Chris Smith

A Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Washington, DC, Tuesday, April 4, 1995
”Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. The subject of today’s hearing is genocide—genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina…I have tried to imagine daily life for Bosnians, being forced out of their homes, being publicly and repeatedly raped, being tortured in the camps, and facing execution in the next second, or—perhaps worst of all—watching these things happen to loved ones. It is hard for us to imagine what life really is like for the people of Bosnia over these past 3 years.”

The war in Bosnia (House of Representatives), January 27, 1993

“As reliable reports of massive atrocities, including rape, torture, and ethnic cleansing have become known, the moral imperative to act and to take effective action intensifies. We have a moral obligation, Mr. Speaker, to do more. Last week, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] and I introduced House Resolution 35 to press for United States action to uphold Bosnia’s right of self-defense by lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia, by enforcing the no fly zone over that country, ensuring the delivery of humanitarian assistance, by force, if necessary, and to aggressively press for unimpeded access to all camps, prisons, and detention centers by the ICRC and other organizations.”

The crisis in Bosnia (House of Representatives), September 23, 1993

“Mr. Speaker, the nightmare in Bosnia wages relentlessly as the world, reticent to become involved, stares in disbelief. The media have tired of the 17-month-old war, and Americans and Europeans sitting in front of the television news seem to be numbed by the countless deaths, the refugees, the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes, and the detention camps… The first step, wich would at least let the Bosnians fight with some effectiveness against their aggressors, would be the lifting of the arms embargo. We simply can’t be deterred or take no for an answer. This would permit them to obtain ammunition, antitank and antimissile munitions… I continue to support strategic airstrikes of the Serb troops which refuse to withdraw from Mount Igman around Sarajevo, military staging grounds and supply lines”

The Serbs stranglehold on Sarajevo (House of Representatives), May 17, 1995

“Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn the latest Serbian onslaught directed against innocent civilians in Sarajevo, an UN-designated safe-haven. The events of the past 24 hours underscore the fact that the besieged city of Sarajevo remains in a virtual stranglehold by well-armed Serb militants. UN sources confirmed that at least 1,000 shells were fired on Sarajevo. The heavy shelling of the Bosnian capital, the worst in over a year, resulted in a score of injuries and deaths. Sporadic shelling continues today. Some have had the audacity to argue that both sides are equally to blame for the attack, a pretext later used to deny the Bosnian Government’s urgent request for protection of Sarajevo. Attempts to equate the forces of the sovereign Government of Bosnia -Herzegovina with the marauding bandits led by Radovan Karadzic, a mastermind of genocidal aggression in Bosnia, are an affront which must be resoundingly rejected…  Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that measures taken by the Security Council to date have failed to maintain international peace and security as it relates to Bosnia -Herzegovina. This being the case, it is unconscionable that that country continues to be denied its right to self-defense, in clear violation of article 51 of the UN Charter. Earlier this year, I introduced H.R. 1172, legistion which lift the arms embargo against Bosnia –Herzegovina. Mr. Speaker, I urge colleagues to support the lifting of the arms embargo, an action fully in keeping with Bosnia’s inherent right to self-defense.”

Chatolics under attack in Banja Luka (House of Representatives), May 23, 1995

“Today I want to bring to the attention of my colleagues the deteriorating conditions in the region of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia It seems the latest atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb militants, who control the area, are directed at Catholic Church leaders and Catholic believers, who are primarily Croats. These attacks come on the heels of Croatia’s efforts to regain control over some of its territory occupied by the Croatian Serb militants since 1991… . An estimated 50,000 Croats and hundreds of thousands of Moslems have been expelled from this region alone during the past 3 years… these tragic developments are but the latest examples of the campaign of death and destruction directed against innocent civilians by the Bosnian Serb militants in Banja Luka and elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina”

Frank McCloskey

Frank R.I.P  1939-2003

“Nevertheless, for more than a year in the House, Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) urged the administration to press the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo that keeps the Bosnian government from defending itself, and to lead an international coalition to do whatever had to be done to stop the slaughter. He, even provided a job for one of the five State Department career officers who have resigned to protest U.S. inaction since fighting broke out in Bosnia in April 1992″

(Outspoken Legislators prodded Clinton on Bosnia, April/May 1994, Page 32)

June 1993, Page 26

What Should the U.S. Be Doing About Bosnia? — Three Congressional Views

What’s at Stake for the U.S. in Bosnia?

