[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9399-9406]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            WHAT IS GOING RIGHT WITH YOUNG PEOPLE OF AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McInnis. Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to address two 
different areas.
  The first area I would like to talk a little bit about is, I have 
been back to my district, which is the State of Colorado. I go back to 
my district every weekend. But, obviously, with the tragic situation 
that took place there a couple weeks ago, that is a large topic of 
discussion; and, of course, it should be. So this evening I would like 
to talk a little bit about our young people, our young men and women, 
of that generation, that age group, the situation out there in 
Colorado.
  Then I would like to shift focus and cover a second area that I think 
should be of keen interest to all of us, an area in which we have a lot 
of interest right now, whether by choice or not, we do have a lot of 
interest, and that is in Kosovo, and talk in some detail about what do 
we do now in Kosovo.
  Let me say that, in regards to the situation at the Columbine High 
School in Colorado and parents and teenagers and adult relationships 
with their children, there are a few areas that I would like to cover.
  First of all, I want to stress about what is going right. Obviously, 
what has gone wrong has been the front news story in all of our 
national newspapers and our national publications and our topics of 
discussions; and sometimes we seem to focus a little more on what is 
going wrong than what is going right. So I want to talk a little bit 
about that this evening.
  I want to move from that to talk about the TV shows, Jenny Jones, 
some of these other people in the talk shows. I will move from that to 
talk a little on moments of silence in schools. We will talk a little 
about video violence. We will talk a little bit about what the 
responsibilities are of Hollywood, of the Internet and, finally, what 
the responsibility should be of our law enforcement and, of course, 
things like gun shows and so on.
  Let me, first of all, start out with, and I think it is very 
important that I precede the extent of my comments with what is going 
right with these young people.
  I have for years since I have been in the United States Congress had 
the privilege of going to a variety of schools throughout my district. 
Now, my colleagues have got to picture the Third Congressional 
District. It is a very interesting district in the State of Colorado.
  First of all, geographically, it is larger than the State of Florida. 
Second of all, there are lots of economic diversity within that 
congressional district. For example, some of the wealthiest communities 
in the United States are in the congressional district that I 
represent, Aspen, Colorado; Vail, Colorado; Beaver Creek, Steamboat, 
Telluride, Durango, Crested Butte, a number of communities like that 
that have a great deal of wealth.
  But at the same time, down in the southern part of the district that 
I represent, we have the poorest area of the State of Colorado: the San 
Luis Valley community, San Luis Castilla, Conejos, and so on. So there 
is a lot of diversity.
  But I teach in schools regardless of the economic diversity. I teach 
in schools throughout the district. And I wanted to relate to my 
colleagues a few of the things that I find when I go out there and talk 
to these young people and listen to these young people and visit with 
these young people.
  Let me say this, and I want to make it very, very clear: Despite what 
has happened in the last couple of weeks, we all should remember that, 
with this generation, these young men and women, that there is a lot 
more going right with that generation than there is going wrong.
  This situation that we had in Colorado is much like a horrible plane 
crash. The morning after, we get up; and we are suspicious of all 
airplanes; we are suspicious of the industry. And the same thing 
happens here, and we focus on the disaster that took place.
  Clearly, it is appropriate that we focus on that so we can hope to 
avoid that in the future. But do not let it darken the cloud about how 
many good kids we have out there, good young men and women, and good 
parents, by the way.
  It is amazing when I go to these classes, class after class after 
class, they are not a bunch of rotten kids out there. Sure, we came up 
with a couple rotten apples down there at Columbine. They did a 
horrible thing. These are bad kids. And I am not one of these people 
reluctant to say that these two young men that shot and murdered all 
those people were bad kids.
  But, in my opinion, that is not reflective of that generation. That 
generation has some of the brightest and most capable individuals of 
any generation this country has ever had. There is a lot that we can 
look forward to in this country. There is a lot that that generation 
can look forward to with our country.

                              {time}  1930

  First of all, obviously the United States of America has more 
freedoms

[[Page 9400]]

