[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H1576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PRESIDENTIAL DECISION-MAKING RELATED TO KOSOVO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LEACH. Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the issue of presidential 
decision-making related to Kosovo.
  Sometimes the challenge of leadership is to recognize that restraint 
at the outset is a better policy than entanglement at the end.
  The Balkans are a caldron of conflict based on a history of 
internecine violence of which we on this side of the Atlantic have 
little understanding or capacity to ameliorate.
  Policy in such a circumstance should be designed to avoid being 
caught up in destructive dissensions which are beyond our ken and 
beyond our control.
  There may be a humanitarian case for intervening on the ground in 
Kosovo as part of a small NATO peacekeeping operation. But this case 
disintegrates if we unleash air power against one of the sides. In the 
wake of air strikes, we will be barred forever from a claim to the kind 
of neutral status required of a peacekeeping participant. More 
importantly, it is strategic folly to assume civil wars can be calmed 
by unleashing violence from 30,000 feet.
  Teddy Roosevelt once admonished ``to speak softly but carry a big 
stick.'' At risk to the public interest, this President has taken a 
different tack. He has raised the rhetoric, threatening one side that 
air strikes will occur if it does not capitulate, and allowed a war 
criminal, Slobadan Milosovic, to force his hand.
  Now, in part because White House threats are either not being taken 
seriously or are viewed as potentially counterproductive, Milosovic has 
put the President in a position of advocating air strikes in order to 
keep his word, even though their effect may be more anarchistic than 
constraint.
  The world will little note nor long remember what most Presidents say 
most of the time. But people from every corner of the earth are taking 
stock of what appears to be a too-ready trigger hand on cruise missiles 
and air power.
  A question worth pondering is whether use of such power in East 
Africa and Afghanistan, for instance, precipitates or diminishes 
efforts by destabilizing powers to build weapons of mass destruction 
and missile delivery systems for themselves.
  Meanwhile, the case for unleashing a military strike in order to make 
a meaningful threat meaningful should be reconsidered.
  It is time to disengage pride and review circumstance. It is time to 
stop being a bully in the use of the bully pulpit.

                          ____________________