| Submitted by Steve Forbes, Candidate for the Republican presidential nomination |
Statement by Steve Forbes on Kosovo |
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President Clinton and Vice President Gore have dragged the American people into a bloody quagmire in the Balkans with no real explanation of U.S. interests, no real roadmap to victory and no real exit strategy. The Administration seriously miscalculated the effect of an ill-conceived military operation and was totally unprepared for the ensuing humanitarian tragedy that occurred when refugees started pouring out of Kosovo. As for the Administration's position of maintaining an international arms embargo on people suffering the horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing, it is immoral and unconscionable. Now the Administration appears to be preparing to make a bad situation worse by setting the stage for U.S. ground troops in Kosovo. It is a troubling symptom of a larger disease: the Clinton-Gore Administration does not have a real American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Concerning Kosovo, the Administration should have sought, at the very least, genuine Congressional authorization, rather than the wait-to-the-last-minute, we're-in-a-combat-crisis approach that Lyndon Johnson used so deceptively in Vietnam. NATO has a stake in maintaining peace and security in the heart of Europe and stopping genocide and ethnic cleansing. In this case, NATO should be arming and training the Kosovar victims of Milosevic's aggression to protect their families and reclaim their homeland. While it would take several months to prepare, a real Kosovar fighting force can be developed to fight the ground war and push Milosevic's forces out of Kosovo - especially if NATO removes its Vietnam-like, political restrictions and uses air power to cut off Serbian supply lines and help destroy Milosevic's capacity to wage war. I strongly oppose sending U.S. ground troops into Kosovo.
As for a future "peacekeeping" operation, NATO's European
countries should better shoulder the financial and manpower burden
of such an effort. Americans have certainly done their fair share
to keep Europe safe and secure throughout the 20th century.
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