than any other country in the world. We have more to offer this 
generation than any other country has to offer their similar 
generations. We also have a lot of other things going. We do have the 
strongest educational system in the world in this country.
  I have had the privilege and the good fortune to travel the world 
throughout my years in political office and so on, and I can tell you 
that having been in contact with the leaders, what you would call in 
some countries the upper echelon of those particular countries, it is 
interesting that these families who can pretty well choose to send 
their children anywhere in the world they would like to send them, when 
it comes to education, a lot of them send their kids, their young 
people, to this country for their education.
  In fact, when it comes to health issues, if one of their young people 
or anybody in their family gets sick, they send them to the United 
States for their health care, because this country has some of the best 
health care if not the best health care throughout the entire world. 
This country does more for its young people than any other country in 
the world in my opinion.
  Now, that is not to discount at all, it is not to discount in any 
regards the situation that occurred at Columbine. But it is to 
highlight, in fact, what is going right with these young men and women. 
I have now been in Congress long enough to have one of the highlights 
of any congressional person's service in the United States Congress, 
and that is to witness and get to see some of the young people that you 
have nominated to go to our service academies, the Air Force Academy, 
West Point, the Naval Academy, the Merchant Marine Academy, to watch 
these young people graduate. I have been in Congress 7 years, so I have 
now gotten to see some of these young people graduate. Every year I get 
involved in the nomination process of this generation that is applying 
to go to our military academies. It is amazing to me, because every 
year it appears to me that these young people are brighter and more 
capable than even just the year before, and the year before was the 
cream of the crop. You have got a lot to be proud of with this 
generation.
  Let me talk about parents for a minute. I have talked about how 
fortunate I think we are in this country to have this young generation. 
I have lots of confidence in them. And I think that the reflection of 
this last 2 weeks is unfortunate because I think by far, by far that 
generation of young men and women, the same generation that lost their 
lives in Littleton and those people, they have got so much to offer and 
contribute to this country, but as I said, I want to talk about parents 
for a minute. I do not think that we need to go on an apology mission. 
There are a lot of good parents in this country. There are a lot of 
parents who have done a good job, have done a terrific job, have shown 
a lot of love, have shared a lot of time, have been very proud of their 
children. There are a lot of good parents in this country. There are a 
lot of good parents at the Columbine High School. There are a lot of 
good parents at any school in this country.
  I have seen some talk shows and some news articles and some people 
talking about how parents do not care about their children anymore and 
about this disaster in Colorado is a result of parents not paying 
enough attention to their children and parents dropping the ball. In 
some cases that might be true. I guess in every generation in the 
history of the world we will find parents who did not give appropriate 
attention to their children. But our focus cannot be entirely on that 
and we should not beat ourselves on our back because some parents drop 
the ball. Clearly we want to figure out how we can improve that. How 
can we take parents who are not close to their children, who are not 
spending the appropriate time with their children, how can we bring 
them closer and mold that together, how can we stress the importance of 
that?
  This evening a previous speaker talked about the importance of single 
parenthood, about the problems that it has caused, about the importance 
of stressing to our young people that single parenthood is not the way 
to go. So we can figure out ways to bring that together. But at the 
same time I am standing here tonight to thank my colleagues here and to 
thank parents throughout this country and to commend you.
  A lot of you are good parents. In fact, probably a lot of you have 
been able to spend more time with your children than maybe your parents 
or grandparents were able to spend with you. We have made a lot of 
progress. I do not want that progress to be hidden by this horrific 
tragedy that we had in Colorado.
  I would like to mention a couple of other facts that I think are 
important. Last year in this country about 2,300,000 young people 
graduated from our high schools. Between 1979 and 1997, here are a few 
statistics that we can be darn proud of. As parents, as educators, as 
lawmakers, as citizens, we can be proud of these statistics. The 
percentage of students completing high school, getting their high 
school degree went up from 78 percent to 87 percent, a 10 percent jump. 
Remember, you are at the very high end of the scale. So that 10 percent 
is a huge jump. It is not like you are way down here and you jump 10 
percent. It is you are up here and you jump that final 10 percent. 
Actually the final 22 percent that remained that were not getting high 
school diplomas, we cut that in half. In this period of time, we took 
half of the students that were not getting their high school degrees 
and were not completing high school, we have gotten them now to go 
through high school, to get that high school degree.
  The percentage of high school graduates with some college, that went 
up almost 20 percentage points, from 44 to 65 percent. You can be proud 
of that. That is a good statistic. That means something. That means 
these young people are getting the opportunity to go on to college. The 
percentage of high school students who got 4 or more years in college, 
that rose 10 percent, from 22 percent to 32 percent. These are good 
jumps. These are fairly dramatic jumps. And in 1996, 50 percent of the 
students in grades 6 through 12, half of the students out there in 
junior high and high school participated in community service. I think 
in the last few years, to a large extent and in many different ways, 
our communities have been strengthened.
  Now, remember the dynamics have changed in the last 25 to 30 or 40 
years. We do have more families where both parents have to work outside 
the home, driven by economic necessity, some driven by choice. We have 
different factors. Instead of having one TV per home, we have several 
TVs. We used to be critical of watching too much TV. Now we are not 
even watching TV as a family because there are two or three different 
TVs in the house. Those kind of dynamics have changed. But on the whole 
take a look at the positive aspects. The positive aspects are, parents, 
there are a lot of you out there that ought to be very proud of the 
mission that you have accomplished. For that generation, that young 
generation in high school right now and the one behind them and the 
ones that have just graduated, I want you to know, we are darn proud of 
you.
  By far, as I said earlier, most of you are going to go on and you are 
going to make something of yourselves. Most of you have the dedication 
and the focus to know that there is personal responsibility, there is 
discipline and that if you exercise a little knowledge and you exercise 
a little energy, you are going to find out that in this country, it is 
not so bad. There are a lot of great things that you can do.
  Let me move on to a couple of areas where I think we do need to focus 
a little more, where society needs to say, all right, we acknowledge 
what the Congressman says, we acknowledge that a lot of things are 
going right. But let us focus on that little part of it where things 
are going wrong. There are some areas in our society where we can 
accept more responsibility or those parts of our society can accept 
more responsibility?
  I am not a plaintiff's lawyer. I do not get too excited about 
plaintiff's lawyers. I think in fact our society, there

[[Page 9401]]

is a statement I saw the other day where in Japan they have this many 
lawyers and this many engineers. In our country it is just the reverse. 
We have this many lawyers and this many engineers. But I was pleased 
last week to see a case handed down by a jury where they awarded $25 
million in damages against the talk show, the TV by ambush Jenny Jones. 
That show is simply entertainment by humiliation and that is exactly 
what the lawsuit was about. Do you have the right to entertain to the 
extent that it could cause physical harm by humiliation? Is that what 
entertainment is about? Have the talk shows gotten out of hand? Well, 
Jenny Jones did.
  What was interesting to me is I read some newspaper articles about 
this that said it puts a chilling effect out there on the first 
amendment. Number one, it does not take away the rights of the first 
amendment. But sometimes society needs to speak out and sometimes 
society says, we need to douse this with a little cold water. We need 
to put a chilling effect on this. Should we have TV talk shows based on 
humiliation? Should we have TV based on ambush? What does it do to a 
society? So as you hear and as you read in the periodicals, the weekly 
periodicals that will come out next week, take a look at what happened 
in the Jenny Jones case and see if you do not feel pretty comfortable 
with the way our courts are going in some regards.
  Some courts get a little out of line. We had a court this week that 
awarded $581 million in punitive damages for a satellite worth $1800, a 
satellite disc that was sold to somebody. I am not talking about the 
extremes. I do not want to talk about the extremes. But I do want to 
talk about situations like the Jenny Jones. I think society, and I 
think in the light if there is anything that could come out of the 
Columbine school situation that might be good is, one, I think we will 
spend even more time with our children and that cannot hurt things, but 
I think society as a whole is also going to look at things like the 
Jenny Jones talk show.
  I think they are going to take a look at the Internet. I think they 
are going to take a look at Hollywood, and I think they are going to 
take a look at gun shows and laws that are being broken. Let me for a 
moment talk about something that I cannot figure out. It has confused 
me. I have studied history. I have been around the bend a couple of 
times. I cannot figure out for the life of me why we have such a strict 
prohibition against moments of silence in our schools. Do you know that 
in our schools you can go into the hallway of a school, you can do what 
Jenny Jones did, you can tease other students, you can talk about 
Hitler, you can do a lot of things that I would say are on the verge of 
misconduct, and you can get away with it under freedom of speech or 
other issues. But the minute you pull out a Bible, the minute you hold 
another one of your student's hands and say a prayer on school 
property, boy, does everything come loose. And I think we have got to 
take a look at that.
  I am not a religious zealot. I am not a part of any kind of 
organization that is advocating, a one issue person that is thinking 
about prayer in school or things like that. But I do think that our 
society has to say, have we come too far in prohibiting even moments of 
silence between two students? If the students want to get together on 
the football field and hold their hands and say a prayer in common, 
what is wrong with that? What do we accomplish by trying to break up 
the one peaceful and loving situation that may have been the only one 
that occurred that day between a group that large?
  I will give you an idea of the extremes. We have got a case in New 
York City, we have a schoolteacher there. One of the students in the 
class drowned, that morning had drowned. Tragic, tragic death. Needless 
to say, the deceased students, the deceased person's fellow students 
were all beside themselves. They were horrified, they were crying, they 
were sad, depressed, and their schoolteacher got them all together in 
the classroom and said, let's say a prayer for Annie or whatever the 
small child's name was that drowned. So they said a prayer. The teacher 
did not lead them in prayer. They said let's just get together and hold 
hands, let's give some thought in prayer. You pick your own prayer, but 
let's say something. And what happened? They fired the teacher. One of 
the quotes was, look, we pay this teacher to teach, not preach.
  Come on. One factor that would help our society as much as anything 
that I can think of is a little common sense, a little common sense in 
your gut right here. What does common sense tell you about that kind of 
situation? Should you fire the teacher that allows the students to hold 
hands and have a moment of silence when they have just lost one of 
their fellow students in a tragic accident? Is that so appalling to our 
society that we should fire the teacher? Is it so appalling to our 
society, is it so counter to common sense that we should go to a 
baccalaureate ceremony or we should go into the hallways of a school or 
we should go onto the sports field and say to the student athletes who 
voluntarily hold hands and have their own moment of silence that they 
cannot do that, that it is somehow a prohibition against the freedom, 
or separation between church and state? That is something we ought to 
assess. That is something we ought to think about. Have we gone too 
far?
  There are other areas we ought to think about. I think Columbine 
demonstrates it, the Columbine disaster. Let us take a serious look at 
Hollywood. There were two tremendous individuals last year, they were 
honest, they had lots of integrity, they were wholesome, they delivered 
a message to America that was really wholesome. It was down to earth.

