Tag Archives: American Conservative Union

The Coalition to Protect Americans Now

March 23, 2000

The Honorable George W. Bush
George W. Bush for President
2600 Lake Austin Boulevard
Number 7208
Austin, Texas 78703

Dear Governor Bush:

Today marks the 17th anniversary of President Reagan’s announcement of his Strategic Defense Initiative, a fitting occasion to commend you for your remarks to date on the pressing need to protect our families from ballistic missile attack. Your commitment to realize President Reagan’s dream of saving lives, rather than avenging them, is necessary because the United States still lacks the deployed capability to destroy even one incoming missile.

We believe that this lack of protection places America’s families and the Nation’s vital interests unacceptably at risk today. And the danger of such a missile attack is increasing inexorably. For example, the People’s Republic of China has threatened American cities with nuclear destruction over Taiwan. North Korea is poised to acquire ballistic missiles of sufficient range to reach much, if not all, of the American homeland. Russia, China and North Korea are assisting other rogue states to obtain weapons of mass destruction and the missiles with which to deliver them to ever-longer distances. U.S. intelligence believes that more than 25 countries have or are acquiring weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.

Despite this clear and present danger — to say nothing of President Clinton’s signature last August on legislation declaring U.S. policy to require the deployment of an effective National Missile Defense “as soon as technologically possible” — the Clinton-Gore Administration persists in deferring a decision to deploy such a defense. Even if Mr. Clinton does make that decision later this year, it will take at least five years to construct the limited missile defense system in Alaska that he appears to espouse. This deployment may well prove to be too late, as well as too little, to provide the kind of anti-missile protection that Americans not only expect, but deserve.

Fortunately, we do not have to accept this dangerous “window of vulnerability.” If directed to do so — and freed from the restraints of a treaty signed twenty-eight years ago with the Soviet Union (a country that ceased to exist in 1991) — the U.S. military could rapidly develop and bring on-line a sea-based anti-missile system based on the Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system. Such a system could provide interim protection for our people and their forces and allies overseas until such time as more comprehensive ground-, air- and/or space-based defenses become available. In this case good policy is also good politics: polls show nearly three-quarters of the American people support the deployment of missile defenses and by similar margins will choose candidates who pledge to deploy such systems.

The Clinton-Gore Administration, however, insists that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty remains in force and precludes the United States from having any effective defense of its territory and people. Worse, it is actively pursuing a new treaty with Russia that would foreclose U.S. options to build competent anti-missile protection.

The Coalition to Protect Americans Now believes that the United States can ill-afford to wait for five years (or longer) to begin deploying missile defenses for the American people. Neither can it safely agree to a new arms control agreement entailing additional limitations on its options for protecting the men, women and children of America.

Accordingly, we call upon you to make the following two pledges defining elements of your campaign and, upon your election, of your presidency:

1) the immediate initiation of the deployment of a sea-based defense as a starting point for more comprehensive anti-missile protection for the American people; and

2) the rejection of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s premise, embodied in the obsolete ABM Treaty and underpinning its efforts to negotiate a new treaty restricting U.S. missile defenses — namely, that any other country may exercise a veto over this country’s ability to defend its people.

Governor Bush, we thank and depend on you for your leadership on this issue.

Sincerely,

Hon. Caspar Weinberger
former Secretary of Defense, and Chairman, Forbes

Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick
former U.S. Representative to the United Nations, and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Hon. Edwin Meese, III
former U.S. Attorney General, Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy, The Heritage Foundation

Hon. William Clark
former National Security Advisor and Secretary of Interior

Steve Forbes
Publisher
Forbes

Hon. William Schneider
former Under Secretary of State, and Member, The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States

Hon. Paula J. Dobriansky
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and Vice President/Washington Director, The Council on Foreign Relations

Amb. Henry Cooper
former Director, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, and Chairman, High Frontier

Lt. Gen. Edward Rowny, USA (Ret.)
former U.S. Ambassador to START Talks

Hon. Michelle Van Cleave
former Associate Director, Office of Science and Technology for National Security, and President, National Security Consultants, Inc.

