Wrong marching orders for U.S. GIs

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 25, 1995 | by Zoh M. Hieronimus

As a talk-show host, I have the opportunity to speak to an average of A150 people a week, or 6,000 people a year. I cover an enormous range of issues, from the recent tyrannical episodes against American citizens in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, to IRS raids, to subtler shifts in community concerns about the failure of public education, the role of spiritual values, states' rights, institutionalized charity, world trade and individual empowerment evidenced by the million-man march.

The common threads that weave their way through the thousands of dialogues heard live on the Zoh Show are people's sense of a crisis in government, the potential loss of nationhood and the stripping away of our national, state and individual sovereignty. Are their concerns unfounded? Just consider the Army's handling of Spc. Michael G. New, a medic assigned to a battalion in Schweinfurt, Germany (See Insight, Oct. 23.) New was notified "to relieve the Army unit currently performing the Operation Able Sentry mission as part of the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force" in the former Yugoslavia. New, a Persian Gulf War veteran, asked his commanding officers: "By what authority can you force me to wear the U.N. uniform or serve in any military capacity that is not under the authority of the Constitution of the United States?" Many Americans are asking a similar question: Why should any soldier surrender his oath and obligation "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"?

Ronald Ray, a retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel and former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, is representing New pro bono. Ray argues, "There are serious legal questions yet unanswered, not the least of which is the status of soldiers who fall into enemy hands. Technically they appear to be hostages, not prisoners of war, and are unprotected by the Geneva Conventions."

The Constitution makes clear that Congress has the power to declare war and has the plenary power to make the rules governing the land and naval forces. After Congress declares a state of war, the commander in chief directs makes) the war. This ultimate command is a nondelegable authority.

On Oct. 6, 1995, Republican Reps. David Funderburk of North Carolina and Bob Dornan of California, as well as 42 other representatives, demanded that the president provide "a full legal and constitutional analysis of the justification of [his] orders placing members of the U.S. Armed Forces under the `command' of the foreign UN. Officers

According to Ray, "What has happened is that President Clinton has turned the entire U.S. armed forces into a potential U.N. rapid-deployment force. [The president is] trying to say that operational control of our forces is not command. You can't separate one from the other... The parallels between this and Vietnam are chilling. In effect, the president of the United States is placing our armed forces into involuntary servitude ... into a mercenary of a foreign power, the United Nations, who writes the rules of engagement and has strategic direction over our armed forces."

As for the brave 22-year-old American soldier from Conroe, Texas, New is facing trial in a military court for what the Army is calling a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 92; he is charged with failure to "wear the prescribed uniform for the deployment to Macedonia, i.e. U.N. patches and cap, an order which it was his duty to obey... "

In fact, such an order is unlawful and one that should be challenged. Each officer and enlistee takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Ray argues that the Constitution does not allow a soldier to "accept an office from a foreign state or foreign power, without the consent of Congress." Congress has not consented. In fact, every U.S. passport warns that revocation of citizenship can result from taking an oath or declaration to a foreign state.

The media is trying to portray this issue as a "conservative thing," but "the real war," as Ray put it, "is not between right and left, Democrat and Republican. It's between those of us who support the Declaration of Independence upon which the Constitution rests and those that would see our sovereignty diminished and our rights lost."