Max Cleland: “we as Members of the Senate, are now being asked by the Commander in Chief to make the most serious decision we can…”

“we as Members of the Senate, are now being asked by the Commander in Chief to make the most serious decision we can make: the decision to authorize him potentially to send our young American men and women in the American military into harm's way. When I was a young man in the mid-1960s, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of force against North Vietnam, and I volunteered to fight in that war. Three times since I came to the Senate--on Iraq in 1998, on Kosovo in 1999, and then last year on al-Qaida and international terrorism--I have been asked by the Commander in Chief to authorize the use of military force to achieve our Nation's objectives, and all three times I voted to authorize the use of force. This is now the fourth occasion I have been asked to give my consent to such action, and each time I have thought back to the words of one who occupied the same seat in the Senate I now have the privilege to hold, Dick Russell. Senator Russell said: While it is a sound policy to have limited objectives, we should not expose our men to unnecessary hazards to life and limb in pursuing them. As for me, my fellow Americans, I shall never knowingly support a policy of sending even a single American boy overseas to risk his life in combat unless the entire civilian population and wealth of our country--all that we have and all that we are--is to bear a commensurate responsibility in giving him the fullest support and protection of which we are capable.”