Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, may I make a parliamentary inquiry? Is Senator Durbin next on the list after me? The reason I ask is, Senator Durbin apparently agreed to switch spots with Senator Kerry.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator. I know the Senator has a very important appointment he has to make. I am prepared, if it is all right with the Senator from Arizona, to switch with him and follow him. In other words, then the Senator from Massachusetts will be next and then I will speak.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I have been authorized, since nobody else is on the floor, to go down the list here. I believe I am to be yielded 30 minutes at this point. I ask that I be able to proceed.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, there are few issues that this body debates which are of consequence equal to what we are debating today. We are literally talking about the life and death of thousands of people, including possibly American personnel, American soldiers. I have been here for 27 years, and on those occasions when I have been put in the position of having to vote on matters that relate to whether or not someone will live or die, I have tried my level best to be as intellectually honest and rigorous with myself as I possibly can. I have listened to the debate on the floor today with great interest and with some disappointment. It comes as no surprise to my colleagues that have served with me in the last 10 years or so, or even those in the last year or so, how strongly I feel about the Balkans. I am given blame, or credit, depending on the place from which you come, for getting us as involved in Bosnia as we are. I came back in the early nineties from a long, several-hour meeting late in the night in the office of Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Yugoslavia, and I came away convinced that this was a man with an agenda that was anathema to our interests and was literally genocidal. I wrote a report years ago, referred to as ``lift and strike,'' whereby I urged us to change our policy. And so I don't want to attempt to hide in any way the intensity of my feelings about what the appropriate action for the United States, NATO, and the world is relative to Mr. Milosevic. But when I recently got back from Macedonia late at night on a Sunday, I got home. After flying, I guess, for 12 or so hours--whatever the timeframe was--I did what most people do after a long trip. I took a shower and brushed my teeth and tried as quietly as I could to climb into bed and not disturb my wife, who was asleep. After I got settled, thinking I had accomplished not awakening her, she leaned over and said, ``Welcome home.'' Then she asked me a question, which I suspect the American people are asking. You are going to ask every one of us. My constituents are going to ask me. It was absolutely sincere. She said, in the dark of the night--and I could not even see her face--``Joe, are you sure you're correct?'' That sort of cut right to the quick of things. I had been so outspoken on this issue, and that took me aback for a moment. I answered her with complete honesty and candor. I said, ``I don't know. I am not positive. I can't guarantee it, but I feel so strongly that I'm right, that I'm going to continue to pursue pushing us in the direction of doing what I think is right.'' If my wife is asking me if I'm sure I'm right, and she is privy to my thoughts, concerns, and serious contemplations about whether or not I should be a party to causing some Americans to die, then I wonder what the majority of the American people must think. They must be moved by, or find appealing, the arguments of some of my colleagues today on the floor: It is not our fight. We should not be there. We are doing it the wrong way. The President of the United States is not worthy of our trust as Commander in Chief. We should bring the boys home. We have no vital interests. You know, I sit in a seat now that men such as Vandenberg sat in. I am a senior Senator. There is only one person on the Foreign Relations Committee that has been there as long as I have been there. When I was the age of these pages--this is the truth--I used to wonder, when I was in high school and college, as we studied about Hitler and Germany, why nobody did anything in 1934 or 1935 or 1937 or 1938 when the price would have been incredibly lower. You look back now and just think what would have happened had the world united and gone in and taken Hitler out. Just think how different it would have been. By the way, I note parenthetically that I am not equating Milosevic to Hitler in terms of his capacity, ability, or his danger. As the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out, he does not represent a country of 50 million people, an industrial giant. He does not have the military power of a country as great as Germany. He does not present the same threat. But it is analogous in the following way: In a closed meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee, with senior Members of the Senate in attendance from the Committee on Appropriations and, I believe, Armed Services, I was making a case several months ago about why we had to be involved. One of my colleagues, for whom I have an overwhelming amount of respect, a veteran who put his life on the line for this country, a very promilitary guy, looked at me and asked the following question, which answered for me that question I could never answer as a young man, Why did we not act? After listening to my case as to why we should be involved with NATO, he said, ``But, Joe, can you guarantee me no American will be killed?'' It was as if somebody took one of those little hammers that the doctors use to test your reflexes, those little rubber hammers, and went bing, and hit me right in the head. The light went on, and all of a sudden I realized why the Vandenbergs of the world didn't do anything. It is difficult to explain to the American people how you would risk even one American life, or more than that, how you would be able to say I can assure you that Americans will die for something that hasn't happened yet. How do you do that? I am sure somebody said, in 1935: If we go in after Hitler, it is going to cost 100 or 1,000 or 2,000 American lives to get the job done. I am sure Senators like the Presiding Officer and me sat there and said, ``How am I going to go home and explain that to my folks? How can I go home and explain we are going to lose several thousand American lives to take out a guy they do not know anything about, who is no immediate threat to them now, and all he is doing is beating up Jews and gypsies?'' Hard