                              {time}  1945

  They were in their times some of the most popular people in the 
United States, and we lost them last year. They passed away. What 
happened to some of those days? Hollywood did not have to do what it 
does today. I will give my colleagues examples:
  Jimmy Stewart and Gene Autry.
  Jimmy Stewart; remember Jimmy Stewart? How often did Jimmy Steward 
have to say a four-letter word on the film? How often did Jimmy Stewart 
have to do some of the things that we see demonstrated, use some of the 
vulgar tactics, just as soon the language, to sell that movie? Jimmy 
Stewart did not have to do that.
  And how about Gene Autry's music? How often did the lyrics of his 
music have to be vulgar, or talk about shooting cops or doing other 
things that common sense tells us, look, we do not need that; we do not 
need that out there for entertainment; it is not necessary.
  Take a look at what these two tremendous entertainers offered to our 
society.
  I think Hollywood has a responsibility to look out there and say:
  Look, constitutionally we may be protected, constitutionally we have 
the right to put out something like the movie Basketball Diaries where, 
by the way, somebody walks into a classroom in a trench coat, shoots 
people with sawed-off shotguns, just like the Columbine school; 
constitutionally, we should fight for this, we have the right of 
freedom of speech to do these kind of things.
  Granted, I will give it to you; let us not argue the Constitution, 
let us argue common sense. Let us argue what is good for this country. 
My colleagues do not need to test the Constitution with these movies. 
It is not necessary. Let us do the Jimmy Stewart kind of thing. Let us 
try and send a message out to America. Let us send out a good, loving 
message to America.
  Those films I saw, my colleagues, do not need to go to that extent. I 
really truly believe some of these films are produced just to see how 
vulgar they can get, to see how horrible they can make the movie, to 
see whether or not it can be pushed to the edge or the boundary of the 
Constitution.
  Well, in my opinion there are not a lot of people that want to debate 
us on that issue. Hollywood, but they are saying: Hollywood, give us 
some good movies, and you have got a lot of them, a lot of great movies 
out there that you have produced.

[[Page 9402]]