By Rep. Frank McCloskey

Bosnia is the defining moment of the post-Cold War era. Absent an early and dramatic turnaround in Western policy, we are in for very troubled and dangerous times.

In the Balkans, a Milosevic victory will mean years of conflict in Bosnia and Croatia, the extension of Milosevic’s genocide to Kosovo, Sandzak and Vojvodina in Serbia and to Macedonia, and a wider Balkan war. In the long run Milosevic’s “Greater Serbia” is doomed to collapse, but its rise and fall will traumatize the Balkans for generations to come.

In Europe, a Milosevic victory will make a mockery of two principles that are crucial to peace and stability, particularly in the area of the former Soviet Union: that genocide will be suppressed and punished, and that cross-border aggression will not be tolerated. It will deeply and perhaps fatally undermine the credibility and authority of the two institutions on which transatlantic peace and security are based: the CSCE and NATO.

In the wider world, a Milosevic victory will expose the end of America’s military commitment to European peace and security. It will reduce the power of the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council to that of the League of Nations in the 1930s. It will poison relations between the West and the Muslim world, and strengthen fundamentalist extremism in the latter. It will embolden aggressors and extreme nationalists everywhere, and drive them and their potential victims into arms races.

These are high stakes. We are very close to losing them. We cannot afford this, and we don’t need to. But this has been obscured for two years by equivocation, wishful thinking and a pervasive defeatism among Western policy makers, particularly in Europe but also in Washington. No wonder Western publics are confused.

Milosevic’s genocidal aims and utter bad faith are perfectly clear. The inadequacy of diplomacy, trade sanctions, and U.N. “peacekeeping” to deter, contain, or reverse Milosevic’s genocidal aggression is flagrant.

Yet Cyrus Vance, David Owen, and many European leaders continue to express hope in these failed policy tools and in Milosevic’s cooperation. They even propose to commit tens of thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, including as many as 30,000 American troops, to police the Vance-Owen plan—a thinly disguised surrender to Milosevic’s genocide which Serb forces clearly reject as insufficiently complete, and which their victims accept only out of despair.

Western policy on the Balkan crisis fears the quagmire of an unwinnable war. It still I fails to recognize that we are already deeply mired down in a quagmire—one of defeatism in the face of a crisis which we must confront, and which will become more and more difficult the longer we postpone that confrontation. It still fails to recognize that the Vance-Owen plan risks getting us deeper into this quagmire by entangling U. S. ground troops in an impossible and immoral mission in Bosnia, leaving Serb aggression in Croatia unresolved, and encouraging more Serb aggression in Kosovo and Macedonia.

President Clinton has signaled his determination to get us out of the quagmire of passivity and defeatism while making sure we do not get into the quagmire of an unwinnable war. He must act now to translate his determination into concrete decisions.

I hope the president will begin by admitting the profound failure of Western policy to date, suspending the Vance-Owen process, and recognizing and underscoring the genocidal nature of the Milosevic regime and its aggression.

I hope he will make clear to the American people the risks of inaction, and forge a U.S. -led victory strategy whose unequivocal objective is to defeat and contain genocidal Serb aggression.

Such a strategy cannot, should not, and need not rely on a massive U.S. or NATO ground intervention. It must and should lift the U. N. arms embargo from the states threatened by Milosevic-Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia; provide arms to Bosnia immediately; and use NATO air power to enforce the will and conscience of the international community.

Rep. Frank McCloskey (R-IN) is a member of the House Armed Services Committee

Joe Biden

“Appalled by the naked Serbian aggression and genocidal attacks on Bosnian civilians, in September 1992 I called for a ‘lift and strike’ policy. …

“My views were not widely shared at that time. As the war escalated — with massacres, ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and rapes — a few other senators, including Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman, joined my call for action. But it took more than two years of failed diplomacy — and a quarter-million killed and 2-million homeless — before we finally came around to the ‘lift and strike’ policy in the fall of 1995. Guess what? The policy worked!”

