[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 11, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2962-H2963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         DIFFICULT VOTE FOR CONGRESS ON EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL

  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 and probably again either Thursday 
of this week or early next week we will have one of the most difficult 
votes that a Congress can cast, and that is on our emergency 
supplemental.
  It might be called a war-plus bill. It is not just to forward fund 
the war, because there are over $3 billion to forward fund the war; and 
it is not just monies that could escalate the war, because there are 
multiple categories in this bill, including money intended to rebuild 
our national defense that could, in fact, expand this to a ground war, 
and the motion to limit that was defeated.
  So this, in fact, is not just a funding bill for the war, however, 
because it also includes important funds to rebuild what has been a 
devastating number of years on our military, where we do not have the 
readiness and where we have sent troops into battle without being 
properly prepared and without the munitions necessary. We have weakened 
ourselves around the world, and I realize that.
  It also has important funds for our agricultural catastrophes, and it 
may even have things for Hurricane Mitch and the victims of the 
earthquake in Colombia in this bill. It has a pay boost for our 
veterans.
  But, ultimately, this is a vote on war. And that becomes a very 
difficult subject for Members of Congress to handle in their districts 
because, in fact, we have troops on the ground, and none of us want to 
be perceived as weakening them and putting them in the battle without 
adequate supplies. At the same time, many of us have strong 
reservations about this war, that, in fact, it is not winnable and, in 
fact, we are putting our soldiers' lives unnecessarily at danger by 
continuing to fund this war.
  I have been regularly visiting high schools and elementary schools in 
my district since the first of the year as part of the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce efforts to look at the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act. And when I talk to students, whether about the 
drug-free school program or school violence, inevitably the war comes 
up. Because many of them are concerned that they may soon become 
involved in this, especially if it expands to a ground war and we 
should have to resort to a draft, which in fact we might have to do if 
we need 400,000 troops.
  The question I get regularly asked, since I express my skepticism 
that this war cannot be successful and we have had a poor strategy, is 
how do we stop genocide and the ethnic cleansing around the world if in 
fact we do not fight this war; and what are we to do to show our 
disapproval if we do not go to war? These are difficult questions but 
not easily addressed or solved merely by saying, therefore, we are 
going to bomb everybody who we disagree with or who we think has 
committed genocide.
  Clearly, this has been a problem in the past. It has happened in 
Turkey vis-a-vis the Armenians. We watched the Communists overrun 
Hungary. And many of us, I was only 6 years old at the time of the 
Hungarian revolution, but many Americans felt we should have intervened 
at that point.

[[Page H2963]]

  But there are certain things in American history we have said that 
are criteria for when we get involved in these type of conflicts. One 
is generally that it has to cross international boundaries. This 
question is complicated here because it is inside a nation, albeit an 
autonomous subsection of that nation or at least an area we believe 
should be autonomous.
  We have also historically argued that there has to be a clear 
national interest. And the only clear national interest here is the 
instability of Europe; and, quite frankly, what we have seen is that 
every week this war goes on, Europe is becoming less stable and the 
agreement will be less good. In other words, our peak in American 
interest agreement was before we started bombing. Every week the 
bombing has continued, the agreement in the end will be worse.
  The agreements that are now on the table we could have had several 
weeks ago. In truth, the Kosovars are less willing and the Serbians 
less willing to live together in peace in the future because of the 
conflict escalating. The more we bomb, the more we destabilize 
Montenegro.
  Now we have accidentally hit the Chinese embassy, and China has used 
this at least as an occasion to stir up their people. Russia is 
concerned as to whether we will be coming in there, and they have 
reactivated and are concerned about their nuclear defenses because they 
do not want us coming in if it is Chechnya.
  Other nations around the world are concerned about what our 
international policy is. Israel is concerned, justly, that if we 
recognize an independent Kosovo, what does that mean for the 
Palestinians? Turkey is concerned about what this means for the Kurds. 
The settlement we are looking towards is worse than we would have had 
early on while there was still a possibility to put this thing back 
together.
  Furthermore, it does not appear to be winnable. Historically, wars or 
efforts that have worked have been winnable or had an exit strategy. 
But that does not and still begs the fundamental moral question: How 
then do we deal with a Milosevic or a Serbian population? Or, for that 
matter, in Croatia, where many people were killed and moved out? The 
ethnic cleansing being the moved out; the killed being the genocide 
without a trial.
  Now Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to our Republican 
conference, suggested that the goal of this administration, and he said 
this point-blank, was to teach the world how to live together in peace. 
This shows some of the divisions that we have in this country and in 
the world regarding, quite frankly, the perfectibility of man. Can we, 
in fact, especially through bombs, teach the world how to live in 
peace? Or even without bombs, is that a realistic goal?
  In my opinion, that is more a humanist perfectibility of man argument 
and not one rooted in the Judeo-Christian beliefs that this country was 
founded on.
  Mr. Speaker, I will extend my comments with written remarks, because 
I am very concerned the premises of this war are unachievable and the 
goals are false and, therefore, because of a kind heart, we have 
plunged ourselves in an unwinnable conflict that is contrary to our own 
moral traditions.

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