Political Quotes

“I rise today to express my support for the McCloskey/Bonior/Gilman/Hoyer amendment to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 2-year-long embargo has done little toward ending either the war or the atrocities committed against the Bosnian Moslems. Two years worth of international diplomacy have achieved almost nothing. And during this 2-year peace process/negotiating period, more than 200,000 Moslems have been slaughtered. If we are not interested in sending in our own troops to end the conflict we can at least ensure that this besieged minority has the ability to defend itself. Two years worth of one tactic is enough: It is clear that diplomacy alone is not working. I have heard the argument that if we lift the arms embargo we will intensify the warfare rather than end the warfare. That by providing arms to the Moslems we will enable them to launch a full-scale war against the Serbs. I admit that this might, in fact, be true. But the alternative is to continue to allow one side to slaughter another. We have watched this happen for the past 2 years and we all know that it will continue despite diplomacy. We come to this well every day to decry the holocaust, to express outrage about Rwanda, to complain that people are hungry and homeless and sick and poor. We complain about all of these things, yet most of us probably feel that we are powerless to help. Well we are not powerless to help. People are being killed in Bosnia.…”