[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6170]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 SENDING GROUND TROOPS TO KOSOVO WOULD COMPOUND A HUGE FOREIGN POLICY 
                                 ERROR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, several times over the last few days I 
have heard reports on national networks saying that Members of Congress 
were getting ``antsy'' about not committing ground troops to Kosovo. 
The implication is that all of the Members of Congress want ground 
troops in there immediately.
  I believe it was a terrible mistake to start bombing in the first 
place, and it certainly would be compounding a huge error to place many 
thousands of ground troops in there now.
  As many columnists have pointed out, the NATO bombings have made this 
situation much worse than it ever would have been if we had simply 
stayed out. The very liberal Washington Post columnist, Richard Cohen, 
wrote, ``I believe, though, that the NATO bombings have escalated and 
accelerated the process. For some Kosovars, NATO has made things 
worse.''
  Pat M. Holt, a foreign affairs expert writing in the Christian 
Science Monitor, wrote, ``The first few days of bombing have led to 
more atrocities and to more refugees. It will be increasing the 
instability which the bombing was supposed to prevent.''

                              {time}  2030

  Philip Gourevitch, writing in the April 12 New Yorker Magazine, said: 
``Yet so far the air war against Yugoslavia has accomplished exactly 
what the American-led alliance flew into combat to prevent: Our bombs 
unified the Serbs in Yugoslavia, as never before, behind the defiance 
of Milosevic; they spurred to a frenzy the `cleansing' of Kosovo's 
ethnic Albanians by Milosevic's forces; they increased the likelihood 
of the conflict's spilling over into Yugoslavia's south-Balkan 
neighbors; and they hardened the hearts of much of the non-Western 
world against us--not least in Russia, where passionate anti-
Americanism is increasing the prospects for the right-wing nationalists 
or the Communist Party to win control of the Kremlin and its nuclear 
arsenal in coming elections.''
  Many conservative analysts have been very critical. Thomas Sowell 
wrote: ``Already our military actions are being justified by the 
argument that we are in there now and cannot pull out without a 
devastating loss of credibility and influence in NATO and around the 
world. In other words, we cannot get out because we have gotten in. 
That kind of argument will be heard more and more if we get in deeper.
  ``Is the Vietnam War so long ago that no one remembers? We eventually 
pulled out of Vietnam,'' Mr. Sowell wrote, ``under humiliating 
conditions with a tarnished reputation around the world and with 
internal divisiveness and bitterness that took years to heal. Bad as 
this was, we could have pulled out earlier with no worse consequences 
and with thousands more Americans coming back alive.''
  Mr. Sowell asks, ``Why are we in the Balkans in the first place? 
There seems to be no clear-cut answer.''
  William Hyland, a former editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, writing 
in the Washington Post said, ``The President has put the country in a 
virtually impossible position. We cannot escalate without grave risks. 
If the President and NATO truly want to halt ethnic cleansing, then the 
alliance will have to put in a large ground force or, at a minimum, 
mount a credible threat to do so. A conventional war in the mountains 
of Albania and Kosovo will quickly degenerate into a quagmire. On the 
other hand, the United States and NATO cannot retreat without suffering 
a national and international humiliation. * * * The only alternative is 
to revive international diplomacy.''
  Mr. Hyland is correct, but unfortunately I am afraid that ground 
troops in Kosovo would be much worse than a quagmire. Former Secretary 
of State Lawrence Eagleberger was quoted on a national network last 
week as saying that the Bush administration had closely analyzed the 
situation in the Balkans in the early 1990s and had decided it was a 
``swamp'' into which we should not go.
  NATO was established as a purely defensive organization, not an 
aggressor force. With the decreased threat from the former Soviet 
Union, was NATO simply searching for a mission? Were some national 
officials simply trying to prove that they are world statesmen or 
trying to leave a legacy?
  The U.S. has done 68 percent of the bombing thus far. This whole 
episode, counting reconstruction and resettlement costs after we bring 
Milosevic down, will cost us many billions.
  If there have to be ground troops, let the Europeans take the lead. 
Do not commit U.S. ground troops. Let the Europeans do something. The 
U.S. has done too much already. Humanitarian aid, yes; bombs and ground 
troops, no.

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