Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
May 3, 1999 -- Page: S4533

MRS. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Madam President. I, too, thank my colleagues, Senator McCain and Senator Biden, for having principle, for stating their principle very forcefully, even though I disagree with what they are trying to do with the resolution that is before us today.

I think every Member of this body has the responsibility to address this issue, to say what we think, and to back that up with action. In fact, I have to say that I was stunned, after the House action last week, that some Members came forward and said, `Oh, this is partisan.'

Madam President, this is not partisan. There are Members from both sides of the aisle who have very differing views on this. I would never say that someone who does not vote with me is partisan or is coming to this debate with anything other than their own conscience.

So I am going to speak from my conscience and my heart. I am against this resolution. I am not against it procedurally; I am against it on the merits. I respect everyone who is on either side of this issue, and I think we need to have the debate. I think we need to take an action that would turn us in a different direction from the course we are on in Kosovo today.

Madam President, I have to take a moment of personal privilege and say that I was stunned to pick up my paper on Saturday and read that one of my constituents, Larry Joyce, had died on Friday. Friday night, when I was speaking to a group, I was talking about Larry Joyce--not knowing that he had passed away--because Larry Joyce is one of my heroes. He has had an indelible impression on me.

He was watching this debate and this issue very closely, because Larry Joyce was a decorated Vietnam veteran who lost his son in Somalia. Sergeant Casey Joyce was one of the great Army Rangers who lost his life in his first mission as an Army Ranger. When Larry Joyce told me his story, I invited him to come and testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. I have to say, he gave the most compelling testimony that I have heard in all of my time on that wonderful committee.

Larry Joyce was a hero. He was a patriot. He was very concerned about this Kosovo issue. I wish he were alive to see this issue all the way through, because he certainly had a lot to say that was important.

This resolution is wrong for a lot of reasons. It is the wrong time--through no fault of the authors of the resolution because they could not have known, when they introduced this resolution in the Senate, that we would have the release of our American prisoners over the weekend.

Of course, all of us were so thrilled when on Saturday we heard that President Milosevic had agreed to release the prisoners, and then on Sunday, when many of us were waking up, we heard the news that they had already been released.

I was proud to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales in my home State of Texas on their way to Frankfurt yesterday, and there weren't two more relieved people in the whole United States of America than they were.

This release does give us a narrow window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution. I think it is wrong to pass a resolution on the floor of the Senate saying escalate the intensity of this campaign. That is the wrong message. Instead, I call on President Clinton to take bold action, open a door for discussion with President Milosevic, set a timetable, require that there be immediate cessation of any hostilities toward Kosovars of Albanian extraction, and ask Mr. Milosevic if he will agree to come to the table and talk about a peace.

This is a window. If it fails, what have we lost? Set a timetable, 5 days. Do you think we could lose 5 days in bombing to save maybe hundreds of lives, maybe thousands of lives, maybe years of conflict? I think it is worth a try. I call on the President today to do just that, take a bold step. This is the opportunity for President Clinton to see if President Milosevic is serious. If he is, talking does not hurt, and it just may help.

The resolution is wrong for other reasons. Those who offer this resolution believe it is necessary because Congress has a responsibility to act. I don't think this resolution is an exercise of responsibility. I think it is an abdication of responsibility. It tells the President, in so many words, don't bother us anymore with this war. Congress doesn't want to know what your plan is. We don't want to know what it is going to cost. We don't want to know from you what the exit strategy is. Congress doesn't want to authorize the use of ground forces. In short, we are saying, President Clinton, go fix it and don't bother us, send us the bill.

I reject that view of taking responsibility for Congress. I think we do have a responsibility to say what we think. If we have learned one lesson from Vietnam, it should be that Congress must take the responsibility that is given it by the Constitution and not let something go on and on and on, when we know we are going in the wrong direction.

In 1964, the Senate passed what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. That resolution urged President Johnson to take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression in Southeast Asia. The debate on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was much of the same debate we are hearing today--concern about whether our allies were dragging us into a war that wasn't ours; concern about whether they would accept enough of their responsibility; concern about cost; concern about whether we were actually declaring war, but being too timid to do it; and there was concern about escalation.

We know what happened. Over the next 10 years, every one of us can tell what happened. Congress abdicated its responsibility. They let the war go on and on and on, and we lost 59,000 Americans because Congress did not stand up and say, wait a minute, we are going in the wrong direction, let's do something about it.