(In a 1997 speech)

“After a sobering tour of Bosnia’s battlefields, Senator Joe Biden came back to Washington last month and declared, “The U.S. must lead the West in a decisive response to Serbian aggression, beginning with air attacks on Serbian artillery.” Senators Bob Dole and George Mitchell agreed, as did 47 Congressmen and 12 State Department officials who took the unusual step of petitioning Secretary of State Warren Christopher to back the use of military force against the Serbs. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright sent a memorandum directly to the President in which she advocated air strikes.”

(Time Magazine, May. 03, 1993)
SENATOR JOE BIDEN, just back from a visit to the former Yugoslavia, is preparing a memo for President Clinton that suggests one way the U.S. could justify the unilateral use of force against the Serbs. Biden plans to tell the President that because U.N. resolutions permit “all necessary means” to deliver humanitarian aid to Bosnia, the Serbian gunners who threaten aid convoys are fair targets for American bombs. Biden will also suggest that the U.S. should abandon the arms embargo against Bosnia, thus literally giving the Serbs’ victims more of a fighting chance. As one member of Biden’s staff who accompanied him on his trip put it, “We couldn’t find a single Bosnian who, given a choice between U.N. forces remaining and lifting the arms embargo, preferred the U.N.”

(Time Magazine, Apr. 26, 1993)

Joseph Lieberman

Joseph Lieberman

L.A.Times, July 01, 1998. Strike or face another Bosnia

„In early summer 1995, Congress voted overwhelmingly to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia. This was a bipartisan effort that signaled congressional support for stopping Serbian aggression. The price of that genocidal aggression had been the slaughter of 250,000 Bosnians and the displacement of 2.5 million people”

Bosnia, Senat, June 19, 1995

“Mr. President, I noted a short while ago that three or four of my colleagues were addressing themselves to the most recent events in the former Yugoslavia. I myself wanted to take this occasion to do the same, because the events there, which have been heartbreaking, tragic, frustrating, and infuriating in various degrees for the last 3 years, seem to only get more so.

International outlaws–the Serbs–seize U.N. soldiers–peacekeepers, supposedly, wearing the blue helmets, noncombatants–seize them as hostages. And what is their reward? Their reward is that the United Nations ceases to enforce a U.N. resolution which compelled U.N. forces to protect Sarajevo and other safe areas in Bosnia. In other words, internationally, at least in Bosnia , crime does pay. The most outrageous, inhumane crime.

This follows genocidal acts against people singled out only because of religion, in this case Moslem. Two hundred thousand dead, two million refugees taken from their homes, increasingly under the cover of a U.N. mission that was supposed to bring peace, but has not brought any of it and has, unfortunately, increased the suffering.

With the withdrawal of UNPROFOR, the international community will again have the opportunity to act to lift the immoral arms embargo of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an embargo that has left one side with heavy weapons, the other side ill prepared to defend families and country.

Time has been running out for the people of Bosnia for too long now. The United Nations has not been willing or able to stop the bloodshed. It is time for the United Nations to step aside. What is left is for the people of Bosnia to fight their own fight with our assistance: at least with us untying their hands, which we have tied behind their backs by the continued imposition of this embargo, which originated at a time when the State of Bosnia did not exist, as an attempt to avoid the expansion of war by keeping arms out of the area. But it is the Serbs in Belgrade who control most of the war-fighting industrial capacity that was Yugoslavia’s. It is the Bosnians who are left to fight tanks with light arms.