  Let us take those few movies; and, by the way, I think most of the 
movies produced by Hollywood are good movies; and I think most of the 
people involved in Hollywood really would agree with me that common 
sense ought to dictate how close to that boundary of vulgarity and 
tragedy and so on we ought to make these movies. So Hollywood, I think, 
will also.
  And I think we will also reassess, and I think a lot of the 
reassessment will be self-reassessment. I do not think the government 
is going to need to come down on Hollywood. I think there are enough 
professionals in Hollywood, enough family people in Hollywood, enough 
people that know the difference between right and wrong in Hollywood, 
enough people that can accept personal responsibility in Hollywood. I 
think they are going to self-enforce. I think we are going to see the 
movies like The Basketball Diaries and some of these songs that have 
been put out by the music industry, I think we are going to find they 
are in disfavor.
  It was interesting the other day. I saw that the poll numbers, or the 
rating numbers I guess is the appropriate way to describe it, on these 
talk shows are dropping. People are going to be getting to realize that 
common sense tells us it is not the way to go in the future, it is not 
what we need to do to a movie, it is not what we need to do to music to 
sell it. In other words, they can have good, heart-filled music or a 
movie with a good theme to it, and it is going to sell.
  Let us talk about the Internet. That is a whole new responsibility, 
and there is a lot of responsibility on the Internet that falls on the 
individuals who use the Internet. Those of us who use the Internet 
should not patronize those Internet web sites that do things like tell 
people how to make bombs.
  In fact, every time one of us who uses the Internet spots a web site 
that is offensive in its nature or does something like tell us how to 
make a bomb or how to machine gun somebody or how to make a legal 
weapon illegal, we ought to complain about it. My colleagues and I have 
a responsibility to write or to contact the provider of those Internet 
services and say: Here is a web site we object to. This web site should 
not be on your service. Do something about it.
  We ought to boycott some of those things. We boycott it simply by a 
letter of one. Even one letter sometimes makes the difference. And I 
can say to the providers of Internet services out there: You, too, as a 
provider, you, too, have a responsibility, a personal responsibility, a 
professional responsibility to take off your Internet services web 
sites that might provide people with information of how to make bombs 
or web sites that have some kind of fantasy involved in killing people 
and so on and so forth.
  Granted, like with the movies, like with music, they have a 
constitutional right, perhaps freedom of speech, to put this on the 
provider service. But I do not think they need to do it. We do not need 
to do it.
  My colleagues think that bomb site on the web service that these two 
young murderers out there at the Columbine school, my colleagues think 
those two young murderers, think that web site to make a bomb was 
necessary for the profit for that Internet provider? My colleagues 
think it was necessary for that Internet provider to grow, for that 
Internet provider to become more popular, that that bomb site be put on 
there? No, it was not. It is not. Common sense tells us that. And the 
Internet providers, a lot of them do exercise common sense, but it is 
going to take more self- enforcement within their own industry.
  So the Internet cannot escape this either.
  I do want to mention, because I am a strong, and I know this is 
controversial out there, I am a strong believer in the second 
amendment. I am a strong believer in the right to possess firearms. But 
I also believe that there are a lot of people out there or some people 
out there who are not exercising responsibility, and as a result they 
are putting a very dark cloud over those of us who enjoy the right to 
bear arms, who enjoy hunting, who enjoy the right to protect ourselves.
  And let me say I just saw in the news today, they showed some people 
at a gun show, some gun show here in the country where they went in and 
they broke up the gun show, and they found some illegal weapons. The 
portrayal of that gun show, frankly, was that anybody that is at a gun 
show is there illegally, that all they do at these gun shows are sell 
illegal weapons. That is unfortunate. What they should have said, made 
it very clear, the people that were at that gun show who were selling 
these weapons illegally should not have been there, they were breaking 
the law, and they should have arrested them immediately.
  I think I advocate the position of a lot of people who believe in 
these rights, and that is if one has got somebody breaking the law, 
prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. We do not want people 
out there breaking those laws. We do not want people like these young 
murderers at Columbine walking around with sawed-off shotguns. We do 
not want them making bombs. We do not want them breaking the laws. If 
we got somebody breaking the law, let us go after it.
  On the other hand, let us respect the rights of the people who obey 
the laws. Let us not penalize the possession, let us penalize the 
misuse. And let us do not automatically say that the misuse equates to 
simple possession.
  But I think that we are going to have, maybe we will have an 
opportunity to close some loopholes. If there are some loopholes that 
exist out there, I think even those in the gun business, the feeling or 
the protectors of the second amendment right, they also have a 
responsibility. If we have got a loophole, let us close it up because 
we want to retain a right, a constitutional right. But, once again, as 
I said about the Internet and Hollywood and so on, we have got to use 
some common sense.
  But let me wrap up this subject before I move on to the next one, 
because I think the next one is going to be very important for all of 
us. Let me just summarize it by saying this.
  In the last 20 minutes or so I have spoken about the tragedy in 
Colorado, about some of the things I think we can do as a society to 
help bring families closer together to help avoid these disasters. But 
I hope that colleagues saw that the primary focus on my comments 
regarding that tragedy in Colorado were to say that this should not 
overshadow the good things in our society that are going on, the right 
things that our parents are doing, the amount of involvement that 
parents have today in this country, the amount of involvement that 
parents have with their children prior to this tragedy, the fact that 
it is just a very, very minute percentage of these young people that 
went out and would go out and do what these two young murderers did.
  So the focus here is remember in this country what that generation, 
what that young generation, those fine young men and women, that there 
is a lot more that goes right with that generation than there is that 
goes wrong, and we have a lot of reasons to be proud of that 
generation.
  Let me shift gears. I want to spend the next or the balance of my 
time talking about Kosovo and the situation in Yugoslavia.
  Let me start out by saying I noticed recently in a local newspaper in 
my district there was a letter to the editor. It was not directed at 
me, but it was directed to Congress, and it questioned whether or not 
the votes or the debate back here on the policy, it did not question. 
It really implied that anybody who would dare stand up and question the 
policy or vote on the question of whether we put ground troops in or to 
what extent we give the President authority to conduct whatever kind of 
military operations he wants to, that the simple expression of that 
would somehow signify a lack of support for our American ground troops.
  At the very beginning of my comments, let me dash that very quickly, 
let me strike that down, and the easiest way to do it is to tell my 
colleagues that on March 24, on March 24 there was a vote, there was a 
resolution, and let me read the bill or the resolution.
  This bill expressed support, expressed support from the House of 
Representatives for the members of the United

[[Page 9403]]

States Armed Forces engaged in military operations against the Federal 
Republic of Yugoslavia. This resolution was to show our support for 
those military troops. Do my colleagues know what that vote was? I do; 
424 in favor of the resolution; one vote against it; one vote against 
it.
  I need to make it very clear to my colleagues here that when you 
stand up and disagree with the policy, that should not be interpreted 
as a lack of support for the troops that are over there serving us so 
well. As indicated by this vote, 424 of us on this floor, 424 of us 
voted to support the troops. One person in the facility voted against 
it.
  There is strong, unified, bipartisan support for our military troops, 
frankly, wherever they are in the world. We want them to have the best 
equipment. We want them to have the best conditions we can give them. 
We want them to be safe. They have a mission to carry out.
  But do not let anybody put a guilt feeling on any of us because we 
support the troops that, therefore, we should blindly follow a policy 
as set forth by an administration or set forth by some other purpose. 
We need to question those policies. That is the checks and balances 
that our forefathers put into our Constitution and our originating 
documents in this country. We need checks and balances. We want debate 
on whether or not the policy is the right policy to follow especially, 
especially in the time of war.
  I want to visit a little on Kosovo here. We are going to talk about 
the results, what kind of results we are getting as a result, because 
of this action. The refugee problem, the destruction that is going on 
out there, the cost to rebuild, what is our clear-cut mission? What is 
our national interest in this regard? And who is picking up the load?
  Let me begin by pointing out something that I think is very, very 
important on Kosovo, this sentence:
  Do not measure by intentions, measure by results.
  The intentions here, the intentions, I think, were good. There were 
some tragedies, there were some atrocities going on over in Yugoslavia, 
so the intentions were good. I have not heard anybody who really 
questioned the intentions of going over there and trying to save some 
lives, but we cannot measure by intention. We have to measure by 
results.
  What are the results? What are those results as a result of us being 
over there in Kosovo? In Yugoslavia? We know, for example, we have had 
hundreds of thousands of refugees who have now left their homes. They 
are in countries that are not their home country. We know that we have 
caused massive destruction in Kosovo as a result of NATO bombing, and 
we are not the only ones. Do not forget on the other side; I am not. 
This Milosevic is a murderer, but the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is 
a side we seem to have taken, was listed by our own State Department as 
terrorist a year ago.
  This incident started about the latest flare-up over in Yugoslavia, 
which, by the way, is a sovereign country, but the dispute with its 
citizens within their own boundaries arose when some members of what is 
called the Kosovo Liberation Army started shooting and assassinating 
Serbian citizens, and then Milosevic took his troops and went in there 
to settle the score and started shooting innocent Kosovo people. But 
they are all Yugoslavian citizens.
  What are the results that we have to measure by? Everyone of us in 
these Chambers have a responsibility and obligation to sit down and 
take a look at what has happened in the last 3 weeks or so of bombing 
and ask ourselves a couple things.

