[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6214-6215]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 KOSOVO

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, on the Tuesday before the recess, I voted 
against authorizing the air war in Yugoslavia. I did so because it 
seemed to me that the goal was a goal not worthy enough, not grave 
enough to begin what amounts to a war, even though under the 
President's leadership it has only been half a war.
  Our goals were to be permitted to send young American men and women 
into the midst of a 600-year-old civil strife in order to enforce an 
agreement that neither side wished. I also voted against that 
proposition, because it did not seem to me that the means were 
sufficient to gain even this questionable end. I voted against it, 
because it did not seem to me that the administration began to foresee 
the terrible consequences that would ensue if, and as President 
Milosevic has, accelerated his expulsion of Kosovars from their own 
homeland, or the refugee problem with which we would be faced. In other 
words, there were no contingency plans.
  At this point, almost 3 weeks later, all of those negative 
consequences have transpired. We are in the midst of an air war. The 
air war has not been successful. It is being fought apparently by a 
President who believes that one can have a war not only without 
casualties on our side but with few, if any, casualties on the other 
side. You should not begin a war for reasons that do not justify the 
use of force, and only the gravest national security reasons do so. 
And, if you get in one, you should not go into it halfheartedly or 
without a desire actually to win.
  Mr. President, what are the potential outcomes? If we are 
overwhelmingly successful, we may get sometime in the next week, or the 
next month, or the next year, exactly the privileges that we sought in 
the first place--the right to send our soldiers into a now devastated 
countryside in order to require people to live together who do not wish 
to live together, and perhaps to enforce an autonomy, which I have 
already said both sides oppose, or, alternatively, maybe we can get the 
Russians or someone else to help us reach a negotiated solution in 
which the Kosovars will be worse off than they were before, and in 
which the barbarism of Mr. Milosevic will at least have been partially 
rewarded. Or we may end up sending our own troops into that devilishly 
difficult part of the Balkans, whether from the south, or the west and 
the north--and we do not yet know--with an escalation of what will 
still be a halfhearted war with secondary goals, goals that will not 
include the removal of the present government in Belgrade and the 
establishment of a real peace. Or, I suppose it is

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possible--just remotely possible--that the President and NATO may 
decide that we want a full-scale war against Serbia until that regime 
is, in fact, destroyed.
  None of these is an appetizing outcome, by any stretch of the 
imagination. We are left with these alternatives only, I think, because 
this administration did not seriously consider what it was doing before 
it began doing it, or seriously consider both the cost and expense in 
men, material, money, and prestige of the United States for such a 
dubious goal.
  I wish that I had a firm, accurate, and a favorable outcome to look 
forward to. I wish I could come up with the appropriate means to reach 
such a goal. However, it seems to me that if we have learned anything 
in the last several years from other parts of the world, and in the 
last several weeks from this part of the world, it is that the armed 
services of the United States should only be used for a vitally 
important interest of the United States. If they are then to be used, 
they should be used with a clear and worthy goal, and with a degree of 
ruthlessness that assures we attain that goal. At this point we have 
done nothing but worsen our relationships with the Russians and with 
the neighbors of Kosovo itself at great expense to ourselves and at a 
horrendous expense to the victims in Kosovo who have been killed, 
driven from their homes, or driven out of their homeland entirely, 
without any significant prospect of returning at any time soon.
  We do need a serious national debate on the subject and we need a 
President of the United States who far more clearly articulates our 
goals and how we are to attain those goals. We have not had that kind 
of presentation. For that reason, support for the United States efforts 
is extremely shallow and is almost certain to disappear once the 
casualty lists begin to be published in this country.
  It is time for candor. It is time for clarity. It is time for a clear 
statement of our goals. In fact, we are well past time for both of 
those and we have not received them. I think we are faced with an 
extremely serious challenge with no clear way to that proper and 
appropriate goal.

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