I am not going to abdicate my responsibility. If I were the only vote in this body, I would vote against this resolution on the merits right now. That is not to say that I would not welcome the President coming to Congress and telling us what he wants, but he has not asked for more force. He has not submitted a plan. He has not stated goals with which I could agree.

Why would we take an action that would give him more authority to use more force at exactly the wrong time? The President had not submitted a plan when the Senate voted to authorize the air operation, and that is why I voted no. At the time, we were told the operation would deter President Milosevic from hurting the Kosovar Albanians. When the bombing began, we all know that he escalated the atrocities against those poor people. That is not our fault. I would never blame us for that. But it is our fault that we didn't have a contingency plan

I would never compound that problem by giving the President more authority to send our troops in on the ground and put them in harm's way with no contingency plan. He has not come to Congress; he has not asked for more authority. The last thing we ought to do is give a blanket authority when we do not know the plans. It would be an abdication of our responsibility to do that.

I think the administration has been all over the lot on the policy that we say that we want to solve this problem. Do we want an independent Kosovo? The administration says no. Do we want to drive Mr. Milosevic from power? The administration says no. Do we want to encourage European democracies who are very strong and stable right now to assume more responsibility for European security? The administration says yes, but the crisis is demonstrating the opposite.

Do we want a strong NATO with a clear sense of purpose and the ability to defend a united Europe? The administration says yes, but I think this Balkan policy is going to tear the alliance apart. It goes far beyond what 19 countries can agree to in a consensus.

We are learning that you cannot fight an offensive war by committee. What we want in Yugoslavia, according to the administration, is a multiethnic, multiparty democracy. We seem to be prepared to impose it on both sides, neither of whom are ready to accept our terms.

We have tried an experimental Balkan policy in Bosnia. It is not workable. Thousands of American troops are there with no end in sight. The head of the international observer group has fired elected officials and canceled sessions of parliament because opposition parties oppose what we are doing in Kosovo. People vote in elections and then cannot stay and serve where they are elected.

I do not think that is an example of a democracy. I think it is a collection of countries trying to force their will on the people of another country.

I certainly do not think we should try to do this in Kosovo with Bosnia as an example. Are we going to require the Kosovar Albanians to live under Milosevic? Surely no one could seriously take that as a goal, but that is the goal stated by the administration--an autonomous region within Serbia that is protected by a NATO force with no end in sight.

So, Madam President, I think it is time for us to look for a responsible force that has a chance to succeed. With the glimmer of hope that we have with the release of our prisoners, I urge the President to seize the opportunity to seek a diplomatic solution, try to bring Mr. Milosevic to the table, bring in the other parties, and look for a region-wide solution.

I think the United States should go back to its role in the region of being a friend to all and an enemy to none. As the world's greatest superpower, we do not have to take sides in ethnic conflicts if we are going to be the neutral party that can bring them together. We should be able to bring the powers together to work out a solution that would have a long-term chance to succeed, one that recognizes the open, gaping wounds of all the parties in the Balkans. It would require much more energy than was put into Rambouillet. It would require President Clinton to take a personal interest and an investment in the solution. And he can do that. The effort would be worth it. We should bring Russia back to the brink to forge an alliance with the West, not push them further away from us. We should provide people in the region self-determination so they can create countries that have a chance for longevity.

It would keep the United States from devoting incredible resources for its open-ended commitment in the Balkans, because our ability to fight elsewhere in the world is being jeopardized by this operation. We are now talking about blockading Yugoslavia. That will take more ships than we now have allocated to this mission. It will hamper our ability to operate in the Persian Gulf. We have already seen that it is diverting military resources from as far as the Asian theater.

Madam President, as much time as we have put in on this Balkans issue, I think we need to come out with a solution that is not a `Band-Aid' for Kosovo, but something that will settle down the Balkans for a longer term and give them a chance to live as neighbors, side by side, to have stable economies, to get their people back in their respective countries, to be able to live and have self-determination; and then, hopefully, they could become trading partners and friends.

Madam President, I don't think that any strategic planner in the world ever thought, as the cold war ended, that we would propose a new strategic concept for America that would include tens of thousands of troops dedicated to the Balkans in perpetuity, but that is exactly what is happening. I have listened to the arguments that are being made. The basic argument seems to be: I don't really like how we got here, but now that we are here, we have to win. We are in it, so we must win it. I keep hearing that over and over again. That is like saying when you are going in the wrong direction, keep going and speed up.

I don't think the Senate ought to say that. I think we ought to be a partner with the President in trying to say, wait a minute, Mr. President, we don't agree with what you have done, so let's try to take a different course. I am suggesting tonight that that course be that glimmer of hope that we can have a diplomatic solution, which would be much bigger than just a `Band-Aid' on Kosovo.