                              {time}  2000

  Number one, what is the national interest? What really is the 
national interest that we have here? Is it a security threat to the 
United States of America? No, it is not. Is it an economic threat? No. 
Is it really truly a threat to the European continent? I say no, but if 
someone else says yes then why are not the Europeans carrying the 
biggest share of the load here?
  Who is carrying the biggest share of the load? The United States of 
America. Who has the heaviest backpack on their back? The United States 
of America. Whose taxpayers are going to end up paying, in my belief, 
in excess of $100 billion to rebuild everything that has been bombed? 
The United States of America.
  Whose problem is it? I think the United States of America has a 
problem. I think it is called a humanitarian problem. Our country was 
made great because we were able to go out and help people in need of 
assistance, and I think in this particular situation the question we 
ought to ask is should not the United States be focused on humanitarian 
aid and let the Europeans shoulder the responsibility of the military 
aid?
  Furthermore, when we ask about the last three or four weeks, question 
what is the legal right. We went to war with Iraq because Iraq invaded 
Kuwait. We went to war because they invaded the sovereign boundaries of 
another country. Now NATO, for the first time in its history, has gone 
across the sovereign boundaries of another country to resolve a dispute 
by the citizens within the boundaries of that country, in other words, 
a civil war. We need to ask those kind of questions.
  Then we need to ask the question, how do we get out of it? I will say 
an article that I read, and I want to recommend it, I am going to put 
it in the Record, this is Newsweek, May 17, so it is the most recent 
Newsweek. In fact, it has Star Wars on the front so it is one that 
probably would be pretty popular to purchase. Take a look at page 36. 
There is an article by a gentleman named Fareed Zakaria, I think is the 
correct pronunciation. The article is titled, What Do We Do Now? What 
Do We Do Now?
  There are several things in this article. I hope everyone has an 
opportunity to go out and buy this. I think this article is one of the 
finest articles that I have read. It is bipartisan. I think it is a 
very fair article. It is one of the best articles I have read about the 
situation we now have in Yugoslavia. Go out and buy this. If not, I 
want to read just a couple of things.
  First of all, I will start with the very last sentence, the very last 
sentence of the article. The author says, why should we be involved in 
this crisis? Why should we be involved in this crisis? Because we made 
it worse. That is what the author says, why should we be involved in 
this crisis? Because we made it worse. That sentence says a lot.
  Let us visit for a minute here. Let me read this, the start of the 
end game, how do you start the end game? How do you get out of 
Yugoslavia? How are we going to resolve this thing? First of all, we 
risk a lot of human lives. We have diluted our military. I talked about 
that at some length last week. And what is the end game? The start of 
the end game would, however, and I am quoting from the article, bring 
several unpleasant questions back to the forefront.
  For 7 weeks, NATO and the media have been obsessed with how the 
Yugoslavia war has been going, how many targets were being hit, what 
planes were being used and so on. Now they must ask again, why exactly 
we went to war, why exactly we went to war. Only if we are clear about 
our interests and our goals can we know whether we have achieved them. 
Otherwise, we have stumbled into an ill-considered war and will preside 
over an unworkable peace.
  That is exactly on point. Until we can define exactly what our 
interests were, we have taken this country, the administration has 
taken this country, into an ill-considered war. If we reach some kind 
of resolution, we are about to, as this article says, preside over an 
unworkable peace.
  We talked about ground troops. There is a lot of discussion out there 
about it and it is covered in this article. There is discussion about 
ground troops. I want to quote on the ground troops because I think 
that is important, too.
  If only we would use ground troops, some hawks now respond, none of 
this would have happened and certainly the

[[Page 9404]]