Hon. Gerald Solomon
United States Representative (Retired)

Hon. Malcolm Wallop
United States Senator (Retired)

Midge Decter
former President, Committee for the Free World

Norman Podhoretz
former Editor, Commentary

Jeffrey Taylor
Director of Government Relations
Christian Coalition

Gary Bauer
former White House Domestic Policy Advisor, and Chairman, Campaign for Working Families

Hon. William Graham
former White House Science Advisor, and Member, The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States

Adm. Leon ‘Bud’ Edney, USN (Ret.)
former Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic

Adm. Wesley McDonald, USN (Ret.)
former Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic

Adm. J.D. Williams, USN (Ret.)
former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Warfare

Hon. Bruce Weinrod
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

Hon. Kenneth deGraffenreid
former Senior Director of Intelligence Programs, National Security Council, and Professor, Institute of World Politics

Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum

Anita Blair
Former Chairman, Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues, and President, Independent Women’s Forum

Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

David Keene
Chairman
American Conservative Union

Paul Weyrich
President
Free Congress Foundation

L. Brent Bozell, III
President
Conservative Victory Committee

Morton C. Blackwell
Chairman
Conservative Leadership PAC

Terrance Scanlon
President
Capital Research Center

James Martin
President
60 Plus Association

Amy Ridenour
President
The National Center for Public Policy Research

C. Preston Noell
President
Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

Tom DeWeese
President
American Policy Center

Major F. Andy Messing, Jr., USA (Ret.)
Executive Director
National Defense Council Foundation

Larry Arnn
President
The Claremont Institute

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, and President, Center for Security Policy

Barbara Ledeen
Director of Policy
Independent Women’s Forum

Brian Kennedy
Vice President
The Claremont Institute

Roger W. Robinson, Jr.
former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council, and William J. Casey Chair, Center for Security Policy

Jeffrey T. Salmon
George C. Marshall Institute

Dr. Edward Teller
former Senior Strategic Defense Advisor to the White House

Diana Denman
former Co-Chair, U.S. Peace Corps Advisory Council

Elaine Donnelly
President
Center for Military Readiness

Hon. Charles M. Lichenstein
former Alternate U.S. Representative to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs, and Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

Dr. Daniel Pipes
Director
Middle East Forum

Kim R. Holmes
Vice President and Director, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute
The Heritage Foundation

Christopher A. Wysocki
President
Small Business Survival Committee

David Rothbard
President
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Harry Valentine
President
Capitol Hill Prayer Alert

Abby Moffat
Trustee
Kathryn and Shelby Collum Davis Foundation

Lewis Uhler
President
National Tax Limitation Committee

George Landrith
Executive Director
Frontiers of Freedom

Kevin Kearns
President
U.S. Business and Industrial Council

Tom Mead
Executive Director
Coalition to Protect Americans Now

Telly Lovelace
Vice President
Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education

Adrian Cronauer
National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans

Joan Hueter
President
American Council for Immigration Reform

W. Thomas Kelly
President
Savers and Investors League

Gordon S. Jones
President
Association of Concerned Taxpayers

Hon. Richard V. Allen**
former National Security Advisor

Fighting Words: Gore Campaign Rejects Options for Near-term, Robust Missile Defense Lest They ‘Destroy the A.B.M. Treaty’

Bush Could Offer Voters Real Choice

(Washington, D.C.): On Friday, an unnamed “senior foreign policy advisor to [the Vice President Al] Gore campaign” offered the clearest indication to date of the priorities of the Clinton-Gore Administration when it comes to defending the United States against missile attack: The Veep and his associates clearly believe that it is more important to protect the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed with a country (the Soviet Union) that ceased to exists eight years ago, than it is to provide Americans with either near-term anti-missile protection from the sea or longer-term — and more comprehensive — protection from space.

According to a 27 March article circulated by the Armed Forces Newswire Service, this campaign aide claimed that:

Gore believes Administration negotiations with the Russians for modifications to the ABM Treaty should not involve allowing possible sea- and space-based National Missile Defense (NMD) systems [because] those kind of modifications would destroy the Treaty and with it any chance we have of seeing ratification of START II, or, to be more exact, of seeing START II go into force and probably also destroy the chances for START III.

