Dick Durbin: “I would like to say, very briefly, a word about the situation in Syria. On May 13, 1994, a Senator from Illinois named…”

“I would like to say, very briefly, a word about the situation in Syria. On May 13, 1994, a Senator from Illinois named Paul Simon was then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa. His ranking Republican was Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Senators Jim Jeffords and Paul Simon had been told that there was a looming genocide about to occur in Rwanda. They went on the phone together and spoke to U.N. General Romeo Dallaire in Kigali, Rwanda, in May of 1994. They asked: What can we do to stop the killing in Rwanda? General Dallaire said: If you would send 5,000 uniformed troops, I could stop this genocide. Senators Simon and Jeffords wrote to the Clinton White House immediately at that time and asked for the administration to call on the United Nations to act. Their letter said in part: ``Obviously there are risks involved but we cannot continue to sit idly by while this tragedy continues to unfold.'' The Senators received no reply from the White House. In less than 8 weeks, 800,000 Rwandans were massacred. Today, President William Clinton acknowledges that he should have done more--we should have done more. What happened in Rwanda was a classic genocide. Today, what is happening in Syria may not meet the classic definition of a genocide, but it certainly meets every standard and every definition as the looming humanitarian crisis of our time. The question before us and the United States is this: What will we do?…”