[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H14145-H14146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             NO VITAL AMERICAN INTERESTS AT RISK IN BOSNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, we are now 8 days away from signing the 
Bosnia accord in Paris. This will seal the deployment of up to 40,000 
troops into the Bosnian theater. That is right. The 20,000 troops that 
have been talked about include only the Army ground personnel in 
Bosnia. It does not include additional U.S. forces in German, the 
Adriatic, the Balkans, or in Italy.
  Mr. Speaker, the President has yet to specify the vital United States 
interests at risk in Bosnia or the detailed and specific plans that he 
promised, the plans to achieve the objective that we have in Bosnia or 
the exit strategy, that he promised to bring our men and women safely 
home. The interests outlined by the President were broad universal 
ideals that would apply anywhere in the world. He made no case for a 
specific deployment in Bosnia. Sad experience has taught us that it is 
easy to send troops in but very difficult for them to accomplish the 
objective after they are there and even more difficult to get out in a 
timely and honorable way.
  Besides all this, it will all be done on borrowed money. We do not 
have the money for it. It is all borrowed money.
  I want to call everyone's attention to an article in today's 
Baltimore Sun. The headline is ``Croats Seen Burning Town That They 
Must Give Back To The Serbs.'' It states that the U.N. condemned the 
scorched earth policy being carried out by the Croatian forces. These 
forces were working in organized burning teams. Mr. Speaker, this 
defies the peace agreement and shows that many in that tragic area will 
not honor it. When rival armies burn each other's towns, I find it hard 
to believe the President's statement that U.S. troops will not be 
entering a combat zone.
  Another article we are mentioning was written by former Secretary of 
Defense Weinberger in this week's edition of the Forbes magazine. He 
asks:

       Is it isolationism or is it failure to accept the burdens 
     of leadership that leads me to conclude that we should not 
     send troops to this ill-stated enterprise? I think neither. 
     The U.S. has always been, and should always be, willing to 
     accept the burdens of keeping peace and maintaining freedom 
     for ourselves and our allies. But when--after two years of 
     fatal, bumbling inaction--we cobble together a paper 
     agreement solving none of the conflicts that started this 
     war, it is simply common sense that opposes deploying any 
     soldiers, U.S. or NATO, to a mission inviting disaster.

  That is the end of the quote. Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more, 
and I submit the entire article for the Record:

                      [From Forbes, Dec. 18, 1995]

           Getting Our Troops Into The Trenches By Christmas

                       (By Caspar W. Weinberger)

       President Clinton's personal pledge to send 20,000 U.S. 
     troops to join 40,000 NATO troops in the Bosnian cauldron 
     invites another foreign policy disaster.
       The Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims have agreed, sort of, 
     that Bosnia will give up 49% of itself to the Bosnian Serbs, 
     who promptly said that that was not enough. The key question 
     that must be answered before we send in our troops is whether 
     there is a peace agreement here that is likely to be kept by 
     all the warring parties. If there is not, any 
     ``peacekeeping'' mission will be futile. Despite chief 
     negotiator Richard Holbroke's hype and President Clinton's 
     speech to the nation, the sad fact is that we have no such 
     agreement.


