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bring special talents to our society,” Gorton says. “China’s loss was our
gain—all those brilliant Ph.D.’s, physicists, physicians, engineers and
economists who decided to stay here, 600 of them in Washington State.
They were not only a benefit to the United States but their loss was an
appropriate punishment of communist China for the way in which it
treated its people. The act was a catalyst for the Chinese government to
start making reforms. It might not have happened without Curtis Hom,
the son of Chinese immigrants—just one of the many remarkable people
I was able to recruit to public service.”
whendA s d AM hussein’s ARMy invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990,
Gorton and Norm Dicks were among the lawmakers invited to a briefing
by the president. Bush said it might mean war if sanctions failed to produce
a withdrawal. In that case, Gorton piped up emphatically, “The one most
important thing we have to do is win.” The room burst into applause. The
history of the 20th Century was replete with lessons on the tragic conse-
quences of meeting naked aggression with timidity, Gorton said.
Adams, Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott and Jolene Unsoeld, the
Democrat from Olympia who had succeeded Bonker in the state’s Third
Congressional District, were among the harshest critics of Bush’s actions.
Unsoeld warned that if the U.S. failed to exhaust all alternatives to war it
would be remembered “as a country that threw away the lessons of Viet-
nam” and became ensnared in a bloody conflict “to make the world safe
for cheap American gasoline and Mercedes-driving sheiks.” Gorton said
Iraq wasn’t Vietnam and the issue at hand wasn’t oil. Even “more boys
will be coming home in body bags” down the road if Iraq wasn’t stopped.
Kuwait today, Saudi Arabia tomorrow, then Israel, said Gorton. “It means
we will face Saddam Hussein again and others who believe that what Sad-
dam Hussein got away with they can get away with as well.” Gorton and
Dicks, a defense expert, were in agreement that Bush should not act with-
out congressional authorization. “The president derives no authority
from the United Nations,” Gorton emphasized.^12
On Jan. 12, 1991, Gorton cast one of the 52 Senate votes in favor of the
war powers resolution. As the deadline for Saddam’s withdrawal neared,
some 15,000 peace marchers took to the streets of Seattle to chant, pray
and sing. Some of the more militant converged on the Federal Building.
Six were arrested for refusing to leave Gorton’s 32nd floor office after his
staff fielded their questions for 15 minutes. The senator was occupied
elsewhere.
An interdenominational service was held at the Episcopal cathedral,