[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 60 (Thursday, April 29, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2525-H2526]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 KOSOVO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, last night's votes on our war were a wakeup 
call to our President, to NATO and to the world. The American People's 
House voted against a declaration of war, against ground troops, and 
also defeated a resolution on a tie vote, even, in support of the 
current air war. That should be a clear message to the world that 
America is in the process of switching the more they learn about this 
ill-conceived war.
  Next week's supplemental defense appropriations bill is in deep 
trouble. How can a Congress vote against a declaration of war this week 
and then the next week turn around and fund it? I want to make sure as 
one of those who is against this war, who started skeptical but has 
turned into someone who feels it is time to aggressively speak out 
before American men and women die on a battlefield in an ill-conceived, 
ill-planned and unwinnable war, that several things are true about this 
supplemental appropriation. Those of us who oppose it are not 
unconcerned about the refugees. Two weeks ago when I was privileged to 
go along with the CODEL over to that area and visited a refugee camp in 
Macedonia, you cannot help but be moved by the terrible stories that 
the individuals are telling about how they have been forcibly removed 
from their country. It is terrible. The question is not whether it 
should pull at your heart and how terrible it is. The question is what 
can we do about it and is this unprecedented? It is wrong when the 
Serbs do it, it is wrong when the Croatians do it, it is wrong when the 
Bulgarians do it, and it

[[Page H2526]]

is wrong when the Bosnian Muslims do it. The question is by inserting 
ourselves can we stop this? Is this the most effective way? And will we 
accidentally create a problem potentially bigger than the problem that 
we went in to solve?
  Secondly, this is not about refugee aid. We should be having a 
separate vote on refugee aid, not refugee aid serving as a cover for 
military appropriations for a continuing war. All of us agree that the 
economies of Albania and Macedonia have been devastated by being unable 
to continue their trade not only with Serbia but the other countries 
around them, by handling the refugees that come in, by having a general 
collapse of their economies by their openness. We need to give aid for 
the refugees, we need to give aid to those countries. That is not what 
this supplemental appropriations bill is about next week. That is 
merely wrapping with it. We will give refugee aid, we will give aid to 
those countries, but I believe it should happen after we have a 
settlement there.
  Thirdly, this is not about replacing military preparedness. This 
President has already proven that whatever we appropriate, he diverts 
to the war. We can appropriate it for this or that, but if he wants to 
continue the war, he is diverting it. We have an obligation if we say 
we are against this war not to hide behind what we are replacing but 
understand he has no conscience as far as how he will divert the money, 
which also leads me to, this is not about military buildup. I am one of 
those who believes we are at least $20 billion behind in military 
preparedness and that is why we need to do it and that is why we must 
as a Republican Congress step up regardless of the budget question and 
address the defense question. But not here. If we put $12 billion, $6 
billion more than he proposed on this bill, what assurances do we have 
that this is not either going to continue the war or be used, even 
worse, for the ground war that we voted against last night? Because 
there are no fire walls that you can put in, particularly if we 
continue to allow reprogramming of money in our leadership that 
protects us from having voted the funds next week to go to a ground 
war.
  It is fine to stand up here as we did last night and say we are 
against a ground war, we are against continuing this air war, we are 
against a declaration of war, but the real thing comes down to the 
money. Next week are we going to stand up and say, ``He can't have the 
money to continue and expand this war. We want to see people come to 
the table in a livable, workable thing''?
  When I was at NATO in Brussels, I had a very weird feeling as I was 
sitting around the table and hearing how we cannot back up, this could 
be terrible and devastating for NATO. This is so much like Vietnam 
where we heard all those things and in fact we got the same deal after 
we had the loss of American lives that we could have had the first day.
  In a very interesting book, ``Taking Charge'' by Michael Beschloss 
about Lyndon Johnson, actual tapes, this is an exchange of Lyndon 
Johnson with Dick Russell, head of the Senate Foreign Relations, 
I believe, at that time.

  ``LBJ: I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and 
Harriman and Vance and all those folks that are dealing with it and I 
would say it pretty well adds up to them now that we've got to show 
some power and some force--that they do not believe--they don't believe 
that the Chinese Communists will come into this thing. But they don't 
know and nobody can really be sure. But their feeling is that they 
won't. And in any event, that we haven't got much choice, that we are 
treaty-bound, that we are there, that there will be a domino that will 
kick off a whole list of others, that we've got to prepare for the 
worst.''
  That is exactly what we are being told here. That is exactly what I 
heard at NATO. ``Oh, we can't back up because we are treaty-bound, we 
are there, it will be a domino.''
  In fact, we stayed in Vietnam. We lost many of my friends, thousands 
of Americans in that battle, and in the end wound up backing up, 
because the problem here is do not bluff, do not make threats that you 
cannot follow through. Our generals have told us, this is unwinnable in 
the air. Those of us who have been over there, those of us who have 
studied any history realize you cannot do a ground war from the south. 
A ground war would have to come from the north. Not only are there huge 
mountains and not only have armies throughout world history been 
stopped in those mountains, you have to come from the north.
  If you come from the north you have Romania and Hungary drawn into 
the war. You have a problem of coming through Belgrade and northern 
Yugoslavia and then us owning northern Yugoslavia as well as the 
autonomous republic of Kosovo.
  It is not winnable on the ground. The American people need to be told 
that if we go to a ground war, between 20 and 50,000 Americans are 
going to lose their lives. We have to understand what we are faced with 
here. We bluffed. We should not bluff when we do not have the ability 
to execute. It is time to cut off the funding for this war.

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