sell. That is where we are now. We have a guy who is doing more than beating up Jews and gypsies. We have a guy who, if you turn on your television, is loading thousands of people into railroad cars in the heart of Europe. He has corralled them like cattle, putting them in railroad cars. I looked at it, and I thought to myself: This is almost like a video game, or something. Is this real? This is 1999. They are loading people on railroad cars because of their ethnicity and religion. The Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, said he was recently in the camps in Macedonia. So was I in the same camps. We came away with two different impressions. We agreed they were happy to be there. We agreed they were getting fed well. But do you know what struck me? As a Senator, I have been in refugee camps all over the world. It was the following. I was standing there talking to people. And there was thousands of people in line--like a long movie line. They were about six or eight wide, snaked all through this camp. I was standing there answering questions for people, and asking questions of refugees. All of a sudden it struck me. I was standing next to a guy who had on a sport coat that must have cost $750. Another guy--I looked down at his shoes. They had been to be $300 Italian-made leather shoes. In between them was an old lady in a babushka with her teeth missing. All of a sudden it came to me. This is the enormity of the cleansing. It had nothing to do with their economic station. It had nothing to do with the specific territory they lived in. It had to do with their religion and their ethnicity. It is as if someone marched into an office building in downtown Washington and took out the $400,000 lawyers along with the cleaning lady because they were both Moslem. People say ``no vital interest.'' Let me ask my colleagues who are listening and the staff of my colleagues who are monitoring this debate. Ask yourself the following question: Can anyone say that they will be leaving their children and grandchildren a more secure future if NATO and the United States do nothing to stop the ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe? Forget for a moment whether or not I and others are right, that if we do not act, it will result in an open war and the split between Greece and Turkey, a division within Europe that is reminiscent of 1910 and 1915, although the Hapsburg, Ottoman, German, and Russian Empires were still in existence. Forget that. Assume we are wrong about that. Tell me, anybody explain to me, how my child and granddaughters are going to be more secure if, in fact, you have a million people displaced, you have thousands of people--at least now documented hundreds of people --brought out in the backyards of their homes and knelt down and had their heads blown off. There are 11 million ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. There are thousands, tens of thousands of Hungarians living in Romania. There are hundreds of thousands of Turks living in Bulgaria. Tell me how this works. Someone explain to me. And then, even if they can explain that, explain to me how the United States of America can be prevent itself from being dragged into a war in Europe. Look, I am not saying to you all that if we don't act right now, within the next 5 years our future is doomed. But tell me what Europe looks like in 20 years. Tell me how it is possible that the United States can conduct its foreign policy anywhere in the world without a stable and secure Europe, not because we are ``Europhile'' and we only think Europe is important or more important than Asia. But tell me how with our economic, political, cultural, and military ties there can be a Europe divided and our interests not be affected. I find it absolutely astounding that anyone in this Chamber could say we have no vital interest. I also find this moral relativism very fascinating. It kind of goes like this. If there is an injustice anywhere in the world and we can't deal with every injustice, then we should deal with no injustice. If in Rwanda African tribes are killing one another and the carnage is greater there, or in Cambodia where 2 million people were killed--and the list goes on--if we didn't get involved there, how did we get involved now? Well, I point out two little facts: One, we have the means in Europe that do not exist in those other parts of the world; two, we have the ability with the means available to us if we are willing to execute an outcome that we desire; and, three, if Europe begins to disintegrate, we are in trouble, because we are a European power. I said that I would try my best to be as honest with myself as I could because, by the way, I tell you we are political. I am not suggesting those who oppose our involvement in Kosovo do it for this reason. But I can tell you that it is a lot easier for me in my State to be for noninvolvement. That is a sacred place to be, Mr. President. That is the easier place to be. I didn't look for this fight. This is not why I came to the Senate at age 30 saying I want to be for pushing us to go to war. That is why I examine these arguments the best I can, because if there is a better way that doesn't include war, I am for it. I listened to all the arguments today. The only one, with all due respect, that I think made sense was Pete Domenici's. He is in opposition to the McCain-Biden resolution. What he said, from my perspective at least, adds up, and it makes sense. He said, ``Hey, look. The President didn't ask for this authority. Why are you forcing it on him? He doesn't want it yet. So don't give it to him.'' And we should send him a letter that says, ``If you want it, Mr. President, ask us and we will act on it quickly.'' When the Senator from Arizona and I introduced this resolution, that was basically our intention. We didn't--at least I didn't--contemplate that the Parliamentarian would rule correctly--I am not challenging the ruling--that the War Powers Act was implicated and that we must vote on this resolution. That was not what we anticipated. We anticipated, when we introduced this, for it to be here on the floor ready and able to be brought up when it was needed, because we--at least I--concluded that we should give the air campaign a full opportunity to succeed--I haven't given up on that yet--but that Milosevic and the rest of the world should know we were prepared to do whatever it took to win. Here we are, voting on it because of the procedural rules not of the Senate, but of the statute, and thereby by the Senate rule. I understand Senator Domenici's argument. By the way, I believe, notwithstanding all the speeches today, if the President of the United States asks for