St Petersburg Times/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is urging Congress to ratify the United Nations’ Disabilities Treaty, claiming it is needed for American servicemen and women. This is patently false.
Heritage expert Steve Groves writes in RealClearPolicy today:
Perhaps the American people have come to expect less than straight talk from the White House. But blowing smoke that misleads Americans with disabilities—including U.S. veterans badly wounded in combat—crosses a red line even by today’s standards.
The Obama Administration claims this treaty will help Americans with disabilities, including veterans, when they travel abroad. But having the U.S. sign on to this treaty simply would not do this. As Groves says, the treaty’s supporters “would have us believe that human-rights treaties like the [Disabilities Treaty] act as a sort of magic wand—if a treaty says that all signatories must do something good, then presto-chango, it shall be so. But in the real world, human-rights treaties simply don’t work like that.”
Groves cites several other international treaties the U.S. has joined that have not stopped other nations from continuing their human rights abuses. This treaty is no different, he says—other nations will not be automatically changed if the U.S. signs on.
What will happen, however, is that the United Nations will have expanded say over the way America conducts itself. Eroding our country’s sovereignty in this way is an insult to the veterans who have fought to keep America free. Groves notes:
Many of America’s disabled received their injuries fighting to uphold our Constitution and the precious freedoms it guarantees our citizens. They were not fighting so that a committee of foreigners could tell us how we must change our Constitution to suit them.