decision to go to war carelessly and in haste before amassing ground 
troops in Albania and Macedonia was a historic blunder. Ground troops 
would have proved a potent threat but even with the troops the war 
would have begun with days of air strikes and it would have been near 
impossible to invade Kosovo while hundred of thousands of refugees were 
swarming across its roads, bridges and mountain passes.
  Those today who still advocate the use of ground troops speak of its 
military benefits which are real. They do not, however, mention its 
costs, which are political. A ground invasion would fracture NATO. 
Germany, Italy and Greece are strongly opposed to the use of ground 
troops. A majority of Italians and more than 95 percent of the Greeks 
are opposed to even air strikes. An invasion would probably split 
Germany's governing coalition. Russia and China would both actively 
oppose it and veto any U.N. involvement with Kosovo.
  So when people talk about ground troops, think of the reality of 
being able to put ground troops in there. Number one, we do not have 
them amassed on the border. Number two is a logistical challenge and it 
takes a lot of time. It would take weeks, at best, months more likely, 
to move the kind of ground force which by the way would not be a 
European ground force in majority, it would be United States troops 
under the auspices of NATO, it would take a great deal of effort to be 
able to put those in location. Then we have to find a country that 
would allow us to stage our ground troops in that country. Albania 
probably would be willing to do that, one of the few countries over 
there that would be, but Albania is so poor they do not even have 
cranes at their harbor capable of taking a tank off a ship. My 
understanding is their airport does not even have radar.
  Ground troops simply are not a feasible alternative at this point. We 
should have amassed the ground troops, as this article I think 
accurately points out, prior to the air strikes but now to amass them 
and move them over there would be somewhat of a real stretch for us to 
do that.
  Even more than that, take a look at the ramifications to NATO as a 
whole. It would fracture NATO. It could perhaps throw the coalition 
government in Germany into chaos. So ground troops, for all practical 
purposes, are not any kind of an immediate answer to force peace.
  Some people argue, and I think this article does a good job of 
addressing it, what about American credibility? What America has at 
risk in Yugoslavia is its credibility. I think this article addresses 
that better in two or three paragraphs, which I will quote in just a 
moment. I think this article does the best job of addressing that of 
any editorial or any type of assessment that I have read.
  Let me read it and then think about the words as I talk. What about 
American credibility? Concerns about American reputation and resolve 
are serious, which is why we must end this intervention with some 
measure of success, but credibility is often the last refuge of bad 
foreign policy. When policy is no longer justifiable on its merits, 
people shift gears and say, well, if we do not win at all costs we will 
lose face. But what about the loss of face in continuing a failing 
mission?
  A variant of credibility logic holds that dictators around the world 
would be emboldened if America does not win decisively. But would they?
  America won a spectacular victory in the Gulf War, televised live 
across the globe. It did not seem to deter the Serbs, the Croats, the 
Somalians, the Sudanese, among others. Whether America wins or loses a 
particular contest, the world will keep turning, bringing forth new 
dictators and new crises.
  Global deterrence against instability is a foolish and futile goal. 
It sets America up for failure. Those two paragraphs accurately address 
that situation, or that question, what about America's credibility?
  Let me reemphasize one point that I think is important for us to 
consider, and that is what about our partners? If any of us had a 
business partnership, or even their own personal partnership which 
would be their marriage, we do not see a lot of successful marriages 
where one spouse carries out 90 percent of the obligation and the other 
spouse kicks in about 10 percent, and we are not going to have a 
successful business partnership, generally speaking, when one partner 
carries almost all of the load and the other partner does not, the 
other partner almost skates.
  Why are not the Europeans carrying a fairer load? Well, some would 
say because the United States has the military capability to carry out 
the air strikes; we are the ones with the airplanes, we are the ones 
with the carriers, we are the ones with the technical expertise. I 
grant that that is probably true, but at some point this administration 
has to come forward and say, all right, America has done its share. Now 
America is going to shift from a military mission to a humanitarian 
mission. That is what we do pretty darn well.
  We know how to take care of people. We can move a lot of supplies, 
medicine, food, clothing. In fact, throughout a lot of grocery stores 
in this country we will see boxes today asking for food contributions 
for the refugees, for food contributions to the people that are 
oppressed over in Yugoslavia. So at some point, especially as I think 
this thing, I hope, heads towards some type of resolution, America 
needs to step forward and say to our European partners, hey, you are 
good partners and you are going to have to carry your fair share and 
your fair share starts today. America shifts from military to 
humanitarian aid and the Europeans shift from minimal involvement to 
oversight of the resolution of this and carrying forth the military 
mission from that point forward.
  In my opinion, it should be a European force that goes into Kosovo to 
enforce any kind of peace accord that is made.
  Let me stress once again, because I think it is so excellent, for 
those and for our students out there, for our college students, anybody 
really that wants to learn or is learning all they can about the 
situation in Yugoslavia, pick up this week's Newsweek. Again, it is the 
May 17. It is an easy one to figure out. It has Star Wars on the front, 
and take a look at that article in there about what we are doing in 
Yugoslavia. I think it addresses the situation very well.
  Let me talk about a couple of other issues that I think are important 
for us to consider in Yugoslavia, and that is I want people out there 
to understand that we have not entered into a fight between a good guy 
and a bad guy. We have entered into a domestic dispute contained within 
the boundaries of a sovereign country, and if we study the history of 
what has gone on here, and history is so, so important for us because 
it reflects a very accurate picture of what we are really facing over 
in Yugoslavia, what we are facing over there, in my opinion, from the 
leadership point of view, not from the people, not from the average 
citizen, the average citizen over there on both sides of this battle 
are innocent citizens, but the leadership and their military 
hierarchies and the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Yugoslavia Army 
under Milosevic, both of those characters, I mean, in my opinion, they 
are criminals.
  In our country, as I said earlier in my comments, last year alone for 
the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is the ones that we are now talking 
about arming, which are the ones we are giving shield and food to and 
we are allowing supplies to go to them, we listed them as terrorists a 
year ago. What we are beginning to see in this country is a spin. 
Instead of being labeled as terrorists, as I think the Milosevic people 
are as well, they are now starting to call the Kosovo Liberation Army 
freedom fighters, or rebels. We are beginning to see this evolution 
here in our country.
  The same thing is going to happen, I think, once this thing heads 
towards a peaceful resolution, which I hope it does in the not too 
distant future. We are going to see the same thing happening as far as 
trying to commit the United States to rebuild all the destruction that 
has taken place over in

[[Page 9405]]

Yugoslavia, some of which we caused, a good deal of which we caused, 
through NATO bombing.

