[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 6, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE CIVIL WAR IN BOSNIA

                                 ______


                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 6, 1995

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, it is tragic enough that we are being 
driven into the morass of a civil war in Bosnia. The tragedy is 
compounded by the fact that we are driven by a President whose attitude 
on the military was set in the late 1960's. There is no evidence that 
his attitude has changed.
  I have seen no more eloquent commentary on this tragedy than Wesley 
Pruden's column in yesterday's Washington Times. I place it in today's 
Record, and urge everyone to read it.

               [From the Washington Times, Dec. 5, 1995]

                   Cautionary Advice From the Master

                           (By Wesley Pruden)

       ``I did not take the matter lightly but studied it 
     carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more 
     information . . . at hand than I did.
       ``I have written and spoken and marched against . . . war. 
     One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a 
     close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I 
     went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of 
     the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans 
     here for demonstrations . . . .
       ``From my work I came to believe that . . . no government 
     really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have 
     the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a 
     war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, 
     a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the 
     peace and freedom of the nation.''
       Well, of course, that was then, when young Master William's 
     very own rear end was on the line, and a large target it 
     made, too. But this is now, when the only ``incoming'' he has 
     to worry about is the errant lamp thrown across the 
     presidential bedroom. By parties unknown, of course. 
     Hillary's contempt for the men who wear the uniform of her 
     country is well known, too, but like the master, the missus 
     hides it skillfully when the chocolate chips are down, as 
     they were yesterday when she invited reporters into the White 
     House to see all the nice Christmas decorations.
       The boys soon to be at the front occupy the first lady's 
     deepest thoughts. Her dearest wish is for something she and 
     the marching bands, with streamers flying, insist on calling 
     ``the peace process,'' oblivious of the cruelty in the cliche 
     and of what everybody beyond the Beltway understands by 
     instinct, that the Bosnia ``peace process'' is to peace what 
     Velveeta is to fine old Stilton.
       ``I also want everyone in America to support our military 
     personnel who are going into Bosnia in the cause of peace,'' 
     says Miss Hillary. She understands that if our boys can put 
     their lives on the line to level killing fields drenched in 
     the blood of a millennium of ethnic carnage, the most she can 
     do is grit her teeth, suppress her '60s disdain for American 
     soldiers, lately reprised at the Clinton White House, and 
     urge everyone to send the boys at the front a Christmas card.
       She wants Americans to remember the families the troops 
     will leave behind, too. ``People who take risks for peace, 
     which is what we have seen in Northern Ireland or now in 
     Bosnia, need to be supported.''
       Bill and Miss Hillary come late to their regard for the 
     troops, and as sincere as they no doubt are--after months of 
     practice at Miss Hillary's bedroom mirror the president can 
     finally snap off a salute as crisply as any arriving boot at 
     Parris Island--they don't understand that the rest of us need 
     no tutelage in holding our fighting men in deference, honor 
     and even awe. We were doing that when Master William was safe 
     in the embrace of the friendly streets of London, leading 
     cheers for Ho Chi Minh.
       Only in America can commander-in-chief be an entry-level 
     job, but you might think that a president with Mr. Clinton's 
     military background (as governor, he was commander-in-chief 
     of the Arkansas National Guard, and brooked no sloppily 
     filled sandbags when the Ouachita River leaped its banks 
     every spring) would choose discretion, not flamboyance, as 
     his guide. Imagining himself as Henry V at Agincourt, he dons 
     a dashing leather bomber jacket, with the patch of the 1st 
     Armored Division on his breast, for the patrol to the mess 
     hall. But neither patch nor jacket makes him George S. Patton 
     or enrolls him in the happy band of brothers. The gesture 
     inevitably invites his troops to see him as a little boy on a 
     tricycle, waving a stick sword, boasting that his daddy can 
     lick the other daddies.
       Mike McCurry, the president's press man, calls this the 
     ``theme of the week'' strategy, and this president has more 
     themes of the week than Baskin-Robbins has flavors. The 
     president, he says, ``wants to focus on making the 
     humanitarian case'' for sending troops to Bosnia, especially 
     in this ``season of hope.''
       The intended point, in the familiar Clinton tactic, is that 
     anyone who gags and retches at the cynical manipulation of 
     tragedy is naturally someone who opposes humanitarian 
     gestures, who feels no tug at his heart in the season of the 
     Prince of Peace.
       Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri, is one such 
     ogre. He told the House yesterday that the Clinton policy--he 
     was too polite to call it the re-election strategy--``puts 
     our troops in a snake pit while we're angering half the 
     snakes.''
       Snakes abound when you join civil wars, as young Master 
     William tried to tell Col. Holmes at the University of 
     Arkansas in that famous letter of phony piety 30 years ago. 
     Nothing has changed.

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