[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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]

 
                    BOSNIA--A CLEAR COURSE OF ACTION

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the 
ongoing slaughter in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  A year ago, I spoke in this Chamber about the outrage of ethnic 
cleansing, but the killing goes on. There seemed a brief respite after 
that mortar shell slammed into the open market in Sarajevo, killing 
scores of innocent shoppers. Now that terrible slaughter has moved to 
Gorazde in defiance of its designation by the United Nations as a safe 
zone.
  Despite my hope that this conflict will be settled peacefully through 
negotiations, I am not optimistic following recent actions by the 
Serbs.
  Therefore, I concur with the President that NATO should step up air 
strikes against Serb artillery and end its targeting of yet another 
U.N. safe haven crowded with refugees.
  Clearly, without denying the very humanity that is the soul of our 
democratic heritage, we cannot stand back and let the carnage continue.
  Through the United Nations, with our NATO allies, the United States 
must lay out a clear course of action that, in addition to increased 
air strikes, should carry the possibility of stricter economic 
sanctions on the unyielding Serbs and lift the arms embargo that 
cripples the struggle of Bosnian Moslems to defend themselves.
  In the past, NATO has yield considerable moral credibility by its 
slow reaction in the face of the bloodshed in Bosnia.
  And clearly the United States' own national conscience suffers in any 
prolonged twilight of inaction. Our self-confidence as a Nation is 
sapped when we watch children die and hospitals shelled and survivors 
cower by the gravesides fearful of yet another mortar burst. In our 
minds, we can almost hear the whine of the next incoming round, and we 
shudder, knowing that when we do take a strong stand, as happened in 
the wake of the shelling of the Sarajevo market, the Serbs cease their 
killing and talk of negotiations. When confronted with the possibility 
of strong air strikes at Sarajevo, the Serbs agreed to a cease-fire and 
even turned in some of their artillery.
  But at Gorazde, first the United States sent mixed signals. Then, 
limited strikes, confined to a few aircraft and trifling targets, were 
seen by the Serbs for what they were, a bluff, and they calculatingly 
called it and intensified their assault on the city.
  The darker forces that revel in race hatred and paranoid nationalism 
see weakness on the part of NATO as an open invitation to ready their 
weapons for new campaigns of ethnic cleansing.
  The terrible tragedy of Bosnia is not only the mangled victims of 
almost 2 years of uninterrupted bloodshed within its borders, but the 
prospect that the violence may spread to other provinces of the former 
Yugoslavia and then beyond--to other nations where racial tensions are 
high and self-governance is weak.

  The Balkans have always been a powderkeg, and so is the crescent of 
former Soviet republics from the Caspian to the borders of China.
  As a nation, we must not embolden strutting demagogues in other lands 
to believe they are immune from international condemnation and forceful 
constraint.
  The weak alibis of Munich in 1938 about faraway lands about which we 
know nothing did not spare the world from greater bloodshed, but merely 
encouraged a madman to further conquest.
  Consequently, I believe our Nation and its NATO allies must make 
clear to the Serbs that airstrikes will be intensified unless the siege 
at Gorazde is lifted. It is time to make Gorazde the symbol of the 
seriousness with which NATO views the sanctity of U.N. designated safe 
havens.
  Token strikes against small targets have been brushed aside, whereas 
direct missions against artillery emplacements, command posts, 
ammunition dumps and principal troop assembly areas could not be 
ignored.
  The bombing of their hillside encampments would be a clear and 
forceful warning to the Serbs that additional pressures, including the 
increased economic sanctions against their country and the potential 
lifting of the arms embargo to the embattled Bosnian Moslems, will be 
brought against them until they end their murderous rampage and agree 
to go to the peace table.
  These steps will bring profound pressures on the Serbian militants to 
cease their killing and, if rationality prevails, to seek peace.
  These steps, of course, must be carefully coordinated with our 
allies, which have some 28,000 troops on the ground in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina and whom we do not wish to place in harm's way.
  A precise, step by step, intensification of pressures--first the 
ultimatum to end the siege, which if ignored would trigger air strikes 
against military targets, initially the artillery positions, ammunition 
depots, and command and control centers--constitute a measured formula 
for containing the violence and letting cooler heads prevail in the 
peace process.
  As President Clinton has vowed, we do not want to see American or 
allied troops dragged into a ground war in the Balkans. But as history 
has taught us, it is better to take preventive action rather than doing 
little or nothing until we find ourselves engulfed in a large 
conflagration.
  I stand ready to support our President in his effort to bring peace 
to the Balkans.
  The world, in 1938, turned its back on Hitler, and he took license to 
plunge the world into war and genocide.
  The United States, in 1994, cannot turn its back on genocide. Nor can 
we and our NATO allies risk the whirlwind that inaction and 
indecisiveness can bring about.

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