The time is at hand for us finally to answer the call for help which has been coming, but has been unanswered, from Bosnia for too long. I hope that my colleagues in both parties in this chamber will be able to play a leadership role in supporting, encouraging, as rapidly as possible, the withdrawal of the U.N. forces from Bosnia , the lifting of the arms embargo, and the selective use of Allied air power to protect not just the sovereignty of a nation, Bosnia , that has been invaded by a neighbor, but to protect the rule of law, in Europe and throughout the world. In that, we here continue to have a vital national interest. ”

Bob Dole

Robert Dole

Neewsweek – Let Bosnia control its own future, Aug 7, 1995

“The Senate’s overwhelming bipartisan vote to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina marked a turning point–for Bosnia and for the cause of American leadership. The principle at the heart of this debate is simple: giving a small, war-torn country the right to self-defense against the most brutal and genocidal aggression on the European continent since the Second World War.

For three years the United States and the international community have: passed resolutions in the United Nations that pledged to protect the Bosnians, held meetings with our allies, established “safe havens” that tragically became safe fox-little more than Serb aggression, and issued NATO ultimatums threatening the Serbs. America and our allies spent a lot of time saying things, but did nothing– except reinforce failed policies.

The Bosnians are not asking for U.S. troops– only for arms to defend their families, their homes and their country.

The truth is that lifting the arms embargo will put the future of Bosnia back into Bosnian hands.

In the absence of American leadership, the Serbs have continued ethnic cleansing, which is just another name for genocide.”

More shells fall on Sarajevo (Senate), May 18, 2005

“Mr. President, on Monday more than 1,000 shells fell on Sarajevo–5 people were killed and 25 wounded. Yesterday Bihac was being shelled. Today a Sarajevo marketplace was hit by a mortar shell. The response to these attacks on U.N. designated safe havens reflects the United Nation’s latest de facto policy: Blame the Bosnian Government for trying to defend its people, and dispatch NATO planes to buzz overhead.

Let us face it, the protection of U.N. safe havens has become a fraud. The enforcement of weapons exclusion zones has also become a fraud.

According to news reports, the United Nations is considering mandate reduction for its forces in Bosnia. In my view that has already happened, and without a U.N. Security Council vote.

It seems to me that increasingly UNPROFOR’s real reason for being is to prevent a change in policy, specifically to prevent the lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia.

I say, along with Senator Lieberman of Connecticut, it is our hope that we will be able to vote on lifting the arms embargo in the Senate.”

United States arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina (Senate, January 06, 1995)

“Mr. President, 2 days ago I introduced legislation together with the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman, to terminate the United States arms embargo on Bosnia -Herzegovina as of May 1, 1995.

As I mentioned in my remarks at the that time, I believed that this legislation was not only consistent with international law in upholding Bosnia’s inherent right to self-defense, but that it would also serve to provide some badly needed leverage for the Bosnians on the diplomatic side.

It seems to me however, that the views that should be given the most weight, are those of the Bosnians. It is their country and their future we are talking about.”

Thousands of Bosnians flee (Senate, July 11, 1995)

“Mr. President, just a short while ago, CNN reported that the so-called U.N. safe area of Srebrenica had fallen–Bosnian Serb tanks have reached the town center and thousands of the 40,000 Bosnians in the enclave have begun to flee.

The main argument made by the administration in opposition to withdrawing the U.N. forces and lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia was that such action would result in the enclaves falling and would lead to a humanitarian disaster. Well, that disaster has occurred today–on the U.N.’s watch, with NATO planes overhead.

If it was not before, it should now be perfectly clear that the U.N. operation in Bosnia is a failure.

Mr. President, there can be no doubt, the U.N.-designated safe areas are safe only for Serb aggression.

It is time to end this farce. It is time to let the Bosnians do what the United Nations is unwilling to do for them. The Bosnians are willing to defend themselves–it is up to us to make them able by lifting the arms embargo.

It seems to me that if there was ever a moment when we ought to have a unanimous vote in this Chamber, it ought to be when we take up the resolution to lift the arms embargo.

We are talking about giving these poor people who are being killed by the dozens every day a chance to defend themselves by lifting the arms embargo, which they have a right to do as a member of the United Nations, an independent nation under article 51 of the U.N. Charter.

The right of self-defense is an inherent right, in my view. We deny them that right by not lifting the arms embargo.”