On the recordOctober 17, 2011
I am here today to clear up a lot of misunderstandings that are floating around the country concerning the decision to have some of our troops--not combat, but some of our troops--go into sections of Eastern and Central Africa to cooperate with about five countries that have been trying, for 25 years, to eradicate the Lord's Resistance Army and their leader whose name is Joseph Kony. It has disturbed me quite a bit over the years that not many people care about Africa. I can remember back when President Clinton was in office that at that time I objected to sending troops into Bosnia and Kosovo because he was using as a reason to do that ethnic cleansing, and I said at that time, here at this desk on the floor: Why is he concerned about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia when on any one given day in any one country in Africa--at that time it was mostly in west Africa, and I used Sierra Leone as an example--in any one day there are 100 people more who are being ethnically cleansed in Africa than there are being ethnically cleansed in the same day in Bosnia or in Kosovo. But nobody cared. Fortunately, that changed when 9/11 came and people realized there was a serious problem. When our country was attacked, it became evident that we needed to take action against terrorists in the Middle East. As the Middle East was squeezed many of the extremists would move south through Djibouti, through the Horn of Africa.…
