[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 110 (Monday, July 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9624-S9626]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAILED APPROACH IN BOSNIA
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as the Serbian advance on Srebrenica
continues, the administration, the U.N. bureaucracy, and some of our
allies are busy defending their failed approach in Bosnia. They argue
that the Bosnians are better off if the U.N. forces stay in
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Bosnia, that lifting sanctions on Serbia is the key to peace, that the
Serb air defenses do not pose a threat to NATO air crews--the news from
Bosnia notwithstanding.
In his response to a letter from Speaker Gingrich and me, the
President stated that he believed that the United States must support
the U.N. protection forces' continued presence in Bosnia. He said that
UNPROFOR had played and was playing a ``critical role'' in diminishing
the conflict and was assisting the U.N. high commission on refugees in
providing aid to the Bosnian population.
In order to believe that the United States and European approach in
Bosnia is working, one simply has to play a game I call ``let's
pretend.'' The rules are simple. It goes like this:
Pretend that the U.N. forces are delivering humanitarian aid to those
in need;
Pretend that the U.N. forces control Sarajevo airport;
Pretend that the U.N. forces are protecting safe havens such as
Sarajevo and Srebrenica and that no Bosnians are dying from artillery
assaults and shelling;
Pretend that there is a credible threat of serious NATO
air strikes;
Pretend that the no-fly zone is being enforced;
Pretend that Serbian President Milosevic is not supporting Bosnian
Serb forces;
Pretend that Bosnian Serb air defenses are not deployed against NATO
aircraft and are not integrated into Serbia's air defense system.
Pretend that the rapid reaction force will react forcefully and
rapidly under the same U.N. rules of engagement which have made
UNPROFOR impotent;
Pretend that U.N. forces can stay in Bosnia forever and that we will
never have to contemplate U.N. withdrawal.
Mr. President, if you can pretend all of the above, you can easily
accept the administration's defense. On the other hand, if you react to
reality and do not engage in multilateral make-believe, then you will
not be persuaded by the administration's case. Without taking the time
to review the last year or two or three in Bosnia, let us just look at
the reports from the last week or so:
In Srebrenica, a so-called U.N. designated safe area, Serb forces
overran U.N. observation posts and Serb tanks are within a mile of the
town center--in fact, we have just had a report that they are even
closer than that;
In Sarajevo, the hospital was shelled and more children were
slaughtered;
Information surfaced that Bosnian Serb air defenses are tied into
Belgrade's air defense system;
The no-fly zone was violated and NATO did not respond;
U.N. envoy Akashi assured the Bosnian Serbs that the United Nations
would continue business as usual in the wake of
the downing of U.S. pilot O'Grady and the taking of U.N. hostages.
Mr. President, these are only a few examples of the reality in
Bosnia. It is this reality that should drive U.S. policy. It is this
reality that has moved the Bosnian Government to reassess the U.N.
presence in Bosnia. It is this reality that should prompt us to do the
same.
The fact is that despite the presence of over 25,000 U.N.
peacekeepers and despite the impending arrival of the rapid reaction
force, the Bosnians are still being slaughtered, safe areas are under
siege, and the United Nations continues to accommodate Serb demands and
veto even limited military action designed to protect United States air
crews. The fact is that the United Nations has become one of the means
of securing Serb gains made through brutal aggression and genocide.
As Jim Hoagland aptly pointed out yesterday in the Washington Post,
and I quote,
The war has now reached a point where the U.N.'s value free
equation of Serbs who are willing to kill with Bosnians who
are willing to die cannot be sustained and cannot be allowed
to spread deeper into the Clinton administration which too
docilely accepted Akashi's veto on retaliation. Americans
will no long support humanitarianism based on self-serving
bureaucratic cynicism and fear.
Not my quote but a quote in the Washington Post from Jim Hoagland,
who, I must say, has had a shift in his thinking recently.
The time for make-believe is over. The United Nations mission in
Bosnia is a failure. The Bosnians deserve and are entitled to defend
themselves. The United Nations must begin to withdraw and the arms
embargo must be lifted. Therefore, I intend to take up a modified
version of the Dole-Lieberman arms embargo bill following disposition
of the regulatory reform bill.
Mr. President, I think every day it is worse and worse, if it can
become worse, in Bosnia, particularly for the Bosnians. It seems to me
it is high time to act.
