Outspoken Legislators Prodded Clinton on Bosnia

If U.S. President Bill Clinton goes down in history as "the man who saved the republic of Bosnia, " there should be a very large addendum: "thanks to bipartisan leadership in Congress. " In fact, for well over a year a select few members of both houses of Congress have been urging the president and Secretary of State Warren Christopher to take the lead within the U.N. and NATO to stop the slaughter.

When on Feb. 11 they finally set a Feb. 21 deadline for Serb guns to stop the shelling of Sarajevo, the firing stopped. A cease-fire in the brutal Croat siege of Muslims in Mostar followed two days later. The outlines of a Washington-brokered political settlement between the Muslim-led Republic of Bosnia, the Bosnian Croats and the Republic of Croatia were agreed upon only days after that. By mid-March, the Bosnian Serbs, with some prodding by Russians and Serbia itself, also were indicating interest in not being odd man out.

The U.S. action came 22 months and more than 200,000 deaths late, but it might have been later still, and a political settlement might have been totally impossible, without steady congressional prodding. It is extremely unusual for Congress to get out in front of a president on a foreign policy issue, unless partisanship has a domestic payoff as in the case of support for Israel. There was no visible political payoff for supporting Muslim-led Bosnia.

Nevertheless, for more than a year in the House, Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) urged the administration to press the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo that keeps the Bosnian government from defending itself, and to lead an international coalition to do whatever had to be done to stop the slaughter. He, even provided a job for one of the five State Department career officers who have resigned to protest U.S. inaction since fighting broke out in Bosnia in April 1992.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (RKS) also had been outspoken for many months in pledging Republican support for any Clinton administration initiative to lift the arms embargo and to lead international air strikes. This involved great political risks for a Republican from a traditionally isolationist state who also happens to be running for president.

Immediately after a Serb mortar shell killed 68 people in Sarajevo's central market on Feb. 5, 51 senators, led by Dole and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT), signed a letter urging President Clinton to ignore the U.N. arms embargo and unilaterally arm the Muslim-led Bosnian government. Both senators also urged President Clinton to proceed with air strikes.

"We have the technical capability to go in there with air power, supplemented by a very limited number of people on the ground to direct those bombs to where we want them to hit," Senator Lieberman, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told Cable News Network. "I think it would certainly send a strong message to Belgrade," Senator Dole told NBC.

At the time, President Clinton responded with irritation: "It's all very well for these members of Congress to say that-they don't have constituents on the ground." However, the U.S. then began the series of actions that culminated in the long delayed ultimatum to the Serbs.

Making Strobe Talbott Grovel

Hard-line components of the Israel lobby sought to drum up Senate opposition to the nomination of former Time magazine columnist and FOB (Friend of Bill) Strobe Talbott as deputy secretary of state. Morton Klein, newly elected leader of the extremist Zionist Organization of America, circulated writings by Talbott disputing the proposition that Israel is a "strategic asset" to the United States, noting that "Israel has been interfering skillfully and successfully in U.S. politics for decades," and comparing the occupation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussain's Iraqi forces to the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli forces.

Most pro-Israel lobbyists declined to join the anti-Talbott campaign on pragmatic grounds that a Democratic Senate would not deny the Democratic president the nominee he wanted (who also happened to be Clinton's friend at Oxford University). However, the National Jewish Coalition, composed of Jewish Republicans, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an ultra-hard-line lobbying group, also circulated their own anthologies of Talbott's journalistic criticisms of Israel.

In the end, FOIs (Friends of Israel) elicited a few groveling remarks from Talbott at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, as his wife and children looked on. "I do want to set the record straight on the question of my view of Israel as a strategic asset," Talbott said. "On that, I have simply changed my mind."

Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) asked, "What's your view of the involvement of U.S. domestic politics in the making of foreign policy? You seem to regard this as a complicating factor ... as improper or undesirable. Is that the case?"

Talbott responded: "I don't think I've ever expressed the view that it is improper. The interaction between American politics and American foreign policy ... is enriching. Basically, we're better off for it."

On some issues, however, Talbott stood his ground. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NQ cited an article Talbott wrote in 1981 entitled "What to Do About Israel." "In that particular article ... you said that the Jews in America wield a power disproportionate to their numbers," Helms said. "You want to tell me what you mean by that?"

Talbott responded: "That statement was simply a statement of fact, and it was a statement intended, among other things, to underscore the strength, the passion, that the American Jewish community quite rightly brings to the question of what U.S. relations should be with the state of Israel. There was absolutely nothing invidious intended."

Talbott's unwillingness to grovel on this issue sent two senators up the wall. Perennial presidential candidate Joseph Biden (D-DE) criticized Talbott for making "totally inappropriate remarks."

On some issues, however, Talbott stood his ground.

"If you have made the comment 'American Jews wield influence beyond their numbers,"' said Biden, who to date has received $100,007 in campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs, "although you might be able to make the argument that that is literally true, that is the kind of language always used by anti-Semites. And I think it is totally inappropriate for you as a journalist or you ... as the number two man in the State Department to not understand and respond to that sensitivity."

Talbott responded that no slight was intended and his writing was "simply a statement of fact."

Onlookers still puzzling over Biden's declarations that speaking the "literal truth" is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and that journalists should avoid doing so, were even more astounded at comments on Talbott's writings by freshman Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who arrived in Washington with the reputation of being an outspoken and independent-minded Jewish senator who didn't mind criticizing Israel when he thought it was wrong.

"[Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister] Yossi Beilin, in reading some of the things you've written, said they 'weren't exactly his cup of tea,"' said Feingold. "My reaction was a little stronger than that. I think it's self-evident, based on the history of the relationship between our nations, that Israel is a tremendous friend and ally to this country."

Despite senatorial posturing during the hearing, the commitee voted to approve the Talbott nomination 17 to 2. The negative votes were cast by Senator Helms and Sen. Hank Brown (R-CO),who has accepted $57,500 from pro-Israel PACs. The Senate as a whole voted 66 to 31 to confirm Talbott, with all 54 Democrats voting for him and 12 Republicans joining the Democrats to vote for confirmation. —RHC