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In 1945, the U.S. took its first major step toward world government:

[I]f we enter into this treaty, we take the power away from the Congress, and the President can send troops all over the world to fight battles everywhere. If you say that is the policy of this country, I say the American people will never support any senator or representative who advocates that policy, and do not make any mistake about it.

-- Senator Burton Wheeler
July 24, 1945 (during Senate debate 
over U.S. entry into the United Nations)

No one can say that the American people weren't warned. The possibility of our military becoming the world's policemen under a UN umbrella was explicitly discussed by the senators who approved U.S. entry into the United Nations. Senator Wheeler's speech received wide coverage in the media. Yet, when he insisted that ratifying the UN Charter would mean that the powers of Congress would be reduced and that the president would be able to "send troops all over the world to fight battles everywhere," most Americans -- and certainly most senators -- either didn't believe him, didn't care enough to object, or approved of what he found objectionable because they wanted exactly what he feared.

Four days after his chilling assessment, Wheeler himself voted in the affirmative as the Senate propelled our nation into the UN by a vote of 89-2. He said he supported ratification because he did not see any "alternative."

Anemic Protest

Now, after more than half a million Americans have participated in a UN-authorized military conflict in the Middle East, a look at the Senate's 1945 deliberations shows that this road to war in the Gulf was paved long before most of our present day troops were alive. During congressional debate over U.S. involvement in the Mideast conflict, there were few protests from senators or representatives concerning the use of our military forces as global policemen or about the President's highhanded disregard of the Constitution's stipulation that only Congress can declare war. Now that the pathetic Iraqi military has been soundly defeated, those protests are heard no more.

But our military wasn't the only winner to come out of this war. Imperial power in the hands of our President also gained a convincing victory. And so did the drive to boost the power and prestige of the United Nations.

All of the issues that should have been raised in recent months were raised in 1945! But the senators of that day stormed ahead, giving the president a green light to cite UN authority, not any provision of the U.S. Constitution, to commit our troops to a war zone and even to start a war. Though some senators undoubtedly knew exactly what they were doing, others allowed themselves to be steam-rolled by an immense propaganda blitz into supporting what any American should have deemed insupportable.

Less than five years after the founding of the UN, few in America questioned President Harry Truman's action in sending our troops off to Korea at the request of the UN. With no declaration of war, and with UN flags flying, our troops were actually kept from achieving victory.

Ten years after Korea, the same UN authority gave a succession of presidents more green lights to commit troops -- this time in Southeast Asia. Kept largely in the shadows during the Vietnam conflict, the UN's involvement was admitted by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Their commitment to a world view that superseded their commitment to our nation led to additional misuse of their offices and further abuse of the forces engaged in battle. None of this could have happened if our nation had stayed out of the United Nations.

Background to Disaster

Without making excuses for any of the pro-UN sentiment that dominated the nation in 1945, we should at least try to understand it. Doing so will help us to comprehend the treachery and cowardice that led the president and most of the senators to turn their backs on the U.S. Constitution, compromise the sovereignty of this nation, pave the way for two remarkably costly military defeats, and set the stage for the involvement of our troops in the Middle East war.

The idea for the United Nations actually took root during World War I. When that conflict ended in 1918, advocates of world government within our nation joined with others throughout the world to support the creation of the League of Nations. A huge amount of effort was expended to convince the American people, and especially the U.S. Senate, that an organization formed to "achieve international peace" was desperately needed. With so many American families still grieving because of the horrors of the recent war, there was great sentiment in favor of creating a world organization. And wasn't it our own President Wilson who had conceived the idea as part of his famous "Fourteen Points"?

Opponents of the League insisted that membership in it would undermine the U.S. Constitution and dilute national sovereignty. Nowhere were these concerns more hotly debated than in the chambers of the U.S. Senate. It actually took nine months for the senators to conclude their discussions. When they finally voted 49-35 to refrain from committing our nation to the organization, internationalists throughout the world were sorely disappointed.

