Jerrold Nadler: “we are told that we are dealing with ancient ethnic quarrels here that we cannot hope to fathom. The truth of the matter…”

“we are told that we are dealing with ancient ethnic quarrels here that we cannot hope to fathom. The truth of the matter is that we are dealing with a classic case of aggression across an international border, against a member state of the United Nations, plus the instigation of domestic insurgency, not very different from what we faced in Kuwait. We have twice before this century had immoral arms embargoes. In the 1930's when the Fascists revolted in Spain, we had an arms embargo against the loyalists while Hitler and Mussolini armed the Fascists. In 1948 we had an arms embargo against Israel, and thank God to the Czechoslovaks who supplied arms so that the seven invading armies did not succeed. Now we are imposing an arms embargo against the victims of aggression and the victims of genocide while the aggressors have plenty of arms. We are told that lifting the arms embargo might lead to greater bloodshed. That is like saying that we should not have let the defenders of the Warsaw ghetto have arms against the Nazis. Mr. Chairman, I am a member of the Holocaust Memorial Council. I have many victims of the Holocaust in my district. We always say never again, we must learn never again, but it is happening again, and what are we doing about it? At least let us arm the Bosnians. This amendment unfortunately does not do that. The amendment simply lifts the arms embargo and leaves everything else up to the discretion of the President.”