Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 8453, the Upholding the Dayton Peace Agreement Through Sanctions Act. I thank Representatives Wild and Wagner for their dedicated efforts to introduce and move this important bill. Memories and horrific consequences of the Balkan wars of the 1990s are with us all, those of us who experienced that war in the region and those of us who worked on the ending of that war. I was one of those people. I was at the Dayton peace conference in 1995 as a young State Department staffer and remember how close we came to failure and the extraordinarily positive consequences of success: ending a war that claimed 200,000 lives, reaffirming the centrality and importance of American leadership in Europe and the importance of the NATO alliance, and keeping the peace in the transatlantic community. The fragile peace that we ushered in with the Dayton Accords was meant to leave the threats of ethnic nationalism and demagoguery in the past and to create a framework, as imperfect as it was, for cooperation and, ultimately, the integration of those countries into European institutions. Well, some of those young countries have done as we hoped. They successfully moved toward and integrated into the European Union and NATO. Some have struggled on that path but are still striving for a democratic and prosperous future.…”