[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18925-S18926]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          IF NOT THERE, WHERE?

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, as we continue to discuss the 
Bosnian situation, and we will continue to discuss it long after the 
resolution has been adopted, I came across an editorial in the 
Christian Century by James M. Wall which I ask to be printed in full in 
the Record. It is simple and direct and as powerful a statement as any 
I have read.
  I urge my colleagues to read this thoughtful editorial comment.
  The article follows:

               [From the Christan Century, Dec. 13, 1995]

                          If Not There, Where?

                           (By James M. Wall)

       Two questions must be confronted as Americans consider 
     President Clinton's decision to send 20,000 troops to Bosnia: 
     If we don't commit troops there, where do we? And if not now, 
     when? The world's largest military force is equipped and 
     trained to perform missions of peace as well as to fight 
     wars. The president has been patient--some would say too 
     patient--in deciding when to act in Bosnia. He resisted 
     earlier calls for military action, and worked instead for an 
     agreement between combatants which makes it possible for U.S. 
     troops to go to Bosnia not to fight but to prevent others 
     from fighting. Richard Holbrooke's negotiating team in 
     Dayton, Ohio, worked with representatives from Bosnia, Serbia 
     and Croatia to end a war in which at least 250,000 people 
     have died or are missing.
       The combatants are scheduled to sign the Dayton agreement 
     this month in Paris. President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia 
     was persuaded by NATO air strikes, a punishing economic 
     embargo and military successes by Croatia and the Muslim-led 
     Bosnia government that his goal of a greater Serbia was 

[[Page S18926]]
     unattainable. Resistance to the accord has predictably surfaced among 
     Bosnian Serbs because under terms of the agreement Sarajevo 
     will be under Muslim control.
       Why intervene in Bosnia, and why now? We must first 
     understand that the U.S. is a nation guided by both 
     humanitarian ideals and practical necessities. Our ideals 
     misled us in Vietnam, where we learned the hard way that 
     civil wars are not resolved by outside military force. From 
     our intervention in Somalia we learned that our humanitarian 
     zeal has to be tempered by practical wisdom. We can feed 
     starving people, but we cannot force a political solution on 
     them.
       Since the end of the cold war the U.S. has been the only 
     world power with the ability to secure a peace through 
     whatever means are appropriate. We have the military might to 
     enforce agreements. The question is: Do we have the will to 
     get involved in conflicts far from American shores?
       It was clearly the presence of oil in the Persian Gulf that 
     led President Bush to claim that vital American interests 
     were involved when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The former Yugoslavia 
     contains no oil, and trade with the region is not critical to 
     the U.S. economy. Nevertheless, instability in that region 
     could easily spill over into surrounding countries. It was 
     instability in this region that precipitated World War I, a 
     fact which led Pope John Paul II, during his recent visit to 
     the U.S., to plead with Clinton not to let the century 
     conclude, as it started, with a war over Sarajevo.
       In making his case to the American people and a skeptical 
     Congress, Clinton argued that without U.S. participation the 
     combatants would not have reached the Dayton accord, nor 
     would the European nations in NATO have agreed to supply an 
     additional 40,000 peacekeeping troops to the region. The more 
     persuasive case for U.S. involvement, however, is the harsh 
     reality of the situation: only the commitment of an outside 
     force can keep the warring parties in Bosnia from continuing 
     their mutual slaughter.
       At one level, the U.S. and NATO assignment in Bosnia is to 
     prevent a recurrence of the war that began in 1991. At 
     another level, however, the U.S. and NATO are making 
     themselves available as a peace broker for enemies who must 
     slowly and painfully build a future together. We cannot 
     arrange that future, but we can help stop those who want to 
     determine the future through violence.
       Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out that modern technology has 
     increased our capacity for intimacy even as it provides us 
     with the tools to fight wars that avoid intimacy. We need, as 
     Niebuhr argued more than 50 years ago, to develop ``political 
     instruments which will make such new intimacy and 
     interdependence sufferable.'' Our survival depends on finding 
     a way to accept the ``interpenetration of cultures'' rather 
     than turning to mutual destruction.
       The peacekeeping force that goes to Bosnia will offer only 
     a partial correction of past errors and blatant wrongdoing on 
     the part of several nations and many individuals. We are 
     sending troops to an area that has witnessed ethnic 
     cleansing, torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians, and 
     rape as an instrument of war. We go to the region not to 
     solve problems but to permit Serbs, Muslims and Croats to 
     struggle toward their own solutions. Sending U.S. forces into 
     a region full of generations-old patterns of hatred and 
     aggression is dangerous. But the alternative is worse. If we 
     do not support the peace process, we invite the return of an 
     unceasing war that breeds further hatred and aggression.
       The U.S. is blessed with wealth and resources and the means 
     to act on behalf of others. We may regard this peace mission 
     as we might speak of any effort on behalf of a people in 
     need. We go to Bosnia not to control or dominate others, but 
     to help others to do what they cannot do for 
     themselves.

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