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“WE NEED TO BRING AMERICA HOME FROM ITS INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1943-H1944 on April 6, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WE NEED TO BRING AMERICA HOME FROM ITS INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Metcalf) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, we have no business in Kosovo. Our policy is a misguided excursion into the danger-laden Balkans. We have no overriding national interest there.
We have heard vaunted allegations of human rights violations leveled against the Serbian government. Once again, we come to find out that an administration determined to mire us in overseas turmoil has greatly exaggerated the situation to win over a skeptical public and stampede the Congress.
We were told several months ago that as many as 100,000 Albanian Kosovars were brutally murdered. We were being misled. Now we know the figure was much, much smaller.
What of our continual bombing that eventually included not only public transportation but medical facilities, nearly 100 schools, churches, and homes? What of the innocent deaths we inflicted with tax dollars of the citizens of the United States? Bombing is by definition an act of war.
What have we done? What are the objectives of our bombing, our President's most recent adventure, and what are the results?
We were told we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. It continues with a vengeance, this time with the acquiescence of our own forces. The KLA not 2 years ago was classified by our own State Department as a heroin-financed terrorist organization. Now they are soon to be vaunted by the Clinton administration as freedom fighters. They roam the countryside brutalizing innocents, not only Serbs but gypsies, Muslim Slavs, and Albanians opposed to their thuggishness.
We were told when we went into Kosovo we wanted to stabilize the Balkans. Initially, the ambiguity of our policy gave the green light to separatist movements around the region. Today in both Bosnia and Kosovo we are committed into the future as far as the eye can see.
Mr. Speaker, I ask, what stability have we achieved in the Balkans? At what price to this Nation? In the Kosovo region, news reports continue to tell us that Kosovar militias still refuse to disarm and are now destabilizing southern Serbia. A new confrontation with Milosevic and a new refugee crisis is feared.
Can anyone share with this Congress a realistic exit strategy from this quagmire? I agree with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's assessment of our Balkan interventions, recently published in the Financial Times:
``NATO has to get off of this merry-go-round. It must acknowledge that imposing multicultural democracy at the point of a gun is not working.''
We were told we went into Kosovo to thwart the Serbian ruler, Mr. Milosevic. What have we accomplished? Milosevic is still firmly in place. We were told we went into Kosovo to insure the credibility of NATO. But did we do this by violating the first section of the NATO charter, by launching a war against a sovereign Nation that had committed no aggression against any of its neighbors?
NATO's strength was that it was a shield, not a sword, a shield, not a sword. Some skeptics suggest NATO's actions were ones of justification, considering their original mission was to protect Europe from a Soviet Union that no longer exists.
What are the costs of Kosovo? Displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars, displacement of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, expansion of the conflict into Serbia proper, the potential of instability in Macedonia, and, tragically and needlessly, a new and probably undying hatred for the United States on the part of the Serbians, and, from what we have seen recently, Albanian Kosovars as well, as a result of this foolish and foolhardy intervention.
Mr. Speaker, we need to bring America home.
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