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Then a US Senator, Joe Biden strongly condemned the massacre on Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and elsewhere perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs. In multiple emotional speeches Biden said the world would have acted differently had the victims not been Muslims. Biden argued that the US should arm the Muslims so they could defend themselves against the Serbs. Biden compared Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic to Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi who led the Holocaust.
Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serbian abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes. The George H. W. Bush administration and Clinton administration were both reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement. In April 1993, Biden spent a week in the Balkans and held a tense three-hour meeting with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević. Biden related that he had told Milošević, "I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one." Biden wrote an amendment in 1992 to compel the Bush administration to arm the Bosnians, but deferred in 1994 to a somewhat softer stance the Clinton administration preferred, before signing on the following year to a stronger measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman. The engagement led to a successful NATO peacekeeping effort.