[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6] [House] [Pages 7889-7890] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]KOSOVO The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, last night's votes on our war were a wakeup call to our President, to NATO and to the world. The American People's House voted against a declaration of war, against ground troops, and also defeated a resolution on a tie vote, even, in support of the current air war. That should be a clear message to the world that America is in the process of switching the more they learn about this ill-conceived war. Next week's supplemental defense appropriations bill is in deep trouble. How can a Congress vote against a declaration of war this week and then the next week turn around and fund it? I want to make sure as one of those who is against this war, who started skeptical but has turned into someone who feels it is time to aggressively speak out before American men and women die on a battlefield in an ill-conceived, ill-planned and unwinnable war, that several things are true about this supplemental appropriation. Those of us who oppose it are not unconcerned about the refugees. Two weeks ago when I was privileged to go along with the CODEL over to that area and visited a refugee camp in Macedonia, you cannot help but be moved by the terrible stories that the individuals are telling about how they have been forcibly removed from their country. It is terrible. The question is not whether it should pull at your heart and how terrible it is. The question is what can we do about it and is this unprecedented? It is wrong when the Serbs do it, it is wrong when the Croatians do it, it is wrong when the Bulgarians do it, and it is wrong when the Bosnian Muslims do it. The question is by inserting ourselves can we stop this? Is this the most effective way? And will we accidentally create a problem potentially bigger than the problem that we went in to solve? Secondly, this is not about refugee aid. We should be having a separate vote on refugee aid, not refugee aid serving as a cover for military appropriations for a continuing war. All of us agree that the economies of Albania and Macedonia have been devastated by being unable to continue their trade not only with Serbia but the other countries around them, by handling the refugees that come in, by having a general collapse of their economies by their openness. We need to give aid for the refugees, we need to give aid to those countries. That is not what this supplemental appropriations bill is about next week. That is merely wrapping with it. We will give refugee aid, we will give aid to those countries, but I believe it should happen after we have a settlement there. Thirdly, this is not about replacing military preparedness. This President has already proven that whatever we appropriate, he diverts to the war. We can appropriate it for this or that, but if he wants to continue the war, he is diverting it. We have an obligation if we say we are against this war not to hide behind what we are replacing but understand he has no conscience as far as how he will divert the money, which also leads me to, this is not about military buildup. I am one of those who believes we are at least $20 billion behind in military preparedness and that is why we need to do it and that is why we must as a Republican Congress step up regardless of the budget question and address the defense question. But not here. If we put $12 billion, $6 billion more than he proposed on this bill, what assurances do we have that this is not either going to continue the war or be used, even worse, for the ground war that we voted against last night? Because there are no fire walls that you can put in, particularly if we continue to allow reprogramming of money in our leadership that protects us from having voted the funds next week to go to a ground war. It is fine to stand up here as we did last night and say we are against a ground war, we are against continuing this air war, we are against a declaration of war, but the real thing comes [[Page 7890]] down to the money. Next week are we going to stand up and say, ``He can't have the money to continue and expand this war. We want to see people come to the table in a livable, workable thing''? When I was at NATO in Brussels, I had a very weird feeling as I was sitting around the table and hearing how we cannot back up, this could be terrible and devastating for NATO. This is so much like Vietnam where we heard all those things and in fact we got the same deal after we had the loss of American lives that we could have had the first day. In a very interesting book, ``Taking Charge'' by Michael Beschloss about Lyndon Johnson, actual tapes, this is an exchange of Lyndon Johnson with Dick Russell, head of the Senate Foreign Relations, I believe, at that time. ``LBJ: I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and Harriman and Vance and all those folks that are dealing with it and I would say it pretty well adds up to them now that we've got to show some power and some force--that they do not believe--they don't believe that the Chinese Communists will come into this thing. But they don't know and nobody can really be sure. But their feeling is that they won't. And in any event, that we haven't got much choice, that we are treaty-bound, that we are there, that there will be a domino that will kick off a whole list of others, that we've got to prepare for the worst.'' That is exactly what we are being told here. That is exactly what I heard at NATO. ``Oh, we can't back up because we are treaty-bound, we are there, it will be a domino.'' In fact, we stayed in Vietnam. We lost many of my friends, thousands of Americans in that battle, and in the end wound up backing up, because the problem here is do not bluff, do not make threats that you cannot follow through. Our generals have told us, this is unwinnable in the air. Those of us who have been over there, those of us who have studied any history realize you cannot do a ground war from the south. A ground war would have to come from the north. Not only are there huge mountains and not only have armies throughout world history been stopped in those mountains, you have to come from the north. If you come from the north you have Romania and Hungary drawn into the war. You have a problem of coming through Belgrade and northern Yugoslavia and then us owning northern Yugoslavia as well as the autonomous republic of Kosovo. It is not winnable on the ground. The American people need to be told that if we go to a ground war, between 20 and 50,000 Americans are going to lose their lives. We have to understand what we are faced with here. We bluffed. We should not bluff when we do not have the ability to execute. It is time to cut off the funding for this war. ____________________