1998CRH492A POWERS WHICH BELONG TO CONGRESS

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Archive-Name: gov/us/fed/congress/record/1998/feb/12/1998CRH492A
[Congressional Record: February 12, 1998 (House)]
[Page H492-H493]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr12fe98-133]

POWERS WHICH BELONG TO CONGRESS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HORN. I would just like to say, Mr. Speaker, I listened with
great care to the remarks of my colleague from Texas. [Mr. Paul] I
think he raises legitimate questions, and I recall back to my first
years in the Congress in 1993-1994 when we had numerous meetings with
the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell.
He was always a very honest, gutsy Chairman. He put to us the tough
questions such as: When do we know we have won? What do we have to do
if we engage our forces? When do we know we will get out of the mire?
There were a number of us on this floor who fought the use of troops in
Bosnia.
We have been very lucky in Bosnia, but when we were told that it
would be only one year, we all knew that was utter nonsense; we could
be there for 15 years for that matter.
What the gentleman from Texas stressed is that perhaps it is time for
this House to follow the Constitution of the United States and not act
because a United Nations resolution is standing and we will defer to
that.
We should never defer to anybody when it comes to a war where
American lives might be spent. What we should do is follow the
constitutional procedures. The President should consult extensively
with this Chamber, and I realize that Presidents sometimes do not have
the time to do it, but we should have the series of meetings

[[Page H493]]

we had when the Croatians, the Serbians and the Bosnians were fighting
what some called a civil war, and we did not at that time get ourselves
involved in that matter.
Some might say that we were wrong and we were too late and we should
have acted earlier. What we should have done, I think most of us would
agree, is to permit the arming of the Bosnians so they could defend
themselves from the Croatians and primarily the Serbians.
Now we do not have that situation where there is a democratic
opposition to Saddam that is knowable. He is a brutal murderer, he
would kill all opponents, he kills his generals on a regular basis. And
we know what he did to the Shiites, and that was partly our fault when
we did not reverse a stupid order which permitted him to use
helicopters, and we know he killed the Kurds in northern Iraq.
So we do have people in Iraq that have suffered under his brutal
regime.
But more of us should be involved in this decision than just a few.
And that is the way the Constitution is written, and we ought to follow
the Constitution.
I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).
Mr. ROHRABACHER. We, of course, worked together in opposing the
American military commitment in Bosnia. But you do believe that America
cannot just stand aside and let Saddam Hussein develop stockpiles of
weapons, and we need to act in some way because it might then
precipitate some type of military action that he might take on Kuwait.
Mr. HORN. Let me just say, for my own answer, I think that our
problem here is that we have given too many Presidents powers that
belong to Congress.

{time} 1730

I was on the floor as a young Senate assistant when the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution came in. Only two United States Senators had the guts to
stand up and oppose it, Mr. Gruening of Alaska, and I believe Mr. Morse
of Oregon, and now we know that they were right. The Tonkin Gulf
Resolution was a lot of baloney. This situation is not baloney.
The gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) correctly notes that
it is a very serious situation, and we need to deal with these things,
either on a collective security basis with the United Nations forces,
but we should not be the sole police force that has to remedy all
problems in the world. That is what bothers me. If we are going to do
it, let the members of the executive branch come up here, discuss this
serious matter with a lot of us, and see where we are on the subject.
Now, President Bush did that in terms of the Gulf War. There was a
debate, probably one of the better debates conducted in the House in
the last twenty years, and then a vote was cast.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would
like to make two points. The other gentleman from California makes a
good point about the character of Saddam Hussein, but my colleagues
have to remember and have to realize that he was a close ally that we
encouraged for 8 years during the 1980s, so we helped build him up,
which contradicts this whole policy. I would like to see a more
consistent policy.
Then the gentleman brings up the subject: Yes, he may be in the
business of developing weapons, but he has gotten help from China and
Russia, and possibly from Britain and the United States, and 20 other
nations are doing the same thing. So if we are interested in stopping
these weapons, we better attack 20 countries. So we have a job on our
hands.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I do not know where the
gentleman got his information that Saddam Hussein was an ally; a close
ally, the gentleman says, of the United States. I am sorry that I was
in the White House at the time. Saddam Hussein was never a close ally.
He was not an enemy, but to label him a close ally is not only
misreading history, it is naivete beyond anything.
We supplied some support for the Iraqis and sometimes we gave support
for the Iranians during that war because during that time there was a
strategy of keeping that war going in order to prevent those two powers
from themselves individually dominating the region. Having them attack
each other was a good strategy at that time, but far from being an
Iraqi ally.
Saddam Hussein is obviously someone that right now, after we have
already gone through this, our futures are linked. If Saddam Hussein
ends up negating the results of the last war, who will then listen to
us anywhere in the world? I pose that question to both of my
colleagues. If he is able to have a lightning strike against Kuwait or
stockpile these nuclear weapons, who will believe the United States
again after we have made this commitment?
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, the question is not so much, let us say, that
we could concede some of the gentleman's argument, but why do you have
such hostility to the Constitution and to the process as what we are
talking about? Why do we not have a declaration of war and win it? Why
should we go with a U.N. resolution and legislation that is 8 years
old? That is one of our greatest concerns.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I am
certainly not here to oppose any particular plan of legislation; I am
here specifically to make sure that people understand that this is a
serious issue and that it cannot be negated simply by a misreading of
history that Saddam was our friend back in the 1980s or some other type
of wishful thinking about the nature of the strategic politics in the
world that we have to play.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would just say to the
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), I am certainly not saying
that Saddam was our friend, but I think our administration was naive in
its support of Iraq against Iran, and that is what concerns me. The
balance of power system, while academics can write about it, and the
British did that for 500 years, is frankly not the way in modern times
that we should conduct ourselves.

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