Global democracy campaign.

When the Senate convenes in September following its summer recess, it will "consider new legislation that would commit America to ending tyranny the world over," observed the July 27 New York Sun.

Attached to the massive foreign aid bill is a measure called the ADVANCE Democracy Act ("Advance Democratic Values, Address Nondemocratic Countries, and Enhance Democracy Act of 2005"). The measure, which is tantamount to an open-ended declaration of war on any regime deemed unsuitable by Washington, passed the House of Representatives in mid-July by a vote of 351-78.

The bill would instruct the State Department to "use all instruments" at its disposal "to support, promote, and strengthen democratic principles, practices, and values in foreign countries." That mandate is extended to the CIA, the Treasury Department, and other organs of the federal government as well. The State Department would be required to evaluate the democratic credentials of each government. Various agencies would be authorized to work with non-governmental agencies in countries deemed insufficiently democratic to promote regime change.

The act, significantly, is written in explicitly United Nations-friendly language. Section 2, which describes the legislative "findings" supporting the measure, asserts that the rights of mankind "are recognized in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations"; it also claims that "the right to democracy was affirmed as a human right by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on April 27, 1999." The "findings" section also mentions the UN-aligned "Community of Democracies" as a useful forum in promoting the legislation's goals.