                              pipe dreams

       The agreement is supposed to create a stable, new 
     ``multiethnic Bosnian country,'' with Sarajevo as its 
     multiethnic capital. The agreement provides for a partitioned 
     Bosnia governed by a federal parliament with control over 
     foreign policy and some economic policy, but having two 
     separate armies, two police forces and separate parliaments--
     all overseen by a rotating collective Bosnian presidency. 
     Even Rube Goldberg couldn't have dreamed up a more complex 
     design than this.
       This agreement accepts the principle of two Bosnias, which 
     is what the Serbs have wanted all along. But within hours of 
     the highly dramatic initialing in Dayton, Bosnian Serb 
     president, Radovan Karadzic, typically wavered back and forth 
     between denouncing the agreement, half-heartedly accepting 
     it, saying that Bosnia's 100,000 Serbs would fight against 
     it, with Sarajevo becoming another ``Beirut,'' and then later 
     saying that maybe he would accept the agreement. Some of 
     Karadzic's behavior may well be explained by the fact that 
     before taking up brutal atrocities and mass murder, Karadzic 
     was a practicing psychiatrist with a record of what is 
     politely called ``instability.'' Physician, heal thyself.
       It is quite true that Serbia's President Slobodan 
     Milosevic--no slouch at committing atrocities himself, but 
     hoping to avoid indictment as a war criminal--has agreed to 
     this arrangement. The very instability the agreement creates 
     will offer Milosevic another opportunity to realize his goal 
     of a Greater Serbia, backed by his Russian allies. We have 
     allowed the Russians to become a part of the ``intervention 
     force,'' but to satisfy their sensibilities they will be 
     allowed to report to U.S. Division Commander, Major 
     General William L. Nash instead of being placed under 
     direct NATO command.
       The 20,000 U.S. soldiers will be deployed along a narrow, 
     2.5-mile-wide strip separating Bosnia's Muslim and Serb 
     armies. If our forces are attacked, they will fight back, 
     even though they are heavily outnumbered. Communications, 
     exit strategies, command and control? Be patient. But if our 
     troops are engaged, Mr. Clinton's prediction of ``some 
     casualties'' will seem modest.
       We have insisted that neither Dr. Karadzic nor that least 
     lovable character, Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, be 
     permitted to have any role in the future because of their 
     indictments as war criminals. But neither Karadzic nor Mladic 
     has agreed to this. General Mladic is renowned for defying 
     all attempts at civilian control of his army, regardless of 
     any agreement. After all, he made and violated 34 cease-fire 
     agreements.
       Is it isolationism or is it failure to accept the burdens 
     of leadership that leads me to conclude that we should not 
     send troops to this ill-starred enterprise? I think neither. 
     The U.S. has always been, and should always be, willing to 
     accept the burdens of keeping peace and maintaining freedom 
     for ourselves and our allies. But when--after two years of 
     fatal, bumbling inaction--we cobble together a paper 
     agreement solving none of the conflicts that started this 
     war, it is simply common sense that opposes deploying any 
     soldiers, U.S. or NATO, to a mission inviting disaster.
     
[[Page H 14146]]



                      two ends against the middle

       Mr. Holbrooke can shout at every camera he finds that 
     Bosnia is not another Vietnam, Lebanon or Somalia. But the 
     parallel with Lebanon is deadly and exact. We dispatched 
     troops to Lebanon to act as a buffer between two states, and 
     innumerable militias that had not agreed to peace or a 
     peacekeeping force. In Bosnia we have a paper agreement that 
     Mr. Milosevic, anxious to save his skin, purported to sign 
     for his former ally, Dr. Karadzic, whose wild and wavering 
     statements after the agreement have made clear that the 
     Bosnian Serbs will most likely fight any intervention force. 
     And since the world has already been told that the U.S. force 
     will be pulled out before next year's U.S. presidential 
     election, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic can wait until 
     November 1996 to try again.

  Mr. Speaker, even though I oppose the deployment, I want to state 
very clearly that I am in full support of the troops, the individual 
people that are going there, doing their duty as they have been 
instructed. These men and women are members of the finest military in 
the world. To put these top combat troops in harm's way doing 
occupation duty is beyond belief, and I call upon the President to stop 
this movement into Bosnia while we can still do so.
  Finally I will encourage everyone to show their support of our troops 
by donating to the individual services relief societies. This is the 
best way to support the children who will be left without a parent at 
this holiday season. In the gulf war there were so many letters to our 
troops that families could not communicate with their mothers and 
fathers. Giving a donation to the relief societies helps the services 
take care of the children separated from their parents because of the 
deployment of American forces abroad.

                          ____________________