START: Treaty With Moscow Is a Waste of Time

Cynthia Tucker, miscast as an editorial writer by forces unknown, today accused Republicans of being "unpatriotic" for not supporting START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.

Displaying a thought process about geostrategic issues that is embarrassing in its naivete, Tucker writes,"There is simply no modern precedent for the behavior of Republicans in the U.S. Senate. They are not only hyper-partisan, but they are also petty, petulant and unpatriotic, willing to jeopardize national security if they think they can hurt President Obama. Witness their growing resistance to a nuclear pact with Russia, the New START treaty."

You'd think the Republicans were trying to ban the military or something.

Why vote against "New" START? Because arms treaties with the Vladimir Putin dictatorship are a waste of time. They were a waste of time before Putin.Heritage Foundation points out that, "Russia repeatedly violated the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ("old" START) all the way to its expiration in December 2009, as clearly stated in 2005 and 2010 State Department compliance reports. " Russia is also believed to be "in non-compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons arsenal may be 10 times larger than that of the U.S.

This Russian government, headed by an ex-KGB officer, would never allow itself to be bound by an arms treaty with us, but Moscow certainly hopes that Washington is stupid enough to sign one and keep its end of the deal. And we're doing our best to not let the Kremlin down.

Tucker writes that Republicans "don’t want to give President Obama another victory, even if it also means a victory for the United States."

And how is a bogus treaty with the Russians a victory for the United States? Tucker shows she has no business writing about arms treaties or the Russians. As one of Tucker's readers comments, after her article: "...can you just stick to writing about things you have a clue about, things like rampant racism in everyone that opposes Obama."

START is no victory for America, offers no "national security," and the Senate and the President should be addressing more pressing issues, such as our debauched currency, the likely downgrade of America's credit rating and the prospect of government insolvency.

It is in fact "unpatriotic," Ms. Tucker, for the Democrats and the President to waste precious time trying to score political points on passage of a worthless arms deal when the United States faces perhaps the deepest fiscal crisis in its history.