ground troops with NATO, that this body will vote for it; that there are over 51 votes for it. When the rubber meets the road and Members have to vote yes or no, I predict we will see a lot of opinions change. Now, I heard today time and again the Gulf of Tonkin analogy. With all due respect, it is not at all analogous. In the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, the U.S. Congress said to the President, and I am paraphrasing, Mr. President, use whatever means at your disposal. It didn't say what the McCain-Biden resolution says; it didn't say use whatever means is at your disposal--assuming 18 other nations sign on with you. You do not, if McCain-Biden passes, Mr. President, have the authority to use force unilaterally. It is in conjunction with NATO; not alone, in conjunction with NATO. At the time of Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, we were essentially alone in the world in concluding that force need be used. With regard to Kosovo, we are in the majority. The entire civilized world, including the Russians, acknowledge that Milosevic is engaged in behavior that violates every notion of civilized conduct. They disagree on the means we should use to deal with that. I was in Macedonia. I went into a tent city about which my friend from Oklahoma talked. He is right, these are courageous young men and women. I sat in a tent that housed about 20 military folks. I walked in and said, They make the analogy back home about Vietnam; what do you guys think of that? There were two women, as well. What do you think of that? A sergeant looked at me, he was 23, 24 years old, and he said the following: Senator, when you were 23 years old, if they had sent you here, would you have any doubt about the morality of what you were undertaking? The answer is no. It is not analogous to Vietnam. I was a student during Vietnam. We were told there was a monolithic communism that was going to roll out of Moscow and Beijing, roll down through Southeast Asia. Our history professors would say, Wait a minute, the Chinese and the Russians aren't getting along together. And, wait, the Chinese and the Vietnamese have been fighting each other for 300 years. So explain to me how this domino is going to fall. Did anybody notice fleets of Russians in Cam Ranh Bay? Not because of us, the Chinese weren't going to let them be there. This monolithic communism didn't exist. I don't want to relitigate Vietnam but it is not analogous, not only for the reasons my friend from Massachusetts stated--the size of the territory, the population, the availability of the arms materiel, the allies. Sure, China and Russia cooperated because it suited their interest to keep the Vietnamese fighting us but not because of the rationale we were given. I respectfully suggest there is nothing analogous. The Tonkin Gulf resolution is not analogous because it is not giving the President authority on his own in the McCain-Biden resolution as Tonkin Gulf did. It is a different continent, it is a different population, it is a different rationale. There is no doubt on the part of anyone about the morality of the undertaking. That old joke, and I am paraphrasing, Can 18 European countries that don't have a lot in common be wrong, all at once? Can they all be wrong? Listening to this debate, one would think the President of the United States just woke up one morning and said: ``You know, I need a war. I would like to have a war. I would like to test our new smart bombs. I would like to figure out if they work better than they did in Desert Storm. We put a lot of money and time into it, and I have just the guy to look to. Eighteen other nations said what this guy is doing is bad.'' Some of my colleagues will say they have been fighting for thousands of years; all those people are the same. There are a lot of bad guys on all sides, but I don't see the Moslems loading up Serbs on cars and sending them off. I don't see this happening anywhere else in Europe. There is one remaining dictator in the region. His name is Slobodan Milosevic. He is a bad guy. He is a smart bad guy. He is doing very bad things. The idea that the United States of America, when all of Europe has stood up and said this must stop, will walk away, I think is absolutely bizarre. Does anybody here truly believe we could stand aside, let this happen, and it not affect our vital interests in the year 2010 and 2012 and 2020 when my granddaughters and their husbands will be sent off? It seems to me we are making a gigantic mistake here to try to hide behind a lot of arguments. I raise this question with my friend. We use that phrase all the time--``my friend.'' This guy really is my friend. We have been friends for 27 years. We were back in the Cloakroom talking. I said, what the heck is going on here? I think we both came to a similar conclusion, at least in part. On both sides of the aisle people are using code words because they don't want to be isolationist. This is about isolationism or internationalism. That is what this is about. A lot of Republicans don't trust this President. I am not suggesting they trust him, but just sort of take that nickel when you do the cards at McDonald's for your kids and see whether you won a cup or something. Scrape it off a little bit and right below is the real link-- isolationism. On my side are a lot of the old antiwar Members. By the way, decorated veterans such as Senator McCain and Senator Kerry say we should be doing this. Look, folks, I don't know how to run an antiseptic foreign policy. I don't know how you can be President of the United States and make every decision you make based upon the following formula: If an American will lose their life, we can't get involved. Look, if there is any man in this Chamber, or woman, who understands the loss of life in war and the brutality of war, it is my colleague here, Senator McCain. I am not being gratuitous here. He may be the next President of the United States of America. Guys like him, and women like him, may have to say, ``I am going to have to do something that is going to cost American lives.'' People who disagree with us, I say to my friend, act like we are cavalier about it. I don't understand it like my friend understands it, but I think I understand loss of life a little bit. It is not about that. It is about the recognition that this is a mean damn world out there. So I listen to my colleagues make the strangest arguments. I hear a Democrat stand up and say: You know, we should not be involved in this at all. This is a terrible thing. I voted against the bombing. And, by the way, we have to save the refugees. We are going to save the refugees. Where the heck are you going to save them?

