[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 25573]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, earlier today, during morning business, I made 
some comments about missed opportunities of our foreign policy and how, 
as we look back over these past 8 years and judge whether we are better 
off or worse off here in the United States of America, it is good to 
take a look at the foreign policy situation, because, in fact, the 
world is a more dangerous place, and we are, in fact, more vulnerable 
and more threatened as a result of 8 years of a Clinton-Gore 
administration.
  When we look into why that is the case, what caused this to happen, 
we find a foreign policy that has really been characterized by photo 
opportunities on the one hand and lack of consistent attention on the 
other hand, and it has not served us as well as it might, and we have 
missed important opportunities at a time when the world is waiting for 
the world's dominant power to show clear vision and signs of leadership 
for the next century ahead.
  As we look at some of the hallmarks, trying to go back over these 
past 8 years of the Clinton-Gore administration, we have found that 
betting on people rather than on institutions in an evolutionary 
process was a big problem. Putting our money on guys like Milosevic is 
a bad bet; and Milosevic was, in fact, the guy we put our money on in 
Dayton for a short-term gain in the Balkans. Unfortunately, it led to 
long-term trouble; and we are still not out of it there. And Milosevic, 
while he has now been finally removed by the people of his country in a 
more evolutionary way, he nevertheless still is a factor, but more 
important, he is still a war criminal. We have dealt with Milosevic not 
as a war criminal in the Clinton-Gore administration, but as somebody 
who we can trust in negotiations. That was a very poor choice.
  Aristide in Haiti, another poor choice; a man who is an 
authoritarian, no friend of the United States, and has receded Haiti 
from the democratic promise it showed in the early 1990s. By betting on 
Aristide, I think we have done that country no favor at all.
  Foday Sankoh in Sierra-Leone. Probably, CNN has shown the most 
gruesome shots of butchery, of children going out and maiming children, 
drugged children going out and maiming children, being used as 
instruments of war. This is a person the Clinton-Gore administration 
chose to try and do business with. When CNN pulled the cord on that and 
they showed Foday Sankoh for the brutal dictator and terrorist that he 
is, the Clinton-Gore administration retreated from that, and so far we 
have nothing to replace it.
  So when I talk about a hallmark of betting on the wrong guy, that has 
been one of the problems. Another has been appeasement. We have seen 
continuously wishful thinking that said, if we could just get these 
people to go along with us, we will be all right, and we will offer 
them carrots. Well, we have to remember that the wall came down in 
Berlin because we were dealing from strength. They had no place to go 
in the Soviet Union and the United States of America was on the side of 
right and we were on the side of strength and eventually we prevailed 
because of those things.
  Now we are going to North Korea and we are seeing extraordinary, 
extraordinary and, I would say, amazing scenes of our Secretary of 
State basically recognizing a dictatorship that is has enslaved most of 
its people, including its children. This is not just enslaving them 
physically, this is mind control as well, because the indoctrination in 
North Korea is total. I have been there, and I have seen it. Here, for 
whatever reason, we are suddenly finding our new best friend, the 
smiling Kim Jong Il. He is still the same old Kim Jong Il, he is not 
our best friend, he is a dangerous dictator, and it is a thoroughly 
Communist country. I do not understand why we are trying to do him a 
favor.
  As we go through and look beyond the appeasements that we could talk 
about in Russia and China, let me skip to some bad judgment, bad 
judgment such as we have seen in the Middle East by trying to do a good 
job, and I give the President credit for that, but by forcing the 
agenda so fast for whatever motivation that it broke the framework. 
That was not good judgment; and we are seeing tragically tonight, every 
night on television, scenes of what happens when one forces a situation 
beyond its evolutionary capability to deal with it.
  We have seen in Iraq apparent, Desert Fox. We bombed the heck out of 
them, and what happens? We end up winning a very short-term gain and 
losing our window into Iraq. We do not truly understand what is going 
on there now. We have lost our eyes and ears, Iraq is evermore 
dangerous and is now reasserting itself as a leader in the Arab world, 
as an evermore dangerous enemy of the United States with greater 
capabilities. We did not do what we needed to do there.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a subject that will continue on, because this is 
a subject that matters to America; and I will be talking more about 
this in sessions to come.

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