[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    LIFT THE ARMS EMBARGO IN BOSNIA

  (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I call on the Congress and the administration 
to immediately lift the arms embargo in Bosnia.
  You cannot watch the television and see the slaughter of innocent men 
and women and children there. I know that we will not be sending 
American troops to Bosnia nor do I think that we should.
  But how can we allow the Serbian forces to continue to do what they 
are doing? I would not want my mom or dad or husband or wife or son or 
children's future to be dependent on the United Nations there.
  In the name of God and decency, how can we not lift the arms embargo 
in Bosnia?
  Mr. Speaker, I am including at this point in the Record three 
articles that appear in today's Washington Post by George Will, Jim 
Hoagland, and Peter Maass which deal with this issue.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1994]

                     Wreckage of Feeble Intentions

                          (By George F. Will)

       The slovenly, lethal improvisation of U.S. policy regarding 
     the Balkan civil war has made the United States morally 
     complicit in the carnage while remaining politically impotent 
     and militarily inconsequential. This wreckage of feeble 
     intentions may at least demolish the notion that the United 
     Nations can be a surrogate for U.S. self-determination, or a 
     repository for U.S. sovereignty, or a substitute for a U.S. 
     president.
       The United Nations' fatuous proclamation of ``safe havens'' 
     is mere diplomatic noise, Many cruelties have been inflicted 
     on Bosnians, whose misfortune it is to be in the path of the 
     creation of ``Greater Serbia.'' Among those cruelties is the 
     United Nations' pretense that it can play a role for which it 
     is incurably unsuited, that of peacemaker. There will be no 
     peace until Serbia's appetite for conquest has been slaked, 
     or until Serbia's victims have arms sufficient to produce 
     stalemate.
       When President Bush was asked why the arms embargo should 
     not be lifted so that Serbia's victims could defend 
     themselves or die resisting, Bush flippantly replied that the 
     trouble in the Balkans was not an insufficiency of weapons. 
     Nor, in the same way, was that the trouble when Germany 
     crushed the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. Bush's 
     secretary of state, James Baker, said of the Balkan civil war 
     that ``we don't have a dog in that fight,'' But we now are a 
     bewildered dog in that fight, although we deny we are in it 
     and we continue to defer to those who are holding our leash 
     and pulling us deeper in.
       A Japanese diplomat named Akashi, representing an Egyptian 
     civil servant named Boutros-Ghali who is hired by the 
     governments represented in the United Nations, decided with a 
     British general named Rose, that U.S. aircraft assigned to 
     NATO would drop a few bombs on inconsequential targets. The 
     investment of U.S. prestige was inversely proportional to the 
     force involved, and the exercise was of a fecklessness not 
     seen since the Bay of Pigs. Where, one wonders, is Congress?
       During the Cold War, the presidency acquired a 
     constitutionally anomalous independence regarding foreign 
     policy, but Congress constantly skirmished with presidents 
     about involvement in decisions about uses of force. Now that 
     the hair-trigger U.S.-Soviet standoff has passed, Congress 
     could prudently, and in accord with constitutional 
     assumptions, become more assertive.
       This president does not disguise the fact that he would 
     rather be, and usually is, thinking of things other than 
     foreign policy. His lack of interest has translated into a 
     casual willingness for U.S. force, military and moral, to be 
     tangled up in lines of authority (Akashi, Boutros-Ghali, 
     Rose) resembling linguine.
       His desire to keep America distant from a civil war--a war 
     America might not be able to influence without an investment 
     of force and prestige disproportionate to America's 
     interest--is defensible. But his indefensible pretense that 
     America must be a mere partner of that moral cipher, the 
     United Nations, which pretends to represent that political 
     fiction called ``the world community,'' is producing the 
     entanglement the president wants to avoid.
       Ejup Ganic, Bosnia's vice president, says to Americans. 
     ``You have to reverse the results of ethnic cleansing if you 
     want a stable peace. . . [Otherwise you might send your 
     troops one day to keep results of ethnic cleansing.'' If the 
     United States is called upon to keep its promise to send 
     thousands of soldiers for ``peace-keeping,'' the United 
     States will indeed wind up ratifying the results of Serbia's 
     war crimes.
       Enforcing a peace produced by Serbian brutality is 
     unappetizing; doing what Bosnia's government wants is 
     unthinkable. Ganic says that until land seized by Serbia is 
     returned to Serbia's victims, his government cannot sign a 
     peace pact. Asked if he was asking NATO to ``reverse Serbian 
     conquests'' because his government lacks sufficient military 
     force to do so, he says: ``You took that force from us 
     because you introduced an arm embargo on Bosnia; you put our 
     hands tied and you create this outcome. Either reverse the 
     outcome or give us weapons we can do by ourself.''
       If U.S. forces someday participate in patrolling a 
     partitioned Bosnia, the line of partition should reflect some 
     results of armed Bosnian self-defense rather than merely the 
     satiation of Serbia's appetite for conquest over people whose 
     crippled capacity for self-defense is a casualty of a lunatic 
     notion of ``evenhandedness'' that only the United Nations 
     could consider just and only a president in full flight from 
     responsibility could cling to.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1994]

