP was engaging
in “a reckless partisanship — it threatens America’s economic well being and, now, our national
security.”

Early in what amounted to the better part of an hour-long rant on that occasion, the President
declared without a hint of irony: “It’s been my experience that very often in politics when a
person is taking a position that he simply cannot defend, the only defense is to attack the
opponent.” The truth is, however, that it is the Clinton Administration whose position on the
CTBT is indefensible and whose only “defense” is now to attack those Senators who
courageously voted to reject a treaty that an actual majority of Senators found to be
insupportable.

A Bill of Particulars

Consider some of the more outrageous of the big lies being used to defame the fifty-one
Republicans who voted against the CTBT:

• Big Lie: Partisan Republicans didn’t allow enough time for hearings or
  debate or afford the
  needed opportunity for amendment of the Treaty.

The Truth: Every Senator, Democrat as well as Republican,
explicitly assented
to the unanimous consent agreement that set out the arrangements under which
the CTBT was considered. Evidently, as long as Senate Democrats and the Clinton
Administration thought their side had the votes — or would get them in the end — the
duration and particulars of the debate were deemed sufficient. If the task is simply to
rubber-stamp a treaty, the job doesn’t take that long. In fact, with the notable recent
exception of the controversial Chemical Weapons Convention, no arms control treaty
since the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has been subjected to protracted and
rigorous Senate debate.

The Democrat complaints about a rush to judgment and their demand for an
eleventh-hour stay of execution only started when it became apparent that
Republican Senators — unlike most of their colleagues across the aisle — had
actually boned up on the Comprehensive Test Ban (thanks to the leadership of
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the personal efforts of Sens. Jon
Kyl of
Arizona and Paul Coverdell of Georgia, and most especially the briefings of
experts like former Carter Energy Secretary James Schlesinger) — and that the
CTBT was headed for defeat.

In the end, the widely shared conviction that this accord was irremediably flawed
and that delay would not improve it caused all fifty-five GOP Senators to vote to
keep to the original schedule, dooming President Clinton’s efforts to try to cut
the sorts of deals on unrelated matters that allowed the CWC to squeak through
eight months after it was nearly killed by the Senate in September 1996.

• Big Lie: The treaty was killed by hard-line Republicans who oppose
  bipartisan approaches to
  foreign policy in general and arms control in particular.

The Truth: The 34 votes needed to kill the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty — to say
nothing of the absolute majority the opponents ultimately mustered — would not have
been possible without the support of Senators like Richard Lugar of Indiana, Thad
Cochran of Mississippi, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and
Olympia Snowe of Maine. These are legislators with unbroken records of
bipartisanship in support for arms control agreements and foreign policy initiatives
they deem to be in the national interest.

It is contemptible and irresponsible to suggest that these members in particular
would act as they did out of any motivation other than what they believed to be
best for the national security and the international effort to achieve real
constraints upon the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world. Indeed,
those who insist that the Senate put partisanship before the national interest
merely display their ignorance of the substantive nature of the debate and vote —
and their biases with respect to both the CTBT itself and the proposition that the
Senate is supposed to be more than a rubber-stamp in the treaty-making process.

• Big Lie: As White House press spokesman Joe Lockhart put it Friday,
  in the wake of the
  CTBT’s defeat: “The titanic debate that’s gone on over the last several years within the
  Republican Party has finally been settled in favor of Fortress America — isolationism.”

The Truth: Far from seeking an isolated United States, the
Republican majority
voted to assure that the military capability that most underpins America’s international
engagement — the United States’ nuclear deterrent — remains safe, reliable and
effective. The difference between the CTBT’s Senate opponents and proponents is not
over the formers’ support for Fortress America or “going it alone” and the latters’
conviction that allies and forward defense arrangements are critical to the Nation’s
security. Rather, the difference that emerged from the Senate vote is between
divergent views about how best the United States can “engage” and, in particular, the
role nuclear weapons should play in American security policy.

The Bottom Line

Those who believe, as most Senators evidently do, that America’s global leadership,
international interests and security are better served by a credible deterrent than by an
unverifiable, unenforceable treaty that would undermine that deterrent, should welcome the
debate being promised — or, more accurately, threatened — by CTBT proponents.
Senatorial, to
say nothing of popular, opposition to this treaty can only be strengthened by intensified exposure
of the public to the wooly-headed, radical anti-nuclear agenda of which the zero-yield, permanent
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has long been a cornerstone. And that’s no lie.