[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 4, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2610-H2611]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CRISIS IN 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 week we had a historic symbolic vote on 
the war. This House voted against ground troops. We also voted against, 
in a tie vote, a resolution to support the air war. This week we have 
the real vote. Are we going to fund the war? Are we just talk or are we 
going to actually cut off the funds for the war?
  There are three goals that have consistently been stated by NATO and 
by our government. One is to degradate the military forces or 
sufficiently degrade the military forces of the Yugoslav government so 
that we can move hundreds of thousands of refugees back, and then 
manage it with a peacekeeping force. I would put forth that anybody who 
has listened to any of the military briefings we have had, who have 
listened to the public reports, understand fundamentally that this is 
an unachievable goal. Milosevic understands that. When are the American 
people going to be told the truth, that our fundamental goals are 
unachievable?
  First off, the military has been saying all the way along, this 
cannot be accomplished just by an air war. They are hopeful that they 
can bring him to the table, but what do they mean when they say this 
cannot be accomplished just by an air war?
  He has dug in, he is fighting in mountainous terrain, he has supplies 
that are going to last him an extended period of time, and we read just 
last week that our military says that after 30 days of bombing, we have 
a net degradation of his military forces of zero. That does not mean 
that we have not impacted his long-term ability to wage war, we have 
blown up a lot of factories so he cannot reproduce, we have reduced 
some of the supply of gasoline

[[Page H2611]]

into the country but he only needs 10 percent and they are saying 
currently that 75 percent of their oil supplies are still there, we 
have only degraded 25. Three weeks ago they told us we had degraded 35, 
2 weeks ago 30, now it is 25. We are headed the wrong direction.
  They say, well, that is because of bad weather. The Balkans, when you 
read history books, always has bad weather. Furthermore, mountains in 
this time of year always have bad weather. This was no surprise. The 
Apache helicopters were not designed to go in to take out tanks. They 
were designed to go in with American forces on the ground as support. 
We are going to lose a lot of pilots and not accomplish our goal if we 
are not careful with how we use Apache helicopters.
  The American people need to understand the air war cannot solve the 
problem of getting the refugees back. The ground war cannot, either. A 
fundamental map, and you cannot see a lot of the details with this map 
but fundamentally you can tell one thing right away, there is lot of 
brown and yellow down here. This is Albania, this is Macedonia, and 
here is Kosovo.
  Now, to force your way in there, you have to go through mountains of 
8,000 feet. That is why the Ottoman Empire stopped when it came in 
here. That is why Hitler could not make it through this part. There is 
no way we can put ground troops in through Albania or Macedonia or come 
in through Thessaloniki because, A, they do not want us to go through 
there but, B, even if they wanted to and even if we rebuilt airports 
and even if we built more roads through the mountains, we are not going 
to dislodge him through the mountains. It does not work.
  Our military understands. Any general who has ever looked at this 
understands that if you have a ground war, you are coming through the 
top where all this green area is. That is where invasions of the 
Balkans have always occurred. But now we are not just talking a few 
thousand troops, we are talking potentially 400,000 troops, potentially 
all or mostly American troops, a minimum, according to estimates, of 
20,000 dead up to 50,000 dead, and having to fight our way through 
Belgrade and Yugoslavia.
  The people need to understand this is not just a magic little war 
where we are going to drop a few bombs and he is going to surrender. 
The truth needs to be told. Those who advocate a ground war and those 
who advocate an air war need to explain, it is not going to deliver. 
The only hope is to get him to the table. We have to have the courage. 
Before we pass a bill this week, if we do, we should first try to take 
the funds out. I will have a series of amendments and other Members 
will, too, to take the funds out to continue this war.
  I know some people are concerned that the President is then going to 
blame Congress for having lost the war. I tried to explain, we did not 
lose the war. It was an ill-conceived war. We bluffed something that we 
cannot deliver. We saw this in Vietnam. We saw it with the Russians in 
Afghanistan. We cannot win this on the ground or in the air alone 
without multiple years and destruction beyond imagination, and then we 
are still just bogged down.
  The bottom line is this. If we give him $12.9 billion, this current 
President, then he could potentially, without a lot of protection for 
this bill, divert it to the ground war without ever coming to Congress. 
This is not just the $3.3 billion to continue the war. While our intent 
is to rebuild a military that he has devastated, our good intent could 
be used to fund a war, an expanded war where thousands of lives are 
lost, where the negotiated settlement in the end is just like the 
negotiated settlement we would have roughly had in the beginning.
  If we get blamed this week because we stopped the funding and the 
President of the United States says the Republicans stopped the war, 
which would be untrue because it was an ill-conceived war in the first 
place, so what? If we saved American lives, that is what we are here to 
do, not to play politics.
  At this point it is the job of this Congress to stand up and say, we 
know, both from the public statements and our private briefings that 
this cannot be accomplished. It is time to get to the table, because at 
most what we are arguing about is how to divide Kosovo at this point. 
It is not even clear in the end that we are going to have a better 
arrangement than we had in the beginning because now after all this 
bombing, after the Kosovars are legitimately upset about the slit 
throats, the massacres and so on, they want to be independent.
  What are we going to tell the Palestinians when they want to be 
independent? And what are we going to tell the Kurds when they want to 
be independent? And what about the subsections of India? And what about 
the Chechnya area of Russia?

                              {time}  2000

  Are we going to intervene all over and, all of a sudden, have a new 
international policy because we got in a bad war with an ill-conceived 
strategy? And if we continue this, and we continue to fight this and we 
continue to put the money in, we only dig ourselves deeper in more 
graves.
  It is time for this Congress to stand up and say:
  ``Get to the table now. We're not going to fund this war. It's 
unwinnable. The settlement you are going to get now is probably as good 
a settlement as we're going to get later, only with fewer Americans' 
lives lost, with fewer dollars spent and with less international 
problems than if we settle it right now.''

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