                          Not-so-Great Powers

                           (By Jim Hoagland)

       Depicted in diplomatic cables and news dispatches as 
     psychopaths commanding a ragtag militia, the ``generals'' who 
     lead Bosnia's Serbs have inflicted a severe embarrassment on 
     the politicians who presume to lead the world. Mafia dons 
     would not have stood for the dishonor and disrespect that the 
     international community's presidents and diplomats swallowed 
     this week.
       ``General'' Mladic called the bluffs of Bill Clinton, Boris 
     Yeltsin, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and their aides on the 
     battlefield of Gorazde. The Serbs have proved once again they 
     are despicable, blood-thirsty thugs. They are also the only 
     players in the Bosnia tragedy who know what they want and how 
     to get it.
       Paradoxically the creeping Serb victory in Bosnia could 
     inflict greater immediate political damage on Yeltsin, 
     Serbia's nominal ally, and on Boutros-Ghali than it does on 
     the Western leaders who dragged the Russian president and the 
     U.N. secretary general into this conflict.
       The American president stays in tune with public opinion 
     and with the non-interventionist mood of the Pentagon by 
     resisting significant American involvement in the Bosnian 
     war. He clings to the rhetorical high ground by talking about 
     lifting the arms embargo that penalizes Bosnia's Muslim 
     government in its war with the Serbs, while refusing to adopt 
     or outline a strategy that would give validity to that 
     alliance-straining step.
       Such a strategy could be devised. But it requires making 
     some tough choices, rather than letting wishful thinking and 
     rhetoric dominate the American approach to Bosnia.
       After the Serbs predictably responded to last week's 
     limited use of American air power around Gorazde by 
     escalation, Clinton countered by calling White House meetings 
     to search for ``new options''--thereby acknowledging that he 
     had not though through the probable battlefield consequences 
     of the air raids before they occurred.
       Clinton spent most of Tuesday closeted in the White House 
     with his principal foreign affairs advisers searching for a 
     way to rescue American credibility. Their conversations 
     reportedly centered on using air power to prevent the other 
     U.N.-protected areas from meeting the same fate as Gorazde.
       The president is not managing this crisis in the same time 
     frame in which it is occurring. He lets events determine 
     where he will go. He deliberately builds time lags into his 
     responses, as if hoping that events will narrow the 
     admittedly unpleasant options he faces, or at least deflect 
     criticism onto others.
       For days before the climactic assault began, the Serbs were 
     known to be shifting artillery and other weapons out of the 
     Sarajevo theater into the hills around the U.N.-declared 
     ``safe haven'' of Gorazde. The American, U.N. and NATO 
     response was to stand by and count on Russian diplomacy to 
     save Gorazde.
       But that was miscalculation. The Russians now acknowledge 
     they cannot deliver the Serbs to the negotiating table. 
     Yeltsin thus appears ineffectual on the international scene 
     and at home, where he is strongly criticized by extreme 
     nationalists for letting the Serbs be bombed in the first 
     place.
       Yeltsin's independent-minded Balkans negotiator, Vitaly I. 
     Churkin, on Monday blistered the Serbs for systematically 
     ``lying'' to him about their actions in Gorazde: ``The time 
     for talking is over. The Bosnian Serbs must understand that 
     by dealing with Russia they are dealing with a great power 
     and not a banana republic.''
       But it is easy to understand why the Bosnian Serbs do not 
     understand that. Why should they? They have just shown they 
     are dealing with great powers that do not have the resolve or 
     unity of purpose to prevent Ratko Mladic from overrunning 
     Gorazde, a town of 30,000 refugees the United Nations has 
     solemnly declared to be under its protection.
       In the Bosnian war, the ``great powers'' are not so great. 
     The citizens of a large country should worry when their 
     diplomats feel compelled to insist that they do not live in a 
     banana republic. Churkin's defensive declaration contains a 
     kernel of admission that Russians will not miss.
       Russian-American cooperation, already under strain, is 
     likely to suffer significant new damage if the Bosnian 
     endgame continues in this manner. Moscow and Washington are 
     already blaming each other for the failure in Gorazde and 
     will escalate that criticism if the Bosnian debacle deepens.
       Avoiding such damage should be a priority of the Clinton 
     administration. That argues for Clinton's joining the 
     Europeans in a Realpolitik solution of accepting the Serb 
     victory in Bosnia and shutting this war down now. That in 
     turn means dropping the smoke-screen talk of lifting the arms 
     embargo, while negotiating the best surrender terms possible 
     for the vanquished Bosnian Muslims.
       Arming the Muslims now is a lost cause. But there is an 
     alternative strategy to surrender. Once the fighting in 
     Bosnia dies down it is certain to resume in the Serb-held 
     portions of Croatia. Lifting the embargo, or simply ignoring 
     it, makes sense only if the United States is ready to start 
     arming Croatia to fight the Serbs in a war to the finish.
       The Croatia option is a bloody route that will certainly 
     drive the Russians into bitter opposition to American policy. 
     The only thing I can think of that would be worse would be 
     continuing the present confused policies that seem to be 
     based on spreading false hopes and meaningless promises to 
     get the administration through the next news cycle.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1994]

