Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 493: BOB DOLE 1995 Clintons Comeback The Senate Debate Speech of Senator Joe Biden on sending Troops to Bosnia Special Edition (Part C) Bosnia (2)

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Episode 493: BOB DOLE 1995 Clintons Comeback The Senate Debate Speech of Senator Joe Biden on sending Troops to Bosnia Special Edition (Part C) Bosnia (2) · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is Randall Wallace, your host for the Randall Wallace Presents podcast, and this is our look back at Bob Dole.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a special edition to go along with our Bosnia episodes here from 1995, because Bill Clinton was not the only United States president to be involved in the Bosnia issue at the time.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Joe Biden, who was then a United States Senator, who would go on to be president, was on was a senator and involved in foreign relations uh at the time.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he will speak on the Senate floor on the decision to send troops to Bosnia.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it would be interesting to hear his address to the United States Senate.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 20 minutes long.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's his contribution to the debate.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you can hear him in his prime.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know Senator Biden or President Biden, when he was president, was was you know close to 80 or 80 years old, or 81, I think.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you know some of his skills had faded just a little bit, uh, but you're gonna hear him in his full um capacity at the top of his game here uh with this speech.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to hear his viewpoint on it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: He'll give you a history lesson on Bosnia.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh it's an interesting piece of of history, uh perhaps at this point, a sort of a sideshow from a future president of the United States commenting on the decision of the current president, the then then current president of the United States uh about sending troops to Bosnia and the Dayton uh agreement.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, here is U.S.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Senator Joe Biden on the Senate floor on December thirteenth, nineteen ninety-five.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I will yield my place to Senator Biden.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I I thank the Senator.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Mr.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: President, I asked unanimous consent at the outset that a much longer statement I prepared on this uh issue be entered in the record as if read.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Without objection, so ordered.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Mr.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: President, uh, I'd like to make uh a few points here, if I may.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think a little bit of uh history is immediate past history is important for us to recall here.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: With regard to whether or not this policy that has been pursued in this administration relative to Bosnia-Herzegovina was a sound one or not, it is the same policy that was pursued by the Bush administration.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: The Bush administration set a policy in motion that said we would support an arms embargo against the Bosnian government as well as others, and that we would not use air power to relieve the genocidal actions of the Serbs.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: To my great disappointment, although there were faint efforts to change that policy by attempting to convince our allies to lift the embargo, truth of the matter was this administration did not change the position.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Some of us, as long ago as the last four months of the Bush administration, argued loudly, if not persuasively, that the Bush policy was an incorrect policy.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Argued that we should lift the arms embargo, and in addition to that, that we should supply weapons to the Bosnian government, which at that time was a multi-ethnic government, made up of a council of presidents, roughly divided, a third, third, and a third between Moslems, Croats, and Serbs within Bosnia.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: A Bosnian army that was made up of Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Moslems.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we even passed the so-called Biden amendment through both houses of the United States Congress that authorized the President of the United States to seek a lifting of the embargo and to transfer up to$50 million worth of weaponry off the shelf to the Bosnian government.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: That was in the last months of the Bush administration.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: I and I don't say this to speak to so much what I did or didn't do, but to mark it historically.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I think after Senator Moynihan was one of the few people who went to Sarajevo, went to near Cherbenica, went to Tuzla, went to Belgrade, went to Zagreb, met with Karajic, met with Molochevich, met with Umperfor, met with the Croatian leadership, and came back and wrote a report, at which time I was debriefed by the Secretary of State and the President.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: And the report called for lifting the arms embargo and using air power to strike at the Serbian genocidal undertakings that were just that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Back then, I and I was not the only one in the world community, but I came back and pointed out that this was raw, unadulterated genocide.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: That the Serbs had set up rape camps, a policy explicitly designed to take Moslem women primarily into camps, rape them, have them carry the children to term in order to intimidate and pollute the Moslem people in Bosnia.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone said that wasn't going on.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: This was not 1937 or 1938 or 1940.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: But now no one questions it occurred.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Remember coming back after going up through Mount Igman and over the mountains into a place called Kistlejack and going through villages and coming back and saying there are graves.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: You could ride through a village in the mountains and see three or four homes pristinely kept, window boxes, flowers, three in a row.