Sam Gejdenson: “we are here with one single primary purpose, and that purpose is to stop the murder in Kosovo. Mr. Milosevic continues…”

“we are here with one single primary purpose, and that purpose is to stop the murder in Kosovo. Mr. Milosevic continues to kill innocent civilians and tries to chase the rest away. This country has led the world, sometimes single-handedly, in military actions in Korea and Vietnam, in Panama, in Lebanon, in Grenada and in Kuwait. In Nicaragua, we armed people to fight themselves because we were worried about the economic and political system that would end up in Nicaragua. We fought to stop communism. Some people say we fought in Kuwait to protect our oil reserves. Here, Mr. Speaker, it is much simpler. We have a brutal dictator who is murdering innocent people and chasing the rest off the land. How do we stop this murder? That is our goal. We cannot use the argument that as a country, we failed to act elsewhere. Yes, there have been other tragedies in recent years, and to my regret we either did not have the assets or the inclination to respond. In Rwanda, in Cambodia, in countless other places the world should have responded. One advantage we possess here is that we have NATO; we have NATO united, that has been trained and operational together for decades. And this is not the United States as the Lone Ranger. How many times have we bemoaned the fact that America alone is left with this responsibility? This is the United States and it is other NATO partners together on a goal to stop murder. Do not blame NATO for the acceleration or the deaths in Kosovo.”