As events would rapidly show, however, they were hardly defeated. Some immediately knew that their goal of world government might be more readily realized if America became involved in another war. Others created such organizations as the Council on Foreign Relations to propagandize Americans about the nobility and necessity of world government.

Prime Opportunity

World War II became their next great opportunity. Our participation in it began, of course, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Conclusive evidence shows that President Roosevelt and his associates knew the attack was coming, yet they deliberately kept this critical information from our commanders in Hawaii. Did these leaders want our nation involved in another war? Absolutely! Were they willing to have thousands of Americans killed in order to swing public opinion in favor of a war? It certainly seems that they were.

President Roosevelt and the team of internationalists surrounding him knew that another war would set the stage very nicely for the next try at world government. Where war had always been known to lead to more government, this one was to be used to produce the framework for absolute world government.

Even before the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and with the war far from over, delegates from the 26 allied nations gathered in 1942 to issue a Declaration of the United Nations, the first time that the term "United Nations" had been used. The following year, representatives from the USSR, Great Britain, Nationalist China, and the United States met several times and agreed to establish a world organization at the end of the war. In 1944 the initial drafts of the UN Charter were hammered out at the Dumbarton Oaks conference. Finally, in 1945, delegates from 50 nations met from April 25th to June 26th in San Francisco, where they approved and signed the United Nations Charter.

Most Americans were unaware of all of these preparations for world government. Most assumed that their leaders had been totally immersed in efforts to win the war and bring their loved ones home. And practically no one knew that the U.S. delegations at these conferences were dominated by the likes of secret communist Alger Hiss and a team of determined one-worlders, every one of them anxious to discard national sovereignty.

By mid-1945, everything needed to start the United Nations was in place -- everything that is but U.S. Senate ratification. Americans were sick of war, especially those old enough to remember World War I. In their minds, something had to be done to prevent future bloodshed. And this widespread sentiment hardly escaped penetrating the U.S. Senate, where pressure to approve the Charter and launch the UN was enormous.

Among the arguments that pro-UN senators aimed at their colleagues during the 1945 deliberations was the claim that the failure of the U.S. to back the League of Nations in 1919 actually invited the horrors of World War II.

Truman's True Colors

On July 24, 1945 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX) told his fellow senators: "The nations of the world remember how the League of Nations was slaughtered here on this floor." Any opponent of U.S. entry into the League in 1919, or into the UN in 1945, was all but formally accused of guilt for the widespread death and destruction caused by World War II.

On July 23, 1945 the New York Times summarized the Truman Administration's attitude regarding the UN as follows:

It is this administration's contention that if the Senate ratifies the Charter in the first stage, they accept a moral obligation to all other signatories of the San Francisco Charter to place at the disposal of the new organization an adequate supply of forces which will be available for use anywhere the Security Council, including the United States delegate, decides to send them, and without authorization of the Congress in each case.

Amazingly, a huge majority of the senators of that day found no fault whatsoever with this accurate assessment of the administration's position.

The above reference to "the first stage" is important, for the senators were operating under a belief that they would be able to limit the UN's use of America's military, indeed any part of the UN's power, through subsequent unilateral U.S. action. Pro-UN Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) told his colleagues on July 24th: "We shall decide for ourselves where we wish to draw the line, if any, between the constitutional authority of the President to use our armed forces in preliminary national defense action and the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war." Whether or not he knew it at the time, his suggestion that the Congress could and would limit the president's power to cite UN authority to commit our troops has proven to be without foundation.

That very same day, an editorial appearing simultaneously in the New York News and the Washington Times-Herald scorched Vandenberg and the whole idea behind the UN: "This United Nations Charter embodies Roosevelt's dreams of a postwar super-state. It entails the destruction of parts of the written Constitution without a by-your-leave to the American people. That, apparently, is okay with Vandenberg and his cohorts."

Still, many senators felt that they would be able in the future to limit our nation's commitment to the UN. But the world-government enthusiasts were on guard. The New York Times commented editorially on July 24, 1945: "We must see to it that no reservations are tacked on afterward." The very next day, its editorial gleefully reported that "no moves ... after the ratification are likely to succeed."

