[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.
____________________