I ask unanimous consent that the entire column in the Washington Post
by Jim Hoagland be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, July 9, 1995]
Bosnia: The U.N.'s Moral Rot
(By Jim Hoagland)
The Serb missilemen who shot down Capt. Scott O'Grady's F-
16 over Bosnia committed attempted murder and got away with
it. After a month, there has been no American retaliation for
an act of treachery that once would have brought the heavens
down on its perpetrators.
Understand why the American government swallowed this
humiliation (without even a serious denunciation of the Serb
politicians in Belgrade who oversaw the shoot-down), and you
understand why the international effort in Bosnia has failed
so miserably--and why it should now be terminated.
A line has been crossed in Bosnia, a line that separates
humanitarian impulse from moral rot; a line that divides
ineffectiveness from dishonor. The United Nations is now on
the wrong side of that line, protecting the Serbs (and the
status quo) from retaliation for having downed O'Grady and
for killing, wounding, imprisoning and harassing British,
French, Spanish, Danish and other soldiers operating in
Bosnia under the U.N. peacekeeping flag.
This can only undermine U.S. and European support for
keeping those troops there and continuing an arms embargo
against Bosnia. It is now embarrassingly evident that in
Bosnia and elsewhere U.N. ``humanitarian'' operations are
guided by bureaucratic dedication to career and organization.
There is no room for justice, or for outrage over the Serbs'
long record of atrocity and betrayal, in the mandate of
Yasushi Akashi.
These are the two straws that break the United Nations'
back in Bosnia:
(1) Akashi, the Japanese diplomat who is Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali's representative in Bosnia, actively
blocked French and British efforts to form outside the U.N.
command a rapid reaction force to strike back at the Serbs
after hundreds of peacekeepers were taken hostage by the
Serbs and then released in June.
The rapid reaction force will be under Akashi's control and
will observe the same peacekeeping rules imposed on the
22,500-man international army already there, Akashi promised
the Serbs in a secret letter disclosed to reporters by the
Bosnian government.
The new troops, like the old troops, will not be permitted
to make distinctions between Serb aggressors, who have
``ethnically cleansed'' Muslim territories and the forces of
the U.N.-recognized Bosnian government trying to regain its
lost lands. If Akashi has his way, the United Nations will go
on equating Serbs who blockade food shipments with Bosnians
who starve because those shipments do not get through.
(2) Following O'Grady's escape, Akashi, with the backing of
France and Russia, vetoed any new bombing raids on the Serbs.
The U.S. Air Force was denied the chastising effect of
retaliation and the preemptive protection of taking out Serb
anti-aircraft missile batteries that are linked to computer
networks controlled from Belgrade.
The chilling hostage-taking changes nothing, except to make
the United Nations command even more timid. The murder
attempt on O'Grady changes nothing except to end effective
enforcement of the no-fly zone over Bosnia. Score in this
exchange: Serbs everything, U.N. nothing.
That is galling, but it is now probably too late to fix.
``You have to respond immediately,'' Sen. John McCain (R-
Ariz.), a fighter pilot in Vietnam and prisoner of war for
5\1/2\ years, told me. ``I don't think you can retaliate a
month or two later and expect to have any effect.''
But McCain also made this telling point: ``We made a
mistake in not publicizing the fact that this shoot-down
could not have happened without the Belgrade computers the
missile batteries are hooked up to. Instead the
administration is constantly sending an envoy'' to negotiate
with Serb President Slobodan Miloseyic--suspected by some in
U.S. intelligence of having given the order both for the
downing of the F-16 and the grabbing of the U.N. soldiers.
This is how moral rot spreads. The United Nations once
served as useful political cover for the major powers, who
wanted to limit their own involvement in the wars of ex-
Yugoslavia. The administration was right to try to minimize
the dangers of rupture within NATO over a unilateral U.S.
lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia.
But the war has now reached a point where the U.N.'s value-
free equation of Serbs who are willing to kill with Bosnians
who are
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willing to die cannot be sustained and cannot be allowed to spread
deeper into the Clinton administration, which too docilely
accepted Akashi's veto on retaliation.
Americans will not long support humanitarianism based on
self-serving bureaucratic cynicism and fear. For better or
worse, American participation in the arms embargo will soon
come to an end and NATO member troops will come out. The war
is going to get bloodier. And the bureaucrats of the United
Nations, who now pursue policies that profoundly offend a
common sense of justice and decency, will not be blameless
for this happening.
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