Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, we are about to make an important decision in voting on the McCloskey-Gilman-Bonior-Hoyer amendment. It is more than a vote on whether we will or will not lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a vote on whether we will act according to important international principles, the right to self-defense. It is a vote on whether we will ensure that countries are not rewarded for violating international principles through forceful changing of borders, aggression, and, yes, genocide. Let us not stand silent, let us not dissemble, let us not say as the gentleman from New Mexico has said, that it is not now time. That is what we said in the thirties: it is not time to confront aggression, it is not time to stand up for principles, it is not time to say enough of killing, enough of taking property by force, enough of ethnic cleansing, enough. This is a vote on principle. It is not some slick foreign policy 'let's deal.' We have been trying to deal with the Europeans for 2 years, and they have not acted. It was the policy of the Bush administration to say that we will, in fact, have the Europeans take the lead. That, my friends, was 2½ million refugees ago. That, my friends, was 200,000 deaths ago.”