Mr. BIDEN. Sure, I am happy to yield.

Mr. BIDEN. I say to my friend from Arizona, and I spoke to this very briefly in his absence, it is the only argument that has any substance, in my view. I disagree with it. I disagree with it for a lot of reasons I have spoken to. I am going to vote and urge my colleagues not vote to table. We will do it the right way. But at least they have an argument that the President has not asked for it. I think we should be telling the President he has it. We are not demanding, the Senator from Arizona and I, that he use ground troops. We are saying to him: We want to make sure you understand that you have to win this and you can't come back to us and say you didn't do it because you didn't have the means. At least that is why this Senator is pushing this. The arguments I find totally disingenuous, though, are the ones that go like this. I heard today: You know, I voted against the bombing, but I tell you what, I am going to vote to table this use of the available ground troops to the President because I don't trust the President. But I tell you what, if this President were a leader, he would do whatever it took to stop this. But I am going to vote against giving him the authority it would take to stop it because I don't trust this President. How? I don't understand.

Mr. BIDEN. I sure will.

Mr. BIDEN. You are, but I don't believe my time is up yet. If it is-- apparently my time is up.

Mr. BIDEN. Only on one occasion. The point the Senator is making I understand. But only on one occasion. Two other occasions I can think of where Presidents have asked not to have more authority--when they thought they were going to lose. I have personally spoken to the President. I have spoken to the National Security Adviser. The National Security Adviser would like to have this authority. But what he does not want to have is a vote that says he cannot have the authority. They are worried if there is a vote that is a straight up-and-down vote and it loses, that it will mean, in conjunction with the House vote last week, that the Congress is on record against ground troops. My argument to them is it does not mean that. It means they concluded they were not prepared to do it now without the White House asking for it. But I believe there have been circumstances in the past where Presidents have affirmatively suggested they not ask for authority and table something when they thought they did not have the votes. My colleagues on this side have told them they do not have the votes, as have your colleagues. I think my colleagues on this side are wrong, and I think the colleagues on the other side are wrong about the votes. Because I find an interesting thing, Senator. On very, very important matters--and everyone knows how important this is--Congress likes to avoid responsibility. I will take us back very briefly to the Persian Gulf. On the Persian Gulf we had great disagreement, and during that time I remember going to my caucus and saying: We must demand a vote. And my colleagues on my side, whose names I will not mention, but I give you my word to this, who were against the action in the Persian Gulf, said: No, no, don't ask for a vote, because they wanted to be in line. Because if it succeeded, they wanted to be able to say, ``Great job, Mr. President,'' and if it failed, they wanted to be able to say, ``Not me.'' I think that is at work here, I say to my friend from Arizona. But the bottom line of it is that the Senator from Arizona, in my opinion, is dead right. I think the amendment is dead right on. I think we do more to bring a successful conclusion to this war by giving that authority whether or not it is used. I think we would make a tragic mistake being apologists for a policy that in fact makes no civilized sense, when we make moral equivalence about the people in the region, when we argue that a bombing pause would not affect anything, when we argue--my time is up. Ten seconds. I compliment Reverend Jackson on bringing these folks home. But with all due respect, I can think of a lot of people with his standing who could have gone and probably gotten the same result, if in fact they were willing, and believed as he does, that we should stop the bombing. I think it is a mistake. It is a little bit like saying: Give me three people back and I will not do anything about the 300 you massacred--which they did, by the way, just 4 days earlier. I think it is a tragic mistake. I wish we would get our act together. I think the President is going to have to take the case to the Nation more forcefully than he has. I hope we do not table the McCain-Biden resolution, but it appears we are going to do that. As you can tell, I have spoken too long. But I think this is something in our vital interest with the capacity to affect the outcome that would be beneficial to all people, and the idea that it would be a failure if we had to have forces there in order to maintain the peace, who were not being killed, and the genocide stopped--I would consider that victory, not failure.