Senator Wheeler naively expected that what he called the "real fight" would come later, when UN-desired military arrangements involving U.S. forces were submitted to Congress. He believed, as did many other senators, that the U.S. and other nations would actually be required to assign portions of their military forces to a permanent UN force, or at least to "make available to the Security Council, on its call" (Article 43 of the Charter) some of their forces. When either of those matters arose, said Wheeler, then would be the time "to find out what will be the policy of the United States with reference to sending our boys into foreign lands."

In his statement urging the Senate to ratify the UN Charter, President Truman addressed the issue of future troop commitments as follows: "When any such agreement or agreements are negotiated, it will be my purpose to ask the Congress by appropriate legislation to approve them." Pro-UN Senator Paul Lucas (D-IL) was quick to assure his colleagues that they had little to worry about because Mr. Truman's stand "eliminates any possibility that assignment of military contingents would be made without consulting Congress."

UN over Congress?

However, Mr. Truman was really saying that he reserved the right to do whatever the UN wanted done with American troops, and after they were committed to battle he would then seek congressional approval for such action. As bad as it was, the Truman position still left Congress a chance to cancel any troop commitment. But as we have recently seen, President Bush merely went through the motions of gaining congressional approval for deployment of U.S. troops. He pointedly stated that he didn't need such approval because he already had authorization from the UN.

Neither the requirement for staffing a permanent UN force nor the call for delivering forces to the UN came during the 1945 debate over U.S. entry into the United Nations. Five years later, however, the call for delivering troops did come with the outbreak of the war in Korea.

While the 1945 Senate debate was underway, John Foster Dulles, a U.S. delegate at the UN's founding conference in San Francisco and a disciple of world-government enthusiast Edward Mandell House, was only one of many voices raised in support of empowering the UN to use our nation's troops. He insisted that once our nation ratified the Charter, we had no right to place any restrictions on the way the UN would employ American forces.

On the day after the Senate actually approved the Charter, the New York Times approvingly summarized U.S. policy on this very issue:

The Administration is also convinced that under Article 43 the United States has no moral right to stipulate that our forces shall operate in only one sector of the world, or to demand that the Security Council hold up its decision pending approval by the U.S. Congress of the recommendations of the American delegate.

As far as the administration, the Times, John Foster Dulles, and a host of others were concerned, the UN could now do what it wanted with our military. And, as a consequence of Senate ratification that placed our nation in the organization, these internationalists now had their vehicle for compromising America's independence. They knew, even if others never thought about it, that internal control of the military has always been a key element of national sovereignty.

While the Senate was considering the merits of committing our nation to the UN, the administration was issuing a half-hearted assurance that, before 1945 ended, Congress would be given the opportunity to define the powers of the U.S. delegate to the world organization. One power supposedly to be spelled out was the extent of our delegate's authority to commit U.S. forces to UN-directed action against future aggressors, or even potential aggressors, even if such aggressors posed no threat to the United States. From all that we now know about the U.S. relationship to the UN, Congress never did define those powers.

Whirlwind Ratification

Where the debate in 1919 about entry into the League of Nations had taken place over nine long months, the debate in 1945 about entry into the United Nations took only six days. Only Senators William Langer (R-ND) and Henrik Shipstead (R-MN) voted against ratification of the UN Charter. Had he not been confined to a hospital bed, Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA) would have added another negative vote. He officially announced his opposition a few days later. Four other senators not present during the July 28th vote subsequently announced their support for ratification, bringing the final tally in the Senate to 93-3 in favor of ratification.

The United Nations, with the United States formally enrolled, was off and running. From the day of that fateful Senate vote, presidents of this nation have assumed the power, and perhaps even viewed it as a duty when requested by the UN, to deliver our military forces to the far comers of the earth. The effects of that action would be demonstrated in Korea and Vietnam, and have just been seen in the sandy terrain of the Middle East.

