[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 18, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3217-H3218]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, we will later today vote on the conference 
report to H.R. 1141, the bill to further fund NATO's aggression in 
Yugoslavia. The President has requested $7.9 billion but Congress has 
felt compelled to give him $15 billion.
  Congress does not endorse the war. We voted overwhelmingly against 
declaring war and yet we are giving the President twice the amount he 
requested to wage the war. It does not make any sense.
  We are asking the President to seek reimbursement from NATO members 
since we have assumed the financial burden for fighting this war. This 
has tremendous appeal but cannot compensate for the shortsightedness of 
spending so much in the first place. The money may well never be 
recouped from our allies, and even if some of it is it only encourages 
a failed policy of military adventurism. If this policy works, the 
United States, at Congress' urging, becomes a hired gun for the 
international order, a modern day government mercenary. This is not 
constitutional and it is a bad precedent to set.
  Reimbursement for the Persian Gulf War has helped to perpetuate that 
conflict now going on for nearly a decade. It is time to think about a 
more sensible foreign policy.
  We should not encourage the senseless and immoral NATO aggression 
against Serbia. The funding of this war should not be approved, no 
matter what special interest appropriations have been attached to the 
initial request to gain support for this special spending measure.
  Our bombing continues to complicate the mess we helped create in 
Yugoslavia. Just about everyone concedes that the war cannot be won 
without massive use of ground troops, which fortunately no one is 
willing to commit. So the senseless bombing continues while civilian 
casualties mount. And whom are we killing? It looks like we are killing 
as many innocent Albanians for whom we have gone to war as innocent 
Serbs.
  Why are we killing anybody? There has been no aggression against the 
United States and no war has been declared. It is time to stop this 
senseless bombing.
  The U.S. has become the world's bully. In recent months we have 
bombed Serbia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and China; 
and in recent years, many others.
  The fetish we have with bombing anybody who looks cross-eyed at us 
has preoccupied our leaders for several decades regardless of which 
party has been in power.
  We may not be willing to admit it, but it is hardly the way to win 
friends and influence people. It is lousy diplomacy. It must stop. The 
only reason we get away with it is because we are the military and 
economic superpower, but that only leads to smoldering resentment and 
an unsustainable financial commitment that will in due time come to an 
end. Our superiority is not guaranteed to last.
  NATO, through their daily briefings, has been anxious to reassure us 
that its cause is just. Yet NATO cannot refute the charge that the 
refugee problem was made much worse with the commencement of the 
bombing.
  Yesterday it was reported in the Los Angeles Times by Paul Watson, in 
stark contrast to NATO's propaganda, that in Svetlje, Yugoslavia, 
15,000 Albanians displaced by the bombing remain near their homes in 
north Kosovo, including hundreds of young military age men, quote, 
strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a sunny day. 
There were no concentration camps, no forced labor and no one serving 
as human shields according to an Albanian interviewed by the Los 
Angeles Times. Many admitted they left their homes because they were 
scared after the bombing started. Some of the Albanians said the only 
time they saw the Serb police was when they came to sell cigarettes to 
the Albanians.
  We should not be in Yugoslavia for obvious constitutional and moral 
reasons, but the American people should

[[Page H3218]]

not believe the incessant propaganda that is put out by NATO on a daily 
basis. NATO's motives are surely suspect. I meet no one who can with a 
straight face claim that it was NATO's concern for the suffering of the 
refugees that prompted the bombing and demands by some to escalate the 
war with the introduction of ground troops.
  Even with NATO's effort to justify its aggression, they rarely 
demonstrate a hit on a military target. All this fine star wars 
technology and we see reruns of strikes with perfect accuracy hitting 
infrastructures like bridges and buildings. I have yet to see one 
picture of a Serbian tank being hit, and I am sure if they had some 
classy film like that we would have seen it many times on the nightly 
television.
  NATO must admit its mistake in entering this civil war. It violates 
the NATO treaty and the U.N. Charter, as well as the U.S. Constitution. 
The mission has failed. The policy is flawed. Innocent people are 
dying. It is costing a lot of money. It is undermining our national 
security and there are too many accidents.
  I am sick and tired of hearing NATO's daily apologies.
  There's nothing America can be proud of in this effort and if we 
don't quickly get out of it, it could very well escalate and the 
getting out made impossible. The surest and quickest way to do this is 
for Congress today to reject the funding for this war.
  The only answer to senseless foreign intervention is a pro-American 
constitutional policy of non-intervention in the affairs of other 
nations; a policy of friendship and trade with those who are willing 
and neutrality with others who are involved in conflict. This is the 
only policy that makes sense and can give us the peace and prosperity 
all Americans desire.

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