Tom Lantos: “There is an air of unreality about this debate. Tomorrow, some of us will be at the Harry Truman Library in…”

“There is an air of unreality about this debate. Tomorrow, some of us will be at the Harry Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, when Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland will formally become members of NATO. NATO, this incredible defensive alliance, which kept the peace in Europe for two generations, which resulted in the collapse of the mighty Soviet Union, and which is the cornerstone of security, not just for Europe, but for much of the rest of the world, and we are now debating as to whether, after the Albanians and the Serbs agree and invite us, we might participate with the force of 4,000 in a NATO contingent of 28,000 to keep the peace in Kosovo. My wife and I went to Kosovo the first time maybe 35 years ago, and we have been back there many times since. It is the only place in Europe where one can find a beautiful young woman of 22 or 23 who has two teeth because they have no dental care. There is a grinding poverty that boggles the mind, and these people have been suppressed, persecuted, given third class citizenship for a long time. This is our opportunity to do a tiny bit, a tiny bit of what the great generation of the second war did under infinitely more dangerous circumstances with infinitely greater sacrifices.”