[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 126 (Tuesday, August 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8069]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ARMS EMBARGO ON BOSNIA

  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, today's vote to lift the arms embargo on 
Bosnia is undeniably an important one. But I would ask my colleagues to 
take a long, hard look at the bigger picture. Lifting the arms embargo 
is an important step and a step that I will support, but I believe we 
should not miss this opportunity to stand up for what we believe in and 
state clearly what we think America's role should be in the Balkans.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that at the current time we have no 
useful role in Bosnia. The fighting is escalating between the various 
parties. The relative calm in eastern Bosnia has now become a war zone. 
The so-called safe havens have proven to be no such thing, and only 
serve to embarrass the United Nations. Leadership has been completely 
vacant during this crisis. Machiavelli said that it is better for a 
leader to be feared than loved. The United Nations has been an utter 
failure every step of the way trying to get the parties to love each 
other. NATO, including the United States, has failed in trying to 
threaten the parties into behaving. And now we want the Bosnian Serbs 
to believe we will bomb them if they do not behave. We have given them 
no reason to believe that we will back up any threat with action. It is 
time for us to pull out before we sacrifice American lives to show we 
mean business.
  How can we let the carnage continue? How can we sit idly by and let 
the ethnic cleansing continue? I hear those concerns over and over 
again, but I must ask in response: What can we do to truly stop the 
fighting? I will make one suggestion, if we, along with our European 
allies, land 500,000
 to 750,000 troops in Bosnia and threaten to shoot anyone who gives 
someone a dirty look or uses harsh language we might be able to stop 
the fighting. Is anyone in this Chamber ready to support that action? 
Neither am I, but I do believe anything short of massive action is 
doomed to failure.

  With that in mind, I would make one further recommendation to my 
colleagues, if a U.N. pullout can be accomplished with the use of only 
25,000 American troops then it can be accomplished without any American 
troops. No mother or father or wife or husband should be forced to 
grieve for a loved one who died because the United Nations was an utter 
and complete failure.
  In my view, we must lift the arms embargo and encourage the United 
Nations to leave Bosnia. We should take every action to limit the 
fighting in the former Yugoslavia. The United Nations, NATO, the 
European Community, and yes, the United States, must provide the 
warring parties every opportunity to reach a negotiated peace. I would 
like to see the fighting stopped, but I do not feel it can be stopped 
without massive intervention.
  Mr. Speaker, I received my foreign policy training in Vietnam in 1968 
and 1969. I know how costly a limited American commitment can mean in 
terms of the lives of young men and women. I know the cost of doing 
things halfway. We have the opportunity to do just that in Bosnia. We 
can take limited actions here and there, and that will be a tragic 
mistake. I would encourage my colleagues to act today and in the future 
to prevent American soldiers from dying because we decided to do 
something halfway.

                          ____________________