Sam Gejdenson: “first let us get straight where we are. There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress take…”

“first let us get straight where we are. There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress take action prior to the President putting troops into a peacekeeping situation. This is not initiating a war; this is not moving troops in an area where we anticipate war. These are peacekeeping operations, and we have troops all over the world in peacekeeping operations without having gotten prior congressional approval. Let us also get rid of some of the arguments that we have heard here on the floor that we are going to let the Europeans take care of that. That was tried. The previous administration waited for Europe to respond to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 people murdered, raped, killed in their homes, in open fields, maybe not reaching the numbers of other mass murders in this century, but certainly enough that the American people felt that we could no longer wait, and this President led our effort to end that slaughter. Burden sharing. We have never had an action where the United States is to play such a small role in the number of people on the ground; that in every other action, American forces were there in larger number and in this case the Europeans are, for the first time in my memory, accepting a larger responsibility.”