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Next home, a hole in the ground.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Next home, perfectly kept, two holes in the ground or a chimney sticking up after that.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And graves at the end of the town road.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I was told by our own people, as well as the French, God bless them, and the Brits, that these folks are all the same.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're all bad guys.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: They're all like this.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: They've all been doing this for all of the last four centuries, which is historically inaccurate and was inaccurate in terms of what was taking place at the time.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when we watched on television, the senator from Arizona and I spoke to it on the floor that night when they overran Sherbenitsa.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you could actually see UN soldiers sitting there with their blue helmets and hats on top of tanks, watching the Serb conquerors take the women and children and send them in one direction and take the able-bodied men and send them in the other direction for extermination.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: This wasn't because they wanted segregated prison cells.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: They took them to the woods, they dug holes, they shot them, they dropped them in the holes, they poured lion their body and bulldozers, the dirt over them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we were told, no, that's not happening.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have satellite imaging that uncovers this surprise.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Surprise.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my lord, this is happening.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I bother to say this, because I know you all are tired of hearing me saying it for the last three years, is to make one very important point.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And one with all due respect, I don't think the president has accurately made.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that is, what is our interest in Bosnia?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a vital interest?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is there an interest?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or as my friend from Missouri said, does this action represent our interest and our values?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if this does not represent our interest and our values, then nothing that has happened since the end of World War II represents our values.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: How many in this chamber, like me, have gone to Holocaust memorial events and heard the refrain, never again.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Never again.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: On the same continent, in the same proximity, to the same death camps, it is happening again and happened again.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: This time it was not Jews, it was primarily Moslems.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: In 1935 and 37 and 39 and 41 and 1943, had it been Catholics like me or Protestants like many in here who were being taken to death camps, the world would have risen up years earlier.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: But it was not.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was Jews.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: We all turned the blind eye as the world.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I respectfully suggest were it not Muslims this time who were in the rape camps, were it not Muslims who were being exterminated, who were part of this new phrase.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder how many of us ever thought, as students of World War II or as participants in World War II, that we would ever serve in the Senate and hear the phrase openly used by one party in a conflict, and the phrase being ethnic cleansing.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Ethnic cleansing.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that an antiseptic term?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And notwithstanding the fact only the Serbs use the phrase, I kept hearing on this floor that they're all the same.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're all the same.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: There have been atrocities committed by Moslems and by Croats, but they have not set up rape camps.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: They have not set up death camps.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: They have not mass murdered.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: As part of a coherent plan.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: A people based upon their ethnicity and their religion.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's called genocide.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Genocide.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it is.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now, even in our move to state what our vital interest is, this administration and others who support it are afraid to use the word.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here to take sides.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: He is no better than Himmler.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: He is no better than Google.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: He is a war criminal.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I might add the leader of Serbia, Molochevich, is also a war criminal.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Although he's the only one not indicted so far.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I hear people stand here and say, what is our interest?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: What is our interest?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Our interest is that history repeated itself.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And let me be presumptuous enough to go on a little more with I think the next history lesson will be.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: NATO for NATO's sake, so we can beat our breast?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: What I'm about to say is going to cause me great difficulty if I'm re-elected and come back here as the ranking member or chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: But Europe cannot stay united without the United States.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is no moral center in Europe.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: When in the last two centuries.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Fine!
