[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 142 (Friday, October 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H12298-H12299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREIGN POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Engel] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity to comment 
on a couple of things that have been said over the course of the past 
few days. First of all, I want to comment on the ridiculous and 
intemperate remarks made by Governor Bush of Texas with regard to the 
Yankees and Bronx, NY, which I am proud to represent.
  When asked if he would be coming to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees 
play, he made a remark about if he came he would have to carry his gun. 
I think that that is a remark that ill behooves a Governor of a great 
State and, quite frankly, if Governor Bush had cared as much about 
taking guns out of the hands of criminals and perhaps controlling, 
having some kind of gun control instead of signing legislation that 
allows people to carry concealed weapons, perhaps the streets would be 
safer for all of us.
  I would invite him to come to the Bronx, where crime has dropped 
tremendously; in fact, as the mayor of New York, who is a Republican, 
has pointed out, that New York City has led the way. There has been a 
reduction in crime across the country. I think President Clinton 
deserves credit, Congress deserves credit, and local officials deserve 
credit. But New York City has led the way in the drop in crime, and so 
has Bronx, NY. And so I just think that Governors ought to think about 
what they say before they go shooting their mouths off and making 
intemperate remarks.
  I also wanted to comment on some of the remarks made by Senator Dole 
the past couple of days where he has been very critical of President 
Clinton's foreign policy. I want to say that I think that the 
President, certainly over the past couple of years, has shown great 
leadership in terms of foreign policy. One only needs to look around 
the world.
  One needs to look at Bosnia, where ethnic cleansing was going along 
until the United States stepped in firmly and stopped it. Has 
everything been a 100 percent success? Nothing is 100 percent success, 
but we know under President Clinton's leadership we have ended most of 
the killing in Bosnia and the United States has shown leadership and 
only the United States can show that type of leadership.
  In the Middle East, we saw the accords signed and we saw a potential 
unraveling of the peace accords in the

[[Page H12299]]

Middle East. It took a great courage, in my opinion, for President 
Clinton to have called Mr. Arafat and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 
and King Hussein to the White House to try to get calmer heads to 
prevail, to try to start a dialog, to try to ensure that the peace 
process is put back on track. That was done 5 weeks before his 
reelection. I think that took an inordinate amount of courage for him 
to do it.
  As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, what else do you expect the 
President of the United States to do? He tried to bring the parties 
together. That is what he has done in terms of his leadership.
  In Iraq, I was one of those Democrats that broke with my party and 
supported President Bush on the Persian Gulf war. Frankly, if President 
Bush's administration had done the job it was supposed to do, we would 
have been rid of Saddam Hussein. Many of us could not understand why he 
was allowed to stay in power after American triumphs in the Persian 
Gulf war.
  And so now I think it ill behooves Senator Dole and others to point 
fingers and criticize when, quite frankly, during those days leading up 
to the Persian Gulf war, when this House had the great courage and the 
Senate did as well to pass my resolution declaring Jerusalem the 
undivided capital of Israel, it was Senator Dole back in those days of 
1990 who criticized it, said he had been to Arab capitals and all the 
Arab leaders wanted to talk about was this terrible resolution which 
should not have been passed. One of the so-called Arab leaders that he 
spoke with in those days traveled to Baghdad and spoke with Saddam 
Hussein and was very concerned about what Saddam Hussein thought.

                              {time}  1445

  And then several months later we were battling him in the Persian 
Gulf; so frankly I do not think that Bob Dole is in any kind of 
position to criticize President Clinton in that regard.
  Northern Ireland; we can go on and on. The President has tried very, 
very hard to say that the United States needs to play a leadership 
role, I think in world affairs. And again Senator Dole when he was here 
was cutting back foreign aid, cutting back American involvement 
overseas.
  I think we make a terrible mistake if we move back to the 
isolationist policies, as friends of my friends on the Republican side 
of the aisle seem to think, moving back 100 years ago. When communism 
collapsed, suddenly many of my friends on the other side of the aisle 
did not think the United States ought to play a role, a major role, in 
world affairs. I think we need to be engaged if we are the leaders of 
the world, the leaders of the free world and the leaders of the world 
as we are. Then with leadership comes responsibility. No one anointed 
us the leader of the world; we claim that mantle, and we ought to act 
that way.
  So I think we ought to be helping these countries, we ought to be 
doing what we can. We cannot be the policemen of the world, but we need 
to pick and choose and show American determination and American 
leadership, and that is what this President has done, and that is why I 
support him.

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