
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 40
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE UNITED STATES SHOULD STAY OUT OF THE BAFFLING BOSNIAN 
CONFLICT (House of Representatives - October 30, 1995)
[This and other documents available via world wide web and/or 
lynx at http://thomas.loc.gov]
 
 
[Page: H11381]
 
 
Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, it is the time in a Presidential term 
when, whether Republican or Democrat, Presidents and their 
advisers begin to think about major feats that might be 
accomplished in foreign affairs. Sometimes, there are 
achievements. Often, it is mostly symbolism. It is much easier 
than staying in town and relating to Congress.
 
Some Presidents have seen themselves as Franklin Roosevelt, with 
cape flying, standing on the bridge of a naval vessel in the 
North Atlantic. Others have seen themselves as Winston Churchill, 
the lone voice alerting the world to the rising power of Adolf 
Hitler and the danger to all Europe in the mid-1930's.
 
Sometimes our Presidents are right, but sometimes they are very, 
very wrong.
 
If I were to give advice to our current President, I would ask 
him to read the brilliant memoir of General Colin Powell. The 
General provides some very wise advice in `My American Journey.' 
At page 291 he says:
 
What I saw from my perch in the Pentagon was America sticking its 
hand into a thousand-year-old hornet's nest with the expectation 
that our mere presence might pacify the hornets.
 
In 1991, when `well-meaning Americans thought we should do 
something in Bosnia,' General Powell remembered `the shattered 
bodies of Marines at the Beirut airport,' and he argued `for 
caution.'
 
At pages 291 and 292, he comments:
 
Foreign policy cannot be paralyzed by the prospect of casualties. 
But lives must not be risked until we can face a parent or a 
spouse or a child with a clear answer to the question of why a 
member of that family had to die. To provide a `symbol' or a 
`presence', the General added, `is not good enough.'
 
Those are wise words.
 
Where is the defined mission of American forces in Bosnia? Many 
of us have argued for years--under two Presidents of the United 
States, one of each party--for lifting the arms embargo and 
letting the Bosnians fight for their own freedom. That has not 
been done.
 
Our executive and legislative energies should be on the major 
problems we have. The major problem where the American interest 
is directly affected is the world's remaining superpower, which 
is the Soviet Union, now the former Soviet states, now Russia. 
That is the country that should occupy our interest in relation 
to NATO, in relation to ties to the West in the years ahead. if 
we fail in that, all else we do will be for naught.
 
At page 577, General Powell says:
 
'No American President could defend to the American people the 
heavy sacrifice of lives it would cost to resolve this baffling 
conflict, the Bosnian baffling conflict. Nor could a President 
likely sustain long-term involvement necessary to keep the 
protagonists from going at each other's throats all over again at 
the first opportunity. American GI's are not toy soldiers,' 
Powell observed, 'to be moved around on some sort of global game 
board.'
 
We have to ask, where is the American interest? What are our 
objectives? What are our tactics? Are they worth endangering 
American lives?
 
Mr. Speaker, I say it is not worth endangering American lives, 
even though we can all grieve for the tragedies we see in the 
former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia. But when Bosnians are willing to 
pretend to be Serbs and Croatians are willing to pretend to be 
Serbs and Bosnians and Serbs pretending to be Croatians and 
Bosnians, it would be rather confusing to send American troops 
into that chaotic situation. And we must not do it.
 
Mr. Speaker, the article of Charles Krauthammer this last Friday 
in the Washington Post entitled `Clinton's Folly' also provides 
quite a bit of wisdom on this subject.
 
Mr. Speaker, I include the article for the Record, as follows:
 
 
   [FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, OCT. 27, 1995]
   
Clinton's Folly
 
   (BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER)
   
The first law of peacekeeping is that when you have real peace, 
you don't need peacekeepers. When both parties are in military 
equilibrium and have no intention of fighting each other--Israel 
and Egypt, for example--peacekeepers are nice to have around but 
they are mere window dressing.
 