Mr. BIDEN. May I have 1 minute to respond?

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Senator. I say to my friend from Virginia, I think it is constitutionally required. I am in the minority in that view. I do not think the President has the authority to commit ground troops without the consent of the Congress, but I think it is politically necessary. I think it is politically necessary because it is of great value to any President to have the Congress on the line with him as he prosecutes a war. I think it is constitutionally necessary and politically wise. I realize that there are those who disagree with me, that the war clause--not the War Powers Act, the war clause--of the Constitution I believe requires the consent of the Congress for the use of this force now, but it----

Mr. BIDEN. I am sorry. If he were to use ground forces. But I acknowledge there is a constitutional argument that says that if the Congress had voted and the House did not, but if they had voted, as we had, for the use of air power, that he would not need that additional authority. I do think there is a constitutional requirement for the Congress to assent to this action. I understand I am in the minority. Beyond that, I think there is a political necessity that we be united. My friend and I have talked about this privately before. We can all disagree about the lessons from Vietnam, but I think we both agree that one of the lessons out of Vietnam was that no matter how smart, no matter how brilliant a foreign policy is, it cannot be sustained without the informed consent of the American people and their elected representatives being signed on to it. That is my primary motivation. The place my friend from Arizona and I disagree is, I am not doing this to embolden the President to do the right thing. The reason I signed on to it is to make sure the Congress goes on record saying that we will back whatever action the President takes to meet the four goals that he has stated. There is legitimate constitutional disagreement, but I fall down on the side that I think it is necessary.

Mr. BIDEN. You are.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, yes, I am. In the one case in Vietnam, it was given through the Tonkin Gulf. In Korea, I don't think it is constitutionally--by the way, I am not alone in this. I happen to teach--it does not make me an expert, but I happen to teach constitutional law and separation of powers now in law school. I can assure you one thing: The vast majority of constitutional scholars agree with me. The point being, you do not need to declare war. As Louis Henkin, who wrote the Restatement of International Law, pointed out, it does not require a declaration of war; it requires a consent of the Congress, which is equivalent to the authority required, just like what we did in the Persian Gulf. When the Congress went on record granting the authority to the President to use the force in the resolution, that is the equivalent of a declaration of war. All constitutional scholars agree on that point.

Mr. BIDEN. I think you drafted it.

Mr. BIDEN. He is correct, Mr. President. I am sounding too much like a lawyer now. From a constitutional standpoint, whether they are asked or not is irrelevant. The only relevant constitutional point--and this is getting us off the point here, but the only relevant constitutional point is whether or not the Congress granted authority, asked for or not. That is the only relevant constitutional point. With the Senator's permission, I would like to ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a legal brief which I have written on this point relative to the war powers clause and whether or not it is required and on the issue of whether or not there is the equivalency of a declaration of war by the consent of the Congress for the action specified.

Mr. BIDEN. With the permission of the Senator, I will put it in tomorrow so there is no question that it is not interrupting his remarks.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes.

Mr. BIDEN. Long time.

Mr. BIDEN. I do.

Mr. BIDEN. I did. Mr. President, again, I am sounding too much like a constitutional lawyer here. I don't want to mix apples and oranges.

Mr. BIDEN. If I may, the Senator makes a valid point. I will not tell you what the President said, because that will be inappropriate. I will tell you what I said. I am allowed to do that.

Mr. BIDEN. I am not seeking recognition.

Mr. BIDEN. Would the Senator like me to answer? I will try to do it quickly.

Mr. BIDEN. That is my answer. They are trying to stop; we are trying to start. It is a different issue.