On June 25, 1950 Soviet-backed forces from North Korea invaded anti-communist South Korea. Immediately, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an end to the hostilities and the withdrawal of the invaders. Two days after the invasion, President Truman announced that U.S. forces were being sent to aid the South Koreans, His formal statement committing our troops made note of the Security Council's action and contained the following sentence:

The Security Council called upon all members of the United Nations to render every assistance to the United Nations in the execution of this resolution.

The President did not cite the U.S. Constitution for his authority to send troops; he clearly indicated that he was responding to the UN's call. He showed a far greater commitment to the UN Charter than to the Constitution he had sworn to uphold. There should have been a nationwide outcry, but there was hardly a peep.

Refuse the UN?

We must consider a vitally important question at this point: Could Mr. Truman have refused the UN's request for troops? Inasmuch as none of the other UN member nations responded as did the U.S. (there were 50 member nations at the time), it seems certain that such a refusal was entirely possible. The President could have expressed regret about what the North Koreans were doing and kept U.S. forces completely out of the conflict. He could have severed relations with the USSR, the power behind North Korea. He could have exercised leadership among other nations of the world to ostracize and isolate the Soviet Union.

Had President Truman felt it necessary to take military action against this clear example of Soviet-backed aggression, he could have asked Congress for a declaration of war against North Korea, the USSR, or both. He could have availed himself of the offer of friendly forces. Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek was pleading with the President to label the Soviet Union the real enemy in this conflict and to allow Chinese forces to join in fighting the communist army.

But because the United States had not been attacked, it is unlikely that Congress would have issued any war declaration. And, because Mr, Truman and his advisers were so heavily committed to the United Nations, there was no chance that any other than the UN response would have been considered. The only thing Congress did was to applaud the President's response, including his sending of our forces into a war without congressional approval and without a declaration of war. The men who were sent to fight would sorely regret the President's action.

The partisans for world government within this country wanted the U.S. to become ever more deeply entangled in the UN. All were thrilled at what the President had done. A July 1st New York Times editorial expressed absolute delight "at the rebirth" of the world organization.

On June 30th the President's order placing U.S. troops in the Korean conflict at the behest of the UN was discussed at a bipartisan meeting of Senate and House leaders. There was no dissent whatsoever from these elected representatives of the American people.

Nor was there anything but praise for the President's action from the overwhelming majority of the American people. Anti-communist fervor was at its peak in our nation. Eastern Europe had fallen to communists; China had recently been conquered; and revelations about communist traitors operating within our own government were filling the newspapers on a regular basis.

Soviet Strategy

It was also widely known that the UN, still considered the great hope for peace by many, was the target of frequent heavy criticism from the Soviet Union. Right at the time, in fact, the USSR was boycotting the UN to protest the defeat of its attempt to have the Peoples Republic of China seated. Americans everywhere felt that if the Soviets didn't like the UN, it must be a good organization, even something that would help fight the communists.

The Soviet boycott was curious to say the least. With the media actively promoting the notion, many Americans actually looked upon the Soviet absence from the UN as a stroke of good luck. Had the Soviets not walked out, it was felt, they could have used their veto to block the UN's commitment of U.S. forces in this supposedly anti-communist military action.

Hardly anyone stopped to realize that the Soviets surely knew that the North Koreans, whom they had been training and supplying, were about to launch their attack into South Korea. If the Soviets didn't want the UN to fight against their North Korean allies, all they had to do was walk back into the UN and cast their veto. That they didn't means that they, too, wanted the UN to act as it did.

In the minds of most Americans, the use of our troops by the UN was considered a welcome development in the all-but-shooting war we were losing to communism. They were delighted that force was finally being employed to stop the communist advance. Their abhorrence of communism was actually used against their best interests, exactly as it has often been used over the past several decades.

Enter MacArthur

On July 7th the UN Security Council authorized the U.S. to name the commander of UN forces. With enthusiastic nationwide approval, President Truman immediately appointed General Douglas MacArthur. Even MacArthur was so caught up in the pro-UN sentiment that he requested UN Secretary General Trygve Lie to send 400 UN flags to be flown by his various units.