What we’re talking to the Russians about now is a [land-based] proposal, which is wrapped around the technology we’ve been developing for deployment by 2005 if the president decides that’s the way he wants to go. If you go back to the Russians and say “Hey, we want this thing opened up so [we] can do this, this and this,” I don’t think we have a chance to close it back up again.

This statement was made in the wake of — and, presumably, in response to — a Capitol Hill press conference last Thursday sponsored by the new Coalition to Protect Americans Now. It featured forceful remarks by members of the Senate and House Republican leadership (Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho and Rep. Tillie Fowler of Florida, respectively) and other influential legislators (including Senators Jim Inhofe and Jon Kyl and Reps. J.D. Hayworth, Bob Shaffer and David Vitter) concerning the present danger posed by proliferating ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

They were joined by highly respected national security experts (including Amb. Henry Cooper, a former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, and Dr. William Graham, a former Science Advisor to President Reagan and member of the blue-ribbon Rumsfeld Commission) and public policy activists (including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene of the American Conservative Union) in calling for the prompt deployment of missile defenses, starting with precisely the sort of sea-based systems the Vice President is said to oppose — i.e., those that could be acquired rapidly and relatively inexpensively by modifying the U.S. Navy’s existing AEGIS fleet air defense ships.

Appeal to Gov. Bush — Make Near-Term Missile Defense a ‘Defining Element of the Campaign’

The Coalition used the occasion, which marked the 17th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s SDI speech, to release a letter (see the attached) to the Republican presidential nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush. It commended him for his “commitment to realize President Reagan’s dream of saving lives, rather than avenging them” and warned against the Clinton-Gore Administration’s failure to date to initiate deployment of an “effective National Missile Defense.”

The Coalition letter was signed by a number of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level officials of the Reagan Administration — including National Security Advisors Richard Allen and William Clark, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Attorney General and Counselor to the President Edwin Meese and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick — as well as an impressive array of other national security practitioners and leaders of grassroots organizations with interests in myriad public policy areas but who share a common concern about protecting Americans. The signatories observed that:

It will take at least five years to construct the limited missile defense system in Alaska that [President Clinton] appears to espouse. This deployment may well prove to be too late, as well as too little, to provide the kind of anti-missile protection that Americans not only expect, but deserve.

Fortunately, we do not have to accept this dangerous “window of vulnerability.” If directed to do so — and freed from the restraints of a treaty signed twenty-eight years ago with the Soviet Union — the U.S. military could rapidly develop and bring on-line a sea-based anti-missile system based on the Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system. Such a system could provide interim protection for our people and their forces and allies overseas until such time as more comprehensive ground-, air- and/or space-based defenses become available.

Declaring that “the Coalition to Protect Americans Now believes that the United States can ill-afford to wait for five years (or longer) to begin deploying missile defenses for the American people” and that the Nation “cannot…safely agree to a new arms control agreement entailing additional limitations on its options for protecting the men, women and children of America,” the signatories urged Gov. Bush “to make the following two pledges defining elements of your campaign and, upon your election, of your presidency:

1) the immediate initiation of the deployment of a sea-based defense as a starting point for more comprehensive anti-missile protection for the American people; and

2) the rejection of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s premise, embodied in the obsolete ABM Treaty and underpinning its efforts to negotiate a new treaty restricting U.S. missile defenses — namely, that any other country may exercise a veto over this country’s ability to defend its people.”

The Bottom Line

If Governor Bush accepts these recommendations — amplifying upon his previously expressed commitment to defend the Nation against missile attack and not to allow the lapsed ABM Treaty to stand in the way of doing so, by emphasizing his commitment promptly to initiate the modification and deployment of AEGIS-based missile defenses — and Vice President Gore affirms the opposition to such an approach expressed on his behalf by one of his “senior foreign policy advisors,” the American people could have a real choice this November: In the words of Senator Kyl, that choice may be between a presidential candidate who favors “peace through strength” and one who prefers “peace through paper.” There are worse, and certainly less definitive, bases upon which to decide into whose hands to entrust the awesome responsibilities of Commander-in-Chief for the next four years.