Political Quotes

On the recordApril 19, 1994
for more than a generation we told ourselves it was never going to happen again. After the destruction of the Armenian people by the Ottomans, the Jews by the Nazis, and the Cambodians by Pol Pot, we were going to live in a more civilized time when the international community would not sit idly by during genocide. Tell that today to the people of Bosnia. Tell it to the 60,000 poor souls encircled and being overrun today in Gorazde. For them it means nothing. What is it that the international community does to these safe areas? Two airplanes, dropping four bombs, while tanks roll through city streets, taking potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. President Clinton says, accurately, there is an international embargo. We cannot unilaterally lift it. We cannot unilaterally defy it. Perhaps, Mr. President, but we do not have to be enforcing it, either. Withdraw the U.S. Navy from the Adriatic, pull America out of this enforcement, allow these poor, desperate people to get the arms they want to buy with their own money to defend their own families with their own lives, lest we be in complicity in yet another international genocide.
Said by
Robert Torricelli
New Jersey

Editor's note · Context

Addressing the genocide in Bosnia and the international community's response.

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