MacArthur's attitude about the UN was to change remarkably in the months ahead. And so were the attitudes of many Americans who began to realize that our men were being required to fight and die, but were not allowed to win. Under MacArthur's leadership, our forces not only freed South Korea of the invaders, but also liberated all of North Korea from communist control. For all intents and purposes, the war had been won. But, as one critic later summarized what eventually happened, "We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!"

Our troops had done their job too well. No sooner had the war against North Korea been won than Chinese communist armies massed across the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and Manchuria. MacArthur ordered his men to destroy the bridges across the river and promptly found his order countermanded by his superiors in Washington. Completely stunned, MacArthur exclaimed:

I realized for the first time that I had actually been denied the use of my full military power to safeguard the lives of my soldiers and the safety of my army. To me, it clearly foreshadowed a tragic situation in Korea and left me with a sense of inexpressible shock.

MacArthur was soon relieved of his command and the war in which American forces were increasingly hamstrung dragged on for two more years. It was later learned that early in 1950 Soviet personnel had left their posts at UN headquarters in New York to direct the North Korean invasion in person.

It was 1953 before the shooting stopped and, for the first time in history, the United States failed to win in a military conflict. After the war was over, an embittered parade of generals -- Van Fleet, Clark, and Stratemeyer to name just a few -- joined MacArthur in testifying before Congress about the incredible restrictions under which they were forced to operate.

Early Warnings

Early in the war, there had been a few subtle indications that something was wrong. Asked at his first press conference after committing troops if he would say that our nation was "at war" and, if so, why there had been no congressional declaration of war, President Truman quickly responded that we were not at war and that no declaration was needed because the conflict was a UN "police action."

Also, the President had immediately cautioned the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan not to enter the conflict and not to start any military operations against the Red Chinese on the mainland. A few days later, he pointedly refused Chiang Kai-shek's offer of three divisions of troops to help with the fight in Korea.

The ostensible reason given for keeping the Nationalist Chinese out of the conflict and out of Mainland China was the need to keep the war from escalating. But even after Red China entered the war in force, the Nationalist Chinese forces weren't welcome.

The real reasons for keeping Chiang's forces out were that they would not have tolerated the no-win restrictions, and they were in a far better position at that time to take on the communists who had overrun their country. Obviously, our leaders in Washington wanted none of that.

On July 14th, less than three weeks after the start of hostilities, UN Secretary-General Lie followed his initial call for troops with individual cable requests to the heads of member nations for additional forces. None responded with troops at that time, although a few nations did eventually send some before the conflict ended three years later. Our own leaders were perfectly happy to have the Korean War be a U.S. affair authorized by the United Nations.

Presidential Precedent

No pluses and plenty of minuses came out of the Korean War. The greatest of the minuses, of course, were the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Others included the huge increase in prestige for the United Nations and the heightened conviction among our own people that our nation not only would be forced to seek permission from the UN to wage future wars, but would have to fight any in which it found itself on a limited basis and without victory as the goal.

But perhaps the most far-reaching consequence was the precedent set by the President of citing UN authorization as justification for placing our nation's troops in an undeclared war. As for the constitutional provision assigning war-making authority solely to Congress, it was as though it had never existed.

For one opinion of what the rounding fathers intended by giving war-making power solely to Congress, consider the following, written by Abraham Lincoln to his law partner, William H. Hendon:

The provision of the Constitution giving the warmaking power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons .... Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. (Emphasis in the original.)

There is probably no more accurate assessment anywhere of the wrongness of President Bush's conduct relative to the recent military action in the Persian Gulf.

Having scored so many victories for their cause via the UN-authorized conflict in Korea, the sovereignty destroyers within our own government then turned their eyes toward an area known as French Indochina, soon to be known as North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. American military involvement in that portion of the world began with advisors during the late 1950s and grew remarkably and disastrously during the 1960s.

NATO and SEATO

Asked under what authority he had sent U.S. troops to Korea, President Truman replied on one occasion that if he could send troops to NATO, which he had already done, he could send them to Korea. Committing troops to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, had never been questioned. Most Americans had been persuaded that this alliance was another brilliant bit of anti-communist strategy.

