[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 109 (Tuesday, September 14, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9238-S9239]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE BIRTHDAY OF FORMER PRESIDENT CLINTON

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, like many Americans, I was concerned to 
learn that former President Bill Clinton was suffering serious heart 
disease and had to be hospitalized for heart bypass surgery. Like many 
Americans, I was relieved to learn that his surgery had gone well, and 
that the former President is recuperating in his home in New York. The 
former President is known for his energy, and I hope that he will have 
a speedy recovery and will return to full health soon. I offer my best 
regards to him and his family, including our distinguished colleague, 
Senator Clinton.
  Inspired, no doubt, by this concern, our Democratic colleagues have 
joined in sponsoring a resolution to honor the former President on his 
58th birthday. I wish to join them in wishing former President Clinton 
greetings on his 58th birthday, and I wish him many more.
  Unfortunately, there is language in this resolution that is 
incorrect, at least because it is historically inaccurate, and at most 
because it seriously distorts the historical record and defames the 
memory of 200,000 victims of genocide in southeastern Europe.
  There is a bizarre clause in this otherwise laudable attempt to give 
the President a legislative birthday card that states:

       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton rallied the members of 
     the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to put an end to 
     ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and to depose the murderous 
     regime of Slobodan Milosevic, actions which eventually led to 
     the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords . . . .

  I know that, in the hurried pace of work around here, particularly in 
this type of political season, a certain sloppiness can find its way 
into legislative language. But this statement, as I have said, is 
incorrect and offensive.
  It is incorrect because, as anyone who knows the history will 
confirm--and I was here in the Senate throughout the bloody wars of 
southeast Europe in the 1990s--the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from 
power occurred in 2000, almost 5 years after the Dayton Peace Accords 
were signed in the autumn of 1995. That's why the statement is 
inaccurate.
  The statement is offensive because almost 200,000 innocent civilians 
died as victims of ethnic cleansing from the outbreak of the wars of 
southeast Europe in 1992 until the United States finally acted in the 
late summer of 1995. The majority of those deaths, I must remind my 
colleagues, occurred during the first three years of the Clinton 
Presidency.
  From the outbreak of the wars of Yugoslavia in 1992, I came to this 
floor advocating a policy of ``lift and strike'': lift the 
international arms embargo imposed on Yugoslavia and strike, with air 
power, the Yugoslavian army under the control of the mass murderers 
Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. I was joined on 
the Senate floor by my colleagues Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman and Bob Dole 
and many other Members of this body. The first Bush administration 
ignored us and left office shortly after the wars began. President 
Clinton, who ran on a campaign platform supporting ``lift and strike,'' 
reversed his position upon entering office and assumed a policy 
consistent, it appears, with current Democratic foreign policy 
thinking, that deferred to the international community.
  We can recall the effectiveness of the United Nations in Bosnia, when 
we think of blue-helmeted U.N. forces remaining by the sidelines as 
Serb forces captured Srebrenica in the summer of 1995, and herded 
thousands of unarmed men and boys--boys--to their slaughter in mass 
graves.
  That summer, a summer that began with Serb militaries surrounding the 
eastern enclaves of Bosnia and the Clinton administration refusing to 
lift the arms embargo preventing the Bosnians from defending 
themselves, while Bosnian Prime Minister Siladzic came to Washington 
and begged not to leave his people to die unarmed, the Dole-Lieberman-
Hatch resolution lifting the arms embargo passed by 69 votes. This 
veto-proof measure, along with the photos of the horrors of Srebrenica 
on the front page of The Washington Post--one horrid photo showed a 
woman hanging herself in despair--caused the Clinton administration to 
relent.
  When Bill Clinton acted, in late 1995, he saw that, when the United 
States leads, the international community will follow. When he acted 
again, in 1999, to stop Milosevic's campaign in Kosovo--a campaign we 
knew would happen when Milosevic was not removed from power in 1995--
the international community followed. In both cases, I supported the 
President, as did a number of Republican Members in this body. He acted 
too late for hundreds of thousands, but he finally acted. It will be 
left to the historians, along with the members of that administration, 
to ponder and justify and explain why there was value in waiting while 
genocide raged across southeastern Europe.
  A birthday gesture to a former President is not the place for this 
debate, and I certainly would not speak here were it not for this ill-
conceived language that appears in this resolution. But legislation of 
any kind becomes a permanent record of the work of the United States 
Congress. This language, when stating historical fact, contributes to 
the interpretation of history. I am a proud member of the council of 
the Holocaust Museum and I am proud to support the mission of that 
revered institution, which could simply be stated that the truth of 
genocide should always be stated. To allow the clause I have just read 
from this otherwise harmless birthday resolution to become a statement 
of historical fact is a whitewash of history, something a democratic 
body should never do.
  But worse, it is a calumny, a grave dishonor, on the memories of 
200,000 civilians of southeastern Europe, people who died in a 
genocidal war in Europe less than 50 years after the Holocaust, 
civilian men and women and children who died while the international 
community failed, the U.N. failed and two administrations, including 
President Clinton's administration, for almost 3 years, waited for a 
power to act like only the United States can.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution 
and the preamble be agreed to en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid 
upon the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in 
the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 425) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  The resolution, with its preamble, reads as follows:

                              S. Res. 425

       Whereas former President William Jefferson Clinton was born 
     in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton attended Georgetown 
     University as an undergraduate and received a Rhodes 
     Scholarship in 1968;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton received a law degree 
     from Yale University in 1973;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton established a record of 
     public service as Attorney General of Arkansas, Governor of 
     Arkansas, and Chairman of the National Governors Association;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton campaigned for and won 
     the Democratic nomination for President in 1992;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton was elected the 42d 
     President of the United States in 1992 and was reelected for 
     a second term in 1996;
       Whereas during William Jefferson Clinton's time in office 
     the United States experienced 8 years of economic expansion, 
     job growth, and the transformation of a budget deficit into a 
     budget surplus;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton rallied the members of 
     the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to put an end to 
     ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and to depose the murderous 
     regime of Slobodan Milosevic, actions which eventually led to 
     the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords;
       Whereas William Jefferson Clinton played a major role in 
     the Good Friday Peace Accords which finally brought peace to 
     war-torn Northern Ireland; and
       Whereas, in the words of President George W. Bush, William 
     Jefferson Clinton `showed

[[Page S9239]]

     a deep and far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great 
     compassion for people in need, and the forward-looking spirit 
     the Americans like in a President': Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate honors former President William 
     Jefferson Clinton on the occasion of his 58th birthday on 
     August 19, 2004, and extends best wishes to him and his 
     family.

                          ____________________