Does anyone care about national security anymore?
Until this week, the heart of the historic U.S. Naval Base at Long
Beach was about to
be leased to a shipping company, Cosco, that is a virtual
subsidiary of the Chinese
Communist Army.
In 1995, a Cosco ship, the Empress Phoenix, was boarded by Customs
agents, who
seized a cargo of 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles -- destined for Los
Angeles street gangs.
And who was chief lobbyist for handing over the historic naval base
to China? None
other than the president of the United States. Clinton held two
meetings, one in the
White House with Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and a deputy secretary
of defense, to
press Long Beach to make the deal.
Clinton's National Security
Council was not even
asked for comment on whether giving China a base on the U.S. West
Coast might
compromise national security. Now that the deal has exploded, both
Democratic
senators from California have asked that the NSC review the lease.
And who will be chief reviewer? Clinton's new national security
adviser, Samuel R.
Berger -- a former lobbyist for the Communist Chinese at Hogan &
Hartson law firm in
Washington, D.C.
What a sweetheart of a deal this is for Beijing.
First, the U.S. Navy
gave the historic base, free, to the city of Long Beach. To
persuade China to take it off
their hands, the city port is building a $200 million dock for
container ships to bring
Chinese goods into the United States. The Chinese will pay $14.5
million a year to
lease the base, and the deal will create between 300 and 600 jobs!
And what will the
Chinese be shipping in, besides toys?
Consider: Not only was Cosco implicated in smuggling assault rifles
into the United
States, federal officials say Cosco ships are subjects of frequent
surveillance and have
brought in "all kinds of contraband."
According to the March issue
of The American
Spectator, those 2,000 assault weapons on the Empress Phoenix were
the first of
many shipments a Chinese gun-running firm, Polytechnology, had in
mind for us: "Court
documents reveal that Poly had hoped to expand their business even
further; they were
planning to move beyond assault rifles to Chinese-made hand
grenades, mortars,
RPG-7 anti-tank rockets and hand-held anti-aircraft missiles
(Chinese copies of the
Stinger) capable of knocking commercial airliners out of the sky."
Sell RPGs and surface-to-air missiles to the Crips and Bloods, and
the next L.A. gang
war could be very exciting, especially at LAX. What's happened to
America? Can one
imagine the reaction if Ronald Reagan learned that Fidel Castro was
smuggling assault
rifles to U.S. street criminals?
The proper U.S. response to
China's support for
terrorism on the streets of L.A. should have been to call in
China's ambassador and tell
him that if public punishment of the offending officials was not
forthcoming, he could
pick up his passport. And if future arms shipments to U.S. street
criminals were tied to
Beijing, China would find herself discussing the matter with the
7th Fleet.
If our leaders
are indifferent to national security, what about national
self-respect? Within weeks of
that incident with the Cosco ship, the Chinese president of Poly
was having coffee with
Clinton.
And last year, Johnny Chung, who gave $366,000 to the Democratic
National
Committee, showed up for a Clinton radio broadcast at the White
House, with six
Chinese in tow, including an adviser of Cosco. The president begged
off being
photographed with his guests, which raises a question: If Bill
Clinton is leery of being
seen with these characters, why is he giving them a Long Beach
naval base?
Henry
Kissinger now warns us, "We should not provoke what we fear most...Declaring
China an enemy today before they have actually done any expansion...would have
major consequences in which, in my view, we would have no allies."
But America has not been provoking China. China has been provoking
us. And what is
being asked is not a declaration of war but an end to appeasement
and a new policy
that accords with national interests and national honor: Inform
China that her behavior
no longer justifies the trade privileges America grants her best
friends.
Congress should reject any new request for extension of Most
Favored Nation status
for China. If this means none of our Asian "allies" stand with us,
we can do without
such allies. After all, who is defending whom here?
The
establishments of both parties
have been deeply corrupted by corporate contributions and the China
trade. It is time
the grass roots told the party elites that we are going to end MFN,
and they have three
choices: Lead, follow or get out of the way.