                              {time}  2015

  Remember that prior to the NATO bombing, there were about 40,000 
refugees in Albania and Macedonia and the surrounding countries. Today 
there are hundreds of thousands. Their economy was not a great economy, 
but they had an economy before NATO began its action.
  Today there is no economy. It will require a massive commitment from 
somebody in this world to take those refugees back to rebuild their 
economy, rebuild their bridges, rebuild their roads, rebuild their 
buildings, put drinking water back in, heating facilities back in 
place.
  What we have to be careful of is that the spin does not end up on the 
backs of the American taxpayers. I am afraid it will. That is why my 
prediction is that the American taxpayers will pay over $100 billion by 
the time this is all over.
  I know here in Congress in the last couple of weeks we have been 
debating among ourselves whether we should do a $6 billion supplemental 
or a $13 billion supplemental. I am advising my colleagues, in my 
opinion, and I have some background in this area, in my opinion the $13 
billion, which is the higher of the two figures that we debated, is 
simply a down payment, is simply a down payment that the taxpayers of 
this country will end up, as I just mentioned, paying somewhere close 
to $100 billion.
  We also need to talk about the continuing test. I think as elected 
officials in this country, every day we are involved in this military 
action we need to ask ourselves if the national interest of this 
country, as elected officials, can provide us with the justification to 
look at a set of parents whose child, young child, young man or woman, 
are serving in the military forces, or the spouses of some man or woman 
that is serving in our military forces, if our national interest gives 
us the justification to look these people right in the eye and say, the 
loss of your son or your daughter or your spouse's life was necessary 
for the best interests of this country.
  The day that Members do not think they can look them right in the eye 
and meet the standards of that test is the day that Members ought to 
stand with me at this podium and say, Mr. President, Mr. NATO, we need 
to bring this thing to a close. We need to find a resolution. We need 
to do it as quickly as we can.
  Unfortunately, this mission was begun, I think, with not the kind of 
preparation, not with the kind of anticipation, not the kind of 
planning that was necessary. But it is time to bring it to a closure if 
we can do it. It is time for the United States to say to its partners, 
you, too, have a responsibility. You, too, are going to have to carry 
your fair load.
  Let me wrap this up and summarize it by reminding all of my 
colleagues here on the House floor, when we talk about Yugoslavia or 
when we talk about any action that we take, we cannot measure by our 
intentions. Do not measure by intentions. It is kind of like Federal 
programs. We see a lot of Federal programs that have become boondoggles 
in our system back here, in our government. They all started out or 
almost all of them started out with good intentions.
  But we do not measure those programs by the good intentions. We 
cannot. We need to measure them by the results. That is what we ought 
to be doing in Yugoslavia. Let us measure by the results. What are the 
results we have today of 4 weeks of bombing, of human lives being 
expended, of bombing the Chinese embassy and creating an international 
flak, pulling Russia and China even more into this very complicated 
web? What are the results we should be measuring, and what do those 
measurements tell us, and do those measurements support the 
continuation of this type of policy, or should NATO come to some kind 
of resolution that can give us the kind of results we feel comfortable 
with when we read the measurements?
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article from the May 17, 
1999, issue of Newsweek.
  The article referred to is as follows:

                     [From Newsweek, May 17, 1999]

                           What Do We Do Now?

                          (By Fareed Zakaria)

       NATO was having a bad day. Friday morning a stray cluster 
     bomb hit a hospital and market in the southern Yugoslav city 
     of Nis. Serb officials said 15 civilians had died. Then, just 
     before midnight, three bombs slammed into the Chinese Embassy 
     in Belgrade, killing four and wounding at least 20 others. As 
     smoke poured out of the embassy, Zelijko Raznjatovic, the 
     indicted war criminal known as Arkan, bounded in front of the 
     TV cameras assembled at the embassy. The Hotel Jugoslavia, 
     which sits about 300 yards away from the embassy, is said to 
     house his infamous paramilitary henchmen, the Tigers. The 
     hotel was also hit, but an outraged Arkan told reporters, 
     ``Luckily we didn't have any casualties.''
       The alliance of nations fighting Slobodan Milosevic could 
     use some of that luck. In the hours that followed the embassy 
     attack, NATO officials confessed that it had mistakenly 
     targeted the building and scored a direct hit. Newsweek has 
     learned that targeters believed the embassy building was the 
     Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, an arms-
     trading company known by the initials SDPR. The SDPR, part of 
     the military-industrial complex the bombing campaign has been 
     seeking to destroy, is about 250 yards from the Chinese 
     Embassy.
       Friday's accidents are tragic reminders of the hollowness 
     of NATO's policy in Yugoslavia--its desire to wage a war 
     whose cardinal strategic objective is the safety of its own 
     pilots. From the start of this campaign, Western leaders have 
     hoped that they could get the benefits of war without its 
     costs. They have delighted in standing tall, speaking in 
     Churchillian tones and issuing demands to Milosevic. But 
     leaving aside ground troops, they have been reluctant even to 
     order the military to fly low, risky missions against Serb 
     forces in Kosovo. This combination of lofty goals and puny 
     means will have to change to bring a decent end to our Balkan 
     misadventure. At last week's meeting of G-8 foreign 
     ministers, the yawning gap between NATO's rhetoric and 
     reality began inching smaller. Western leaders stopped 
     insisting that after the war Kosovo could be policed only by 
     NATO forces and agreed to an international ``civil and 
     military presence,'' involving Russia, neutral countries and 
     the United Nations. (The latter will be possible only with 
     Chinese support.) At the same time, NATO is waging a more 
     intense bombing campaign--Friday's raids were the heaviest so 
     far.
       The start of an endgame would, however, bring several 
     unpleasant questions back to the fore. For seven weeks NATO 
     and the media have been obsessed with how the Yugosla war has 
     been going--how many targets were being hit, what planes were 
     being used and so on. Now they must ask again why exactly we 
     went to war. Only if we are clear about our interests and 
     goals can be know whether we have achieved them. Otherwise, 
     having stumbled into an ill-considered war, we will preside 
     over an unworkable peace.
       The debate over whether America has interests in the 
     Balkans is now somewhat irrelevant. Our commitments have 
     created interests, even though in foreign policy it should 
     usually be the other way around. We have two sets of concerns 
     relating to Kosovo, humanitarian and strategic. Sadly, in 
     both our goals will end up being to undo the consequences of 
     the war. The humanitarian goal is to reverse the flow of 
     refugees out of Kosovo. The strategic goal is to stabilize 
     the region--particularly Macedonia and Albania--which is 
     straining under the weight of the refugees and the war.
       NATO began bombing, let us remember, not for the refugees 
     but to get Yugoslavia to sign the Rambouillet accords. And 
     once the war began, several Western leaders, most prominently 
     Britain's Tony Blair, suggested that their war aims had 
     expanded to include Milosevic's head. Milosevic has been 
     strengthened at home and even abroad, where most countries 
     see him as the victim of an arbitrary exercise of Western 
     power. The Rambouillet accords are dead. The Kosovo 
     Liberation Army announced last Friday that it rejects them 
     because they do not provide for an independent state. For 
     their part, the Serbs are unlikely to agree to a referendum 
     on independence in three years, and NATO is no longer even 
     demanding that they do so. The requirement that NATO disarm 
     the KLA seems increasingly farfetched. Providing Kosovars 
     with some protection and autonomy is now the best NATO can 
     hope for.
       The Clinton administration's overriding objective is to 
     stop the exodus of refugees and have them return to Kosovo in 
     safety. This does not figure in any of the original 
     statements on the war, and for a simple reason. There was no 
     refugee exodus until the bombings began. NATO angrily denies 
     the connection, but the facts are clear. The United Nations 
     High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that there were 
     45,000 Kosovars in Albania and Macedonia the week