                    Lesson for a Younger Generation

                            (By Peter Maass)

       Budapest.--When politicians and generals discuss Bosnia, 
     they often have Vietnam on their minds. Their warnings about 
     quagmires, mission creep and the shortcomings of air strikes 
     relate to Vietnam and the lessons that we should have learned 
     from it. But they are ignoring the most relevant lesson of 
     all: A government that is deceptive and acts immorally will 
     undermine its credibility with the governed, particularly the 
     younger generation.
       Every generation has its watersheds. For George Bush's 
     generation, it was World War II and the Cold War. For Bill 
     Clinton's, it was Vietnam and Watergate. I am 33 years old, 
     which nestles me amid the Xers and Yuppies, and for us Bosnia 
     is turning into a watershed of disillusion. By opening 
     himself up to justified criticism about hypocrisy and 
     appeasement, President Clinton is deepening the apathy of 
     younger Americans who want a government they can respect and 
     believe in.
       It might be true that most members of my generation 
     couldn't find Bosnia on a map, let alone Gorazde. But you 
     don't need to understand Balkan politics to realize that our 
     government has failed to accomplish the bare minimum, which 
     is to do what it says it will do--not what it should do, but 
     what it says it will do--on an issue that it has defined as 
     one of good vs. evil. The goal of rolling back the Serbs was 
     long ago abandoned, but at least, we were assured last year, 
     America and its allies at the United Nations would protect 
     six ``safe areas''--Gorazde, Zepa, Srebrenica, Sarajevo, 
     Tuzla, Bihac.
       Now it's one down, five to go.
       The sad story of Bosnia's demise, presided over by America 
     and its allies, is not new. The imminent fall of Gorazde, a 
     U.N. safe haven that is now one of the most deadly places on 
     earth, is just another nail in its coffin, hammered into 
     place by the Serbs and observed by the rest of the world. But 
     because Gorazde's fall is so spectacular in the amount of 
     media coverage it is receiving, and in the obvious disarray 
     of President Clinton's laughable policy for containing the 
     Serbs, Americans of all ages are getting a subversive, though 
     perhaps accurate, message on the evening news: Their 
     government is incompetent and immoral.
       Disillusion is not new to my generation. We've had 
     Watergate, Ollie North and Iran-contra, some bad times in the 
     job market and, more recently, Whitewater. But even during my 
     hypercritical days a decade ago as editorial page editor of 
     the student newspaper at the University of California at 
     Berkeley, I thought the government could do good things.
       But now Bosnia. The allied response to two years of 
     aggression and murder is to drop a half-dozen bombs on the 
     Serbs, three of which don't explode. We knocked out one tank, 
     a couple of armored personnel carriers and a tent. The 
     foreign policy experts talk about America's loss of 
     credibility on the global stage. I tend to worry about 
     something more intimate, about the loss of credibility 
     between America's government and governed. An important bond 
     is being frayed, and this increases my worries about the 
     future of my country.
       My hometown, Los Angeles, has endured sufferings in the 
     past year that are almost biblical--fire, floods, earthquake. 
     It non-biblical tribulations include high unemployment, 
     gruesome crime, race riots and urban decay. Is America in a 
     tailspin? I don't know. Nobody does. But we all know that it 
     needs to get moving again. That can't happen unless people 
     have hope, and unless they have a government that they trust.
       I am living overseas, so it might seem unwarranted for me 
     to talk about ``my'' generation. But I visit America often 
     enough to stay in touch. And thanks to the wonders of 
     satellite television, I watch American network news before 
     going to sleep--I probably see it more often than my peers in 
     the United States. I'm also part of the cyber crowd, so every 
     day I log to Compuserve and browse through the ``Global 
     Crises'' bulletin board, a computer talking shop for 
     important world issues, such as Bosnia.
       When people post messages on the ``Global Crisis'' bulletin 
     board, they have undramatic headlines such as ``Serb Attack 
     on Gorazde.'' The messages are often interesting and 
     provocative. Over the past few days, I noticed that new 
     people, not the ``regulars,'' are posting messages. Gorazde 
     has touched them. Today there was an unusual headline on a 
     long message posted by a newcomer who couldn't believe 
     America was standing on the sidelines. The headline was 
     simple: ``Pain so Deep in the Soul.''
       The failure to protect Gorazde crystallizes and deepens the 
     American government's failure over the past two years (a 
     failure that was nursed into life by a Republican 
     administration). President Clinton could have stood up to the 
     Serb attack on Gorazde and, in a small way, re-fired our 
     trust in government to do the right thing, or at least try 
     to. He managed to regain a bit of credibility by staring down 
     the Serbs over Sarajevo earlier this year. But with Gorazde, 
     he has fallen flat on his face. Our disillusion grows with 
     each Serb shell that hits Gorazde's hospital.

                          ____________________