[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6163-6164]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000

       U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN KOSOVO: WHY THIS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Upton). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I am taking this opportunity to discuss 
one of the primary reasons I introduced legislation that will prohibit 
the use of appropriated funds to the Department of Defense from being 
used for the deployment of U.S. ground troops in Kosovo unless 
deployment is specifically approved by Congress and authorized by law.
  There are many reasons why Members of Congress should support the 
bill. Issues that need to be discussed include the authority of 
Congress to declare war, why this region is or is not vital to our 
national security interests, and whether the human and monetary cost of 
American involvement in this fight is worth risking American lives.
  The President has argued that for humanitarian reasons American 
intervention is necessary. Why is it more important for us to be 
involved militarily in Yugoslavia, a country certainly of no real 
national security threat to the United States, when there are human 
rights violations occurring in China, a nation that is perhaps our 
biggest security threat in the new world order?
  While we rightly condemn Yugoslav President Milosevic for driving 
ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, we continue to maintain a strategic 
partnership, sell highly sensitive satellite information, provide 
normal trade relationship status to China, a nation that has suppressed 
and displaced over 128,000 Tibetans and commits some of the most 
horrific human rights abuses in the world, including forced abortion, 
sterilization, execution, rape against its own people.
  Who is our biggest national threat? A nation the size of the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky, with a population of 11 million and an active 
military of 114,000 and 400,000 reserves or a country the size of the 
United States, with a population of 1.2 billion and an active military 
of 2.8 million with 1.2 million in reserve under communist control with 
a nuclear and chemical arsenal that sells weapons technology to rogue 
nations at odds with the United States?
  Civil wars and human rights atrocities are occurring all over the 
world. According to the 1998 world refugee survey, there are over 3.5 
million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, including 2.9 million in 
Africa, 5.7 million in the Middle East, 2.2 million in South Central 
and East Asia and the Pacific.
  Let us get back to the question of why Kosovo and not elsewhere is 
important. In Sudan alone there are 4 million internally displaced 
persons and over 350,000 refugees. In just the last decade over 1.9 
million people in Sudan have died due to war-related causes and famine. 
In 1998, 2.6 million Sudanese were at risk of starvation due to civil 
war, drought and government restrictions on relief flights. Why are not 
we bombing the Sudanese Government and sending in ground troops?
  Afghanistan has over 2.6 million refugees and between 1 million and 
1.5 million internally displaced persons.

[[Page 6164]]

Today the extremist Afghan Taliban government discriminates and 
completely controls the life of half its population. Women are 
forbidden to work outside the home and from attending school, may not 
ride in vehicles unless accompanied by a male relative and are denied 
health care in many parts of the country. They have left over 2 million 
dead and 700,000 widows and orphans. Why are not we bombing Afghanistan 
and sending in ground troops?
  What about Angola, Colombia and Sierra Leone? And the list goes on 
and on and on.
  Clearly, we must have a better foreign policy strategy than this. It 
is quite obvious that the administration does not have a well-thought-
out policy regarding Kosovo. Through NATO, the administration seems to 
be running this war day to day without any master plan or exit 
strategy.
  Despite efforts to keep our troops away from the Kosovo border, we 
now have three American POWs. To make matters worse, we are now hearing 
that the administration went against the advice of top Pentagon 
officials who determined early that we should not even be engaged in a 
bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.
  It is unrealistic to believe that we can intervene for a few months, 
a year or 3 years and settle this conflict that has raged for 
centuries.
  Four years ago, or 5, when the Secretary of State, Secretary of 
Defense and the Joint Chiefs came before the Foreign Affairs Committee 
on which I served, I asked the question, you say you are going into 
Bosnia for a year? I know that you know the history and know that it 
all began in the 4th century with the fall of the Roman Empire and was 
exacerbated in the 10th century with the rise of the Ottoman Empire. 
What are you going to do in 1 year's time that they could not do in all 
of these centuries?
  Of course, the answer is nothing. Four years, $7 billion, 19,000 
troops later, we are still there with the current ground force of 
6,200.
  I asked the same question when they went into Haiti, asking what is 
it you are going to do in a year that we did not do the ten times we 
went in before the last time, staying for 15 years? Of course, the 
answer is, we did not do anything, other than to spend a billion 
dollars and send 20,000 troops. We are still there.
  There are those who would like to say that this is some comparison 
with Hitler. That is mixing oranges and apples.
  Madam Speaker, I will continue this tomorrow evening.

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