I have heard the argument that the credibility of NATO is at stake. Now, that is a good argument. I want the credibility of NATO to remain intact. But what kind of alliance, with a mistake staring them in the face, would keep going down the same road and say that, in order to remain credible, we have to go down the same road, at any cost in lives, at the cost of any treasure of any of our countries, and we are going to gut it out even though everyone who has any little bit of awareness of what has been going on is bound to say this isn't working very well?

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that, if NATO were under attack, we could win a war? No, there is no doubt, because if one of our countries was under siege, we would go all out and we would win. We might use nuclear weapons if we had to, but we would win if one of us had a security threat. But the fact of the matter is, Madam President, we don't have a security risk. We have a humanitarian tragedy. So we are not in this full force. It is a `gentlemen's war.' We are doing strategic bombing. We are trying to be careful not to kill civilians, thank Heaven. We aren't going to put in ground troops. The President has said that.

This is not a war on which you can judge the credibility of NATO. If we wanted to win, we would win. We have the force to win, make no mistake about it. Nobody in their right mind would doubt it. But the problem here is the same as we had in Vietnam; we are not prepared to use full force to win, because it isn't a security threat.

To keep NATO strong, I submit that we don't keep going forward on a mission that doesn't appear to be very positive. To keep NATO strong, we should have a clear principle, a clear mission, and not an immediate reaction, but be slow to get into action. And when you go, by God, you go to win. That is what was wrong with Vietnam, and it is what is wrong today in Kosovo. It is not the credibility of NATO that we don't win a `gentlemen's war.' The credibility of NATO would be tested if we had a real security threat to one of our countries, and we would go in and we would win

So I think the resolution today is meaningless, because we know we are not going to use full force. We are not going to use weapons of mass destruction, and we are not going to use ground troops. The President has said that. He hasn't even asked for it. And this operation should show us, and it should be a lesson for NATO, that if we are not prepared to go for a win, we should not take the first step. That is the lesson to keep the credibility of NATO.

If we are not prepared to go for a win and declare war on Serbia we shouldn't have started the bombing, and we shouldn't continue in this direction. That is why the resolution is wrong.

I am not ready to declare war on Serbia. I think they have a despot as a leader. But I don't think the American people are ready to declare war on a country that is not a security threat to the United States. I don't think we should start bombing another country if we are not ready to declare war.

Madam President, I don't think it is right for Congress to say go full force in the same direction you have been going. I think it is my responsibility as a Senator to say: I think we are going in the wrong direction, Mr. President. Let's take stock of the situation, and let's try to do something that would be a positive turn.

I was reading in the New York Times this morning a column by William Safire about the price of trust. The central question is, Do we trust the President to use all force necessary to establish the principle that no nation can drive out an unwanted people? And the answer is no. The distrust is palpable. Give him the tools and he will not finish the job.

Madam President, I don't want to give him the tools in that kind of atmosphere. It would be an abdication of my responsibility as a Member of the Senate to do that. The only responsible action for the Senate is to ask the President to come to Congress if you want to escalate this conflict. Come to Congress, and tell us why and tell us what your plan is. Tell us what the cost is. Tell us how many troops you need, and for how long. Tell us what the mission is. And what is victory?

How could we say that passing this resolution is an act of responsibility? I don't doubt for one minute that everyone who votes for this resolution is doing it because they believe it is right--because they believe in the Presidency. So many of the war heroes in this Senate believe in the Presidency. I think that is why they are standing so tall.

But, Madam President, I am a Member of the Senate. I believe in the Presidency. But I believe that when the President is doing something that is wrong--that I should stand up and say so. That is what I was elected to do. That is what the people of Texas sent me here to do.

I hope that we can have an influence on the President. I hope he will take bold action. I hope he will sit down tonight and decide that there is a glimmer of hope with the release of the American prisoners and it is worth a chance.

That is why I hope we will table this resolution--that we will take our responsibility seriously as Members of the Senate, and say: Mr. President, what we are doing isn't working, and I am not going to escalate it. I am not going to put our troops into harm's way, most assuredly, when you don't ask us to do it. And when you don't give us a plan, and when you don't give us a policy that we can decide if we support or not. The people who elected me to take the tough vote trust me to do what I think is right in my heart. I would never abdicate my conscience by giving a blank check to put our troops into harm's way in support of a policy that I haven't seen, and what I have seen I disagree with. No way.

Madam President, I yield the floor.