Charles Norwood: “today's vote to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia is undeniably an important one. But I would ask my colleagues to take a…”

“today's vote to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia is undeniably an important one. But I would ask my colleagues to take a long, hard look at the bigger picture. Lifting the arms embargo is an important step and a step that I will support, but I believe we should not miss this opportunity to stand up for what we believe in and state clearly what we think America's role should be in the Balkans. Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that at the current time we have no useful role in Bosnia. The fighting is escalating between the various parties. The relative calm in eastern Bosnia has now become a war zone. The so-called safe havens have proven to be no such thing, and only serve to embarrass the United Nations. Leadership has been completely vacant during this crisis. Machiavelli said that it is better for a leader to be feared than loved. The United Nations has been an utter failure every step of the way trying to get the parties to love each other. NATO, including the United States, has failed in trying to threaten the parties into behaving. And now we want the Bosnian Serbs to believe we will bomb them if they do not behave. We have given them no reason to believe that we will back up any threat with action. It is time for us to pull out before we sacrifice American lives to show we mean business. How can we let the carnage continue? How can we sit idly by and let the ethnic cleansing continue?”