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Fine is understanding her role.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: So we do have a national interest.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Our national interest goes well beyond the genocide that will spread like a cancer.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I will not take the time because others wish to speak to explain what the rest of it is, but I do in my longer statement I put in the record.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a second question, it seems to me.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Not only what is the national interest of the United States, is there one?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: But once you establish there is one, which I believe there is one that exists, is the proposed action by the president the one that can meet that national interest?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd respectfully suggest this is not the best one.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: If the president and the administration, in my view, and the last administration had the gumption, they would have told our European allies, we are lifting the arms embargo.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a Vietnamese, this is not a Vietnamization program.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: The Vietnamese in South Vietnam weren't sure where they wanted to be north or south.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's why it never worked.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: The Bosnians know where they want to be.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: They want to be free.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: They will fight for themselves.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: All they have ever asked is lift the embargo.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Prime Minister Sologics came after my first visit to Bosnia.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: I asked in my office, and twelve of my colleagues, very, very all good men and women, came, Democrats and Republicans, because the word was then, you know, if we lift the embargo, it's just gonna make it worse for those poor folks.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: More are gonna get killed.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And one of my colleagues, very informed in foreign policy, my one of my Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues, sat at my conference table and said the same thing to Salajic.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: And Salajic said something I will never forget as long as I live.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: He looked at this senator and he said, Senator, at least do me the honor and the privilege of choosing how to die.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Senator, do not send me food to fatten me and my family in the winter, only to be assured that I will be killed with a full stomach.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Give me a weapon.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let me defend myself and have the good grace to let me choose how to die.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: He then went on to add, I'm not asking for you to send a single American troop.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not asking for you to send a single American.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Just asking you to lift this immoral embargo.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's what should have been done.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because the only time as a student of history of the Balkans, and I suspect I have read as much as almost anybody in here, at least I've tried my best.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: I've gone there twice, I've spoken with everyone I could speak to.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: The last two Balkan wars, the only time they end, is when all parties conclude they cannot achieve any more on the ground than they can at the peace table.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: But events have overtaken us.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the event that has overtaken us is called Dayton.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that bothers me most, I say to my friends here in the Senate, both men of experience, is the part I don't like about being senator is when presidents don't get it right, we don't get to make the best choice.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: We get to choose among bad choices.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Two bad choices.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: No choice at all.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: The best choice would be to lift the embargo, provide air cover while it's being done, and let the Bosnian government establish itself because Serbia has already lost.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Molochevich has no interest in continuing because he's a pariah in the Western community.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Have the war trial war trial war crimes tribunal go forward and let it be settled.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: But we didn't do that.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: We have one of two choices now.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: One, we participate with a better than even chance, we provide enough time for the Bosnian government to get the physical wherewithal and economic strength to defend themselves, and then we leave.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Or we don't participate at all, which means nothing happens because the Europeans have no center on this issue.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing will happen except the embargo will be on, the genocide will continue, our interest will be badly damaged, the cancer will spread, and my son may not go to Bosnia today, but he may be in wet eastern Germany in eight years.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And we do have a moral rationale for our engagement.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And let me conclude because others are waiting by saying the following.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Restoring the emir of Kuwait to the throne.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: God bless his soul to send 500,000 troops there.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me, tell me why we don't have a moral interest in stopping what was international aggression by Serbia crossing the Drina River into a UN recognized country and participating in forming genocide.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: In Kuwait, we had to come up with a single example.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Of one young woman who was raped and beaten, who turned out not to be true.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: They enraged people about the awful thing Saddam Hussein was saying.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And here we have mass graves.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: I visited with Bob Dola Hospital in San Diego.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know who was in the hospital?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Seven children.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know why there were only seven children?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because the Serbs sit in those hills.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And they have as a campaign of terror.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing of children.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Walk with me through San Diego streets and see streaks across the roads.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Blankets and sheets.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was the Lower East Side in 1919 in the United New York.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I asked why.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know why they're there?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: To take off the line of fire from Serbian snipers shooting children.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: We pretended it didn't happen.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Ask Bob Dole.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: We stood beside a beautiful raven-haired child who looked at us as we spoke.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the neurosurgeon said, the reason she's not turning is she has no sight.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: He turned her head.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: The bullet had gone through the back of her head, severed the optic nerves, and came out the other side.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: There were seven children in that hospital.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody else.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a planned campaign by Milanic and the Serbs to terrorize the Moslem community.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: So let me tell you, if your moral center is oil, I understand you.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: If your moral center is humanity, there is no comparing the restoration of the Emir of Kuwait with the ending of genocide in Bosnia.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: But the only exit strategy I say, Mr.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: President, there's only one, and I hope the president, with all due respect, understands it and can only one exit strategy.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: That is, we will not be able to leave unless what Bob Dole, Joe Biden, Lieberman, a whole bunch of others insist it be in this resolution, and that is that the Bosnian government is armed and prepared to defend itself because that is the ticket home for Americans.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I thank my colleagues for the time.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: There is a moral reason for this.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: There is the U.S.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: interest.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the best way to do it, but as senators, we only get to choose among the bad ways offered to us.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: It is worth doing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: I, in this Christmas season, as I saw off the first group to go to Bosniate from Dover Air Force Base, the only thing I could think to say was thank you.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Watch where you walk.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: There are a million landmines.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Watch where you walk.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And God bless you.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm telling you, you're doing something right.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: But you're being put in a position that isn't the one you should have been put in in order to accomplish it.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's a hell of a way to send them off.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: We have no choice.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: It seems to me to meet our moral obligation and our national vital interest.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I thank the chair and I yield the floor.