[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 170 (Tuesday, October 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H11570]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       REASONS FOR SENDING TROOPS INTO BOSNIA NEED TO BE EXAMINED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Speaker, I certainly applaud the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] in her comments, and her fight against cancer 
and her fight against cancer in this institution as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to join my colleagues to ask the President to go 
to the American people and tell us why we must send troops to Bosnia. 
It is a simple request, but it is one that must be made, and it is one 
that we must have the President address to the American people. I would 
submit, from the calls and comments that I received from the folks that 
I represent in Kansas, that he has not made his case to the American 
people. He has not make his case to the Congress. I sit on the 
Committee on International Relations, and we have heard from several of 
the Secretaries in this administration, and they fail to put forward a 
clear plan, a clear reason, a convincing case, a compelling case, for 
why we should send our young men and women into Bosnia.
  Now it seems to me that we have discovered the way to handle these 
sorts of issues some time ago, and particularly this was exercised 
during the Persian Gulf war when that President, President Bush, 
initially said, well, Congress, I need a vote of the Congress, but then 
there was so much pressure he decided, no, I will get a vote of the 
Congress, and he took his case to the American people, and he explained 
why we needed to be in that region of the world, and explained it 
clearly and concisely, and said here is the reason, here is how we are 
going to go in, here is what we are going to accomplish, here is how we 
are going to get out, and it convinced American people and convinced 
this body. A vote was taken, and a supportive vote was taken, and we 
conducted that engagement very successfully with a great deal of 
support of the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to do that in this situation in the world, in 
Bosnia. The vital interests of the American people have to be explained 
by the Presidency, and it has not been done to date.
  Earlier today a colleague of ours, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Weldon], supplied a certain standard for sending young men and women 
into combat that I thought was a very good one that we should apply 
into this case when the President presents his case as to why we should 
send our troops in

                              {time}  1915

  He asked the question simply this way: Would I be willing to go? 
Would I be willing to send my daughter or my son into harm's way for 
this cause?
  It seems to me that is the same standard we should apply in this 
particular case once we get from the administration what the plan is. 
Why we are going in? What are the strategic and vital interests? And 
that has been taken to the countryside, because maybe then we will be 
convinced that we should be going into Bosnia, we should be protecting 
that region of the world.
  But as of today, we have not seen any compelling case or any real 
case at all from the administration as to why we should go. Why should 
we vote or appropriate the funds or allow the use of funds to send our 
troops into harm's way in that part of the world, when we do not even 
know what our plan is to go in, to occupy, and how to get out, and what 
will we declare as victory once we are there.
  I have a lot of questions of the administration myself. What is the 
deployment strategy we are going to have? Let us take that out to the 
American people. What are the military goals we are going to pursue in 
this particular area? What is the exit strategy?
  Mr. Speaker, I simply ask the President of the United States to do 
what we have learned over years and years of the history of this 
country when we engage in military conflicts, when our young men and 
women can be sent into conflict and some can come home not alive, and 
that is simply this: Take the case to the American people first. 
Explain to the American people first what are our strategic and vital 
interests of why we need to be here. Why do we need to do this? Take it 
there first. And then, Mr. President, come to this body. Come to the 
Congress and ask for a vote of Congress, so each of us in our 
conscience can look and ask ourselves, would I be willing to go? Would 
I be willing to send my son or daughter into harm's way for this cause? 
And then let us have a vote. That is how a democracy should operate. 
That is how we should operate in this particular case.
  I call on the administration to act that way. It is in their best 
interests and the best interests of the American people.

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