[[Page 9406]]

     before the bombing. Today they number about 640,000.
       As the Serbian sweep through Kosovo began and tens of 
     thousands of refugees poured into Albania and Macedoma, 
     Secretary of Defense William Cohen asserted, ``We are not 
     surprised,'' making one wonder why NATO was so utterly 
     unprepared for something it had expected. In fact, a high-
     ranking administration official admits frankly, ``Anyone who 
     says that we expected the kinds of refugee flows that we saw 
     is smoking something.
       What Milosevic planned was a campaign called Operation 
     Horseshoe. It was to be a larger version of a brutal 
     offensive in 1998 that attacked and destroyed KLA strongholds 
     and killed, terrorized and expelled civilians in areas that 
     supported the group. Most Western observers--including the 
     CIA and the United Nations--estimated that this ugly action 
     would result in an outflow of a maximum of 100,000 refugees 
     abroad.
       The decision to wage an air war against Milosevic involved 
     a fateful preliminary move. The 1,375 international observers 
     posted in Kosovo had to abandon the province, as did all 
     Western journalists and diplomats. Brussels and Washington 
     may not have recognized what this meant, but people on the 
     ground did. As one Kosovar said to a departing British 
     journalist: ``From now on it's going to be a catastrophe for 
     us, because the [observers] have gone.''
       The human tragedy that resulted should teach a sobering 
     lesson to all those who goaded the administration to stop 
     planning and start bombing, who urge that force be used as a 
     first resort in such crises and who want military might used 
     as an expression of moral outrage. Being righteous, it turns 
     out, does not absolve one of the need to set clear and 
     attainable political goals, relate your means to them and 
     make backup plans. The philosopher Max Weber once noted that 
     a statesman is judged not by his intentions but by the 
     consequences of his actions. It is well and good to clamor 
     for a blood-and-guts foreign policy, but until now it has 
     been Western guts and Kosovar blood.
       If only we would use ground troops, some hawks now respond, 
     none of this would have happened. And certainly the decision 
     to go to war carelessly and in haste, before massing ground 
     troops in Albania and Macedonia, was a historic blunder. 
     Ground troops would have proved a potent threat. But even 
     with troops, the war would have begun with days of 
     airstrikes. And it would have been near impossible to invade 
     Kosovo while hundreds of thousands of refugees were swarming 
     across its roads, bridges and mountain paths.
       Those who still advocate the use of ground troops today 
     speak of its military benefits, which are real. They do not, 
     however, mention its costs, which are political. A ground 
     invasion would fracture NATO. Germany, Italy and Greece are 
     strongly opposed to the use of ground troops. A majority of 
     Italians and more than 95 percent of Greeks are opposed even 
     to the airstrikes. An invasion would probably split Germany's 
     governing coalition. Russia and China would both actively 
     oppose it and veto any U.N. involvement with Kosovo.
       These are staggering obstacles, and not because Washington 
     should pander to Chinese or Russian prerogatives. The 
     eventual settlement in Kosovo--even after an invasion--will 
     have to be a political one, involving Yugoslavia, its 
     neighbors and other major powers. (Remember the strategic 
     goal was to bring stability to the region.) It will be a more 
     durable, lasting settlement if it is not a unilateral 
     American fiat. Even in the gulf war, even in World War II, 
     the endgame was as much political as it was military.
       Of course, Washington could just go ahead and do whatever 
     it wanted. It is certainly powerful enough. But it would mean 
     not just as American invasion of Yugoslavia itself, but also 
     its occupation--it used to be called colonialism. The 
     problem, of course, is that as America gets sucked deeper and 
     deeper into the Balkans, one has to ask, is it worth it? Even 
     if we have ``self-created'' interests in the Balkans, are 
     they of a magnitude to justify a full-scale war, massive 
     reconstruction and perpetual peacekeeping? Sen. John McCain 
     urges that we fight the war ``as if everything were at 
     stake.'' But everything is not at stake. One cannot simply 
     manufacture a national emergency. For seven weeks now the war 
     has been going badly, during which time the stock market has 
     hit record highs, a powerful indication that most Americans 
     do not connect even a faltering war in the Balkans with their 
     security. (By contrast, markets everywhere reeled last July 
     when Russia announced merely that it was defaulting on its 
     debts.)
       What about American credibility? Concerns about America's 
     reputation and resolve are serious--which is why we must end 
     this intervention with some measure of success. But 
     credibility is often the last refuge of bad foreign policy. 
     When policy is no longer justifiable on its merits, people 
     shift gears and say, well, if we don't win at all costs we 
     will lose face. But what about the loss of face in continuing 
     a failing mission? A variant of the credibility logic holds 
     that dictators around the world will be emboldened if America 
     does not win decisively. But would they? America won a 
     spectacular victory in the gulf war, televised live across 
     the globe. It didn't seem to deter the Serbs, the Croats, the 
     Somalis, the Sudanese, the Azerbaijanis, among others. 
     Whether America wins or loses a particular contest, the world 
     will keep turning, bringing forth new dictators and new 
     crises. Global deterrence against instability is a foolish 
     and futile goal. It sets America up for failure.
       In the weeks ahead, despite the Chinese disaster, NATO must 
     intensify the air war--and hit tanks and troops. It must also 
     intensify its negotiations. The careful use of diplomacy 
     might well resolve what the careless use of force has not. 
     (If the Senate acts speedily on his nomination as U.N. 
     ambassador, Richard Holbrooke's considerable skills could 
     prove invaluable.) During this intervention, many have made 
     analogies to the Vietnam War. Some are more appropriate than 
     others. What is most relevant, however, is not how we entered 
     that war but rather how we left it. After four presidents had 
     made commitments to the people of South Vietnam, in 1973 
     Washington abruptly abandoned them to a terrible fate. This 
     time let us be clear; our obligations now are not to vague 
     notions of credibility and deterrence. We have a specific 
     commitment to the people of Kosovo to negotiate a decent 
     settlement for them and help rebuild their country. Western 
     nations will have to provide assistance to the southern 
     Balkans as a whole (minus Serbia for now). America having 
     paid for most of the war, Europe should pay for most of the 
     peace, but it must happen in any case. It is not a commitment 
     that requires that we send in ground troops or pay any price, 
     but it is one we cannot walk away from. There is an answer to 
     the legitimate question: why should we be involved in this 
     crisis? Because we made it worse.

                          ____________________