Posted on 10/30/2004 12:07:55 AM PDT by TFine80
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the choice presented by this resolution is clear. Are we going to stand by and watch a bunch of thugs and murderers commit virtual genocide; or are we going to do what we can, as civilized people, in cooperation with the rest of the civilized world, to stop them?
In the fall of 1990, at the time of Operation Desert Shield, the President told us that by confronting Saddam Hussein, we could help bring about a "new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace a world in which nations recognize their shared responsibility for freedom and justice and where the strong respect the rights of the weak."
The question we face today is whether those words mean anything at all. This is a defining moment, not only for the suffering people of Bosnia, but for the international community as well.
Because if we stand by and do nothing while orphans are murdered, while defenseless men and women and children are herded into cattle cars and shipped to detention camps, while civilian homes and apartments are shelled day after day, while those trying to provide food and medicine to the sick and starving are threatened and shot a, and while a process of so-called ethnic cleansing is followed to its logical, deadly conclusion, we will not simply have failed the people of former Yugoslavia, we will have aided and abetted their destruction. And we will have sent a message to dictators and potential dictators from the hills of Cambodia to the mountains of Peru that as long as it is only human lives and not oil that is at stake, you can get away with just about anything you have the power and the ruthlessness to attempt.
During debate on this issue in the Foreign Relations Committee, concern was expressed about the precedent that we might be setting by this resolution. After all, if we participate in using force to stop the bloodshed in Bosnia, what about the civil war in Somalia, what about Nagorno-Karabach, what about Kashmir, what about any number of conflicts that are now raging or that may break out around the globe? I think this is an understandable concern, Mr. President, but I also think there are good answers to it.
Calling ones self a humanitarian then voting for and condoning abortion, the former is not possible...you simply can't have it both ways Senator Kerry.
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