If the U.S. had not been constantly supplying the communists with the means to stay in power, of course, there would never have been any pretext for creating NATO. That the individuals pushing for increased aid to communists were also strongly supporting NATO should have raised some eyebrows. But it didn't. One result of our membership in NATO was that our leaders now had another "justification" for committing troops to the role of the world's policeman. Another was the certainty that those troops could be used in other activity not under NATO's jurisdiction. In the process, the United States also gave up any right to act alone in its own self-interest.

Begun in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is what the United Nations terms a "regional arrangement" formed under Articles 51-54 of the UN Charter. Article 54 specifically requires: "The Security Council shall at all times be kept fully informed of activities taken or in contemplation under regional arrangements .... "NATO isn't as much controlled by the UN as it willingly allows the UN to be aware of what it is doing or contemplating. Like our nation, it would never do anything the UN wouldn't sanction.

With NATO already in existence, the Eisenhower Administration in 1954 launched the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) under the same provisions of the UN Charter, Its stated purpose was to preserve the "neutrality" of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, three of the four nations newly carved out of what had been French Indochina. The fourth nation was communist North Vietnam.

It was under SEATO that American troops were sent into Vietnam. The SEATO Treaty itself states: "The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations ... to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. Measures taken ... shall be immediately reported to the Security Council of the United Nations."

Tonkin Rush

While U.S. forces had been engaged for years in steadily escalating military action in South Vietnam, it was not until Congress was stampeded into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7, 1964 that the enormous buildup of men and material began. That resolution supplied congressional approval for the huge increase in our force level and silenced any congressional opposition. The resolution was considered by many to be a declaration of war. But it was no more a constitutional declaration of war than the congressional stamp of approval given to President Truman's Korean "police action" in 1950, or the weak-kneed approval Congress gave to President Bush just prior to the war in the Persian Gulf.

Even worse, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was based on a complete non-incident. Rushed through Congress in response to a supposed attack on U.S. vessels by North Vietnamese PT boats on the night of August 4, 1964, it won overwhelming approval because of reports from the Robert McNamara-led Defense Department about a "sea battle that raged" with "burning ships and gun-fire."

It was later shown conclusively that there was no attack whatsoever and that early reports suggesting the existence of one came from an excited radar operator aboard the USS Maddox. Commanders on the scene even tried to tell their superiors that there had been no battle. After the phantom attack and the congressional resolution, the individuals who wanted to use the war as a weapon against their own nation's independence had even more "authority" to widen and deepen America's commitment to it. And that's exactly what they did. Vietnam was to be another war authorized by the president citing our relationship to the UN, not the U.S. Constitution.

As the following statements indicate, our own leaders relied totally on our membership in the UN and SEATO for authority to proceed with the Vietnam War:

• "We are in Vietnam because the United States and our allies are committed by the SEATO treaty to 'act to meet the common danger' of aggression in Southeast Asia." (President Lyndon B. Johnson, January 10, 1967)

• "It is this fundamental SEATO obligation that has from the outset guided our action in South Vietnam." (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, November 26, 1966)

• "The Southeast Asia Collective Defense treaty authorizes the President's actions. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was designed as a collective defense arrangement under Article 51 of the UN Charter .... The United States has reported to the Security Council on measures it has taken in countering the Communist aggression in Vietnam." (State Department Bulletin 8062, March 28, 1966)

There were no UN flags flying this time, and hardly anyone knew that our leaders were using the UN to justify our involvement. When the deliberately mismanaged war began to be unpopular, they allowed finger pointing at SEATO or anything else but themselves. Meanwhile the military faced even more stringent restrictions than those that hampered our forces in Korea. While fighting was going on, no one accepted responsibility for those restrictions, but the damage they did to our war effort and the danger in which they placed our troops are a matter of historical record.