The second law of peacekeeping is that where there is no peace, 
sending peacekeepers is a disaster. When the parties remained 
unreconciled--as in Beirut and Somalia, for example--peacekeepers 
simply become targets.
 
The third law of peacekeeping is that Americans make the best 
targets. If you are unhappy with the imposed peace, there is 
nothing like blowing up 241 Marines or killing 18 U.S. Army 
Rangers to make your point. Killing Americans is a faster way to 
victory than killing your traditional enemy.
 
From which follows one of the rare absolutes in foreign policy: 
Never send peacekeepers--and certainly never send American 
peacekeepers--to police a continuing, unsettled war. Yet 
President Clinton long ago committed the United States to sending 
25,000 peacekeeping troops to police a Bosnian peace.
 
He made this offer in his usual foreign policy way: unreflective 
offhandedness in the service of expediency. And now, as a Bosnian 
agreement of sorts approaches, his bluff is about to be called. 
Must the country go along with his folly?
 
If in the coming peace talks at an Air Force base in Dayton, 
Ohio, Richard Holbrooke can manage to get the Serbs, the Croats 
and the Bosnians to agree to a real peace--one they will be 
satisfied with and truly respect--that would be wonderful. But 
why would we need Americans to police such a peace? Such a peace 
could be policed by Fijians or Pakistanis or Canadians wearing 
U.N. blue helmets or some other multinational attire.
 
Why are the Bosnians demanding American ground troops instead? 
Because none of the three vengeful, irredentist parties expects 
anything resembling a real peace. They are not even pretending. 
Croatia, for example, announced just Tuesday that if it does not 
get Eastern Slavonia it will go to war with Serbia at the end of 
November to get it.
 
At Dayton, the parties may grudgingly sign on to a `peace' that 
all know will amount to a limited, temporary cessation of 
hostilities--a hiatus long enough to allow the quick 
interposition of heavily armed NATO and American ground troops. 
And then what?
 
And then, insanely, we have made ourselves parties to the 
conflict. There will be no avoiding it.
 
'Whom are we going to fight?' Congress asked administration 
spokesmen at hearings last week. The administration answer: just 
rogue elements of the different militias who might violate the 
agreements their political leaders had signed. But if any of the 
three parties sent regular troops against us, we would presumably 
just give up and get out.
 
As if giving up and getting out can be accomplished without 
needless casualties, self-inflicted humiliation and grave 
tensions with allies who might be left behind. And as if the job 
of housebreaking overambitious `rogue' militias is the job of the 
U.S. Army and not of the Balkan parties' own political and 
military leadership.
 
And what kind of neutrality--the one indispensable for any 
peacekeepers--are we bringing to the conflict? Our sympathies for 
the Bosnian government side are pretty obvious, particularly to 
the Serbs who have been on the receiving end of NATO air strikes 
and U.S. Navy cruise missiles. Even more absurd, the 
administration intends to simultaneously `peace-keep' and arm and 
train the Muslims.
 
Let's be clear: U.S. troops will be in Bosnia not to peacekeep 
but to protect the Bosnian government side. Our job will be to 
serve as human tripwires for the Bosnians. If Serbs or Croats 
move against the Bosnians, they will henceforth have to roll over 
the bodies of Americans first--and risk involving the United 
States even more heavily on the side of the Sarajevo government.
 
Bosnia is about to see the transformation of an impotent UNPROFOR 
(U.N. Protection Force) into a heavily armed USPROFOR (U.S. 
protection force). And the administration knows it. Secretary of 
Defense William Perry boasts that our force in Bosnia will be 
`the meanest dog in town.' But real peacekeepers are not supposed 
to be mean dogs. Real peacekeepers, like the ones in Sinai or 
Cyprus, are warm puppies. Their job is to carry binoculars and 
smile and reassure everyone. You send heavily armed infantry when 
you are going to protect and enforce.
 
It is hard to think of a greater folly than trying to enforce a 
peace among unreconciled Balkan enemies. It is a folly that 
Clinton's fitful meanderings on Bosnia have backed us into, a 
folly that must be firmly rejected now before it is too late.
 
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