"Rules of Engagement"

Complaints from the men who had to fight the war, from generals down to the privates, certainly helped to make their agony known. Then, in 1985, Senator Barry Goldwater pried the Vietnam War's "Rules of Engagement" out of the State Department. Goldwater had them published in 26 pages of the Congressional Record (March 6, 14 and 18, 1985). What they showed was that America's leaders had done everything possible to insure defeat for the U.S. forces and victory for the communist North Vietnamese. The UN wasn't mentioned, because the rules were a creation of our own leaders.

U.S. pilots were prohibited from bombing Soviet-made SAM missile sites while they were under construction, but were permitted to try after the sites had become operational and had the capability of shooting down attacking aircraft. Pilots could not attack a communist MiG fighter plane sitting on a runway or bomb its airbase, but they could go after it once it was in the air and had its own guns at the ready. Truck depots 200 or more yards from a road were not approved targets -- only enemy trucks on a road. If the trucks drove off the road, they could not be attacked.

Throughout the war, returning ground soldiers told of being ordered not to shoot until shot at, being refused permission to attack the enemy's privileged sanctuaries, and being required to give up terrain won at great cost. While all of this was going on, the Johnson and Nixon Administrations were increasing aid and trade programs with the Eastern European nations supplying the North Vietnamese.

The Vietnam War tore America apart. It left three nations under communist control. It increased U.S. indebtedness, made credible the charge that the U.S. was untrustworthy, and destroyed real patriotism within a large portion of an entire generation. Everything about the war confirmed what critics of the United Nations had been saying for years. If U.S. entry into the UN hadn't allowed our own president an assumed authority to place troops in no-win, undeclared wars, the troops wouldn't have been there. Or, had they been there, it would have been by a congressional declaration of war, with a firm commitment to win the war, and with a swift victory as its conclusion.

Global Vision

Many of the "founders" of the United Nations from the U.S.Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Adlai Stevenson, Nelson Rockefeller, and John Foster Dulles, for example -- were either communists or determined one-worlders. The same could be said of most of the delegates from the other nations at the 1945 San Francisco conference. Their "vision" was always of a world government run by them with no sovereignty for any nation.

Perhaps the most fundamentally dangerous attitude about the UN, the one reinforced repeatedly since this action in the Middle East began, is that the UN is essential if peace is to prevail. Not only Americans, but peoples all over the earth, have been told that real peace would reign if only the United Nations were given sufficient power to enforce it. But if a UN were given such power, who would ensure that it would not be used to establish world tyranny?

Nationhood is a good thing. True enough, some national leaders have been evil men who have led their nations in evil pursuits. But concentrating unchallengeable power in any organization, or in the hands of any group of individuals, is hardly the way to ensure a just peace. Placing it in the anti-American, pro-communist and godless United Nations would be suicidal.

The war in the Persian Gulf will spawn a demand for a permanent UN "peace" force, exactly what our own nation's 30-year-old disarmament scheme calls for. The UN has been "reinvigorated" by President Bush's action. If he gets his way, the Declaration of Independence will be forsaken, the Constitution will be cast aside, and the Stars and Stripes will be relegated to a distant second place. No one who has such goals, President Bush included, can in good conscience swear an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Two Paths

Our nation has arrived at a critical junction. From where we are right now, one of the two paths before us leads straight into the "new world order" dominated by the United Nations. The other leads to a full restoration of the independence of the United States of America, a restoration that must begin by disentangling our nation from the United Nations.

The UN does not control this nation. It is our leaders who are using U.S. membership in the UN to destroy independence and to create the world government they and their internationalist allies in other countries intend to run. Congress can stop them if Congress is made to do so by aroused public opinion. A rising tide of understanding on the part of the American people is all that is needed to force Congress to do what is right.

With all that has already been done to America by her own leaders, and with all that they plan to do through an on-going disarmament plan that includes the establishment of a permanent UN "peace" force, it is perfectly accurate to state that the time to block their plans and keep our nation free and independent is getting short.

No one wants to be a slave to an all-powerful world government. But that is exactly what stares Americans in the face if we fail to act. So let's act! Let's wake the town and tell the people -- about the UN, about the "vision" of its founders, about leaders who continue to use the UN to build their "new world order," and about the benefits to our nation and to all true Americans of withdrawing from the United Nations.