Second Debate Transcript: Page 5
Oct. 11, 2000 -- LEHRER: Well, let’s keep — let’s stay on the subject for amoment. New question, related to this. There have been — I figuredthis out — in the last 20 years, there have been eight major actionsinvolving the introduction of U.S. ground, air or naval forces. Letme name them: Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia,Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. If you had been president, are any of thoseInterventions — would any of those interventions not have happened?
GORE: Can you run through the list again?
LEHRER: Sure. Lebanon.
GORE: I thought that was a mistake.
LEHRER: Grenada.
GORE: I supported that.
LEHRER: Panama.
GORE: I supported that one.
LEHRER: Persian Gulf.
GORE: Yes, I voted for it, supported it.
LEHRER: Somalia.
GORE: Well, of course, and that, again — no, I think that thatwas ill-considered. I did support it at the time. It was in theprevious administration, in the Bush-Quayle administration, and Ithink in retrospect the lessons there are ones that we — that weshould take very, very seriously.
LEHRER: Bosnia.
GORE: Oh, yes.
LEHRER: Haiti.
GORE: Yes.
LEHRER: And then Kosovo.
GORE: Yes.
LEHRER: We talked about that.
Want me to do it with you? Go through each one?
BUSH: No.
(CROSSTALK)
LEHRER: … be Lebanon.
BUSH: No, I’m fine. I’ll make a couple of comments.
LEHRER: Sure. Absolutely. Sure.
BUSH: Somalia. Started off as a humanitarian mission thenchanged into a nation-building mission, and that’s where the missionwent wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nationpaid a price.
And so I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’scalled nation-building.
I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow a dictatorthat’s in our — and it’s in our — when it’s in our best interests.
But in this case, it was a nation-building exercise. And samewith Haiti, I wouldn’t have supported either.
LEHRER: What about Lebanon?
BUSH: Yes.
LEHRER: Grenada?
BUSH: Yes.
LEHRER: Panama?
BUSH: Yes.
LEHRER: Obviously, the …
BUSH: Well, some of them I’ve got a conflict of interest on, ifyou know what I mean.
LEHRER: I do. I do.
(LAUGHTER)
LEHRER: The Persian Gulf, obviously.
BUSH: Yes.
LEHRER: And Bosnia. And you’ve already talked about Kosovo.
BUSH: Yes.
LEHRER: But the reverse side of the question, Governor, thatVice President Gore mentioned — for instance, 600,000 people died inRwanda in 1994. There was no U.S. intervention. There was nointervention from the outside world. Was that a mistake not tointervene?
BUSH: I think the administration did the right thing in thatcase, I do. It was a horrible situation. No one liked to see it onour — you know, on our TV screens. But it’s a case where we need to make sure we’ve got a, you know, kind of an early warning system in place in places where there could be ethnic cleansing and genocide theway we saw it there in Rwanda.
And that’s a case where we need to, you know, use our influenceto have countries in Africa come together and help deal with thesituation. The administration — it seems like we’re having a greatlove fest now — but the administration made the right decision ontraining Nigerian troops for situations just such as this in Rwanda.And so I thought they made the right decision not to send U.S. troopsinto Rwanda.
LEHRER: Do you have any second thoughts on that based on whatyou said a moment ago about genocide and …
GORE: I’d like to come back to the question of nation-building.But let me address this question directly first.
LEHRER: We’ll do that later.
GORE: Fine.
We did actually send troops into Rwanda to help with thehumanitarian relief measures. My wife, Tipper, who’s here, actuallywent on a military plane with General Shalikashvili on one of thoseflights.
But I think in retrospect we were too late getting in there. Wewould have saved more lives if we had acted earlier.
But I do not think that it was an example of a conflict where weshould have put our troops in to try to separate the parties for thisreason, Jim: One of my — one of the criteria that I think isimportant in deciding when and if we should ever get involved aroundthe world is whether or not our national security interest isinvolved, if we can really make the difference with military force, ifwe’ve tried everything else, if we have allies.
In the Balkans, we had allies, NATO, ready, willing and able togo and carry a big part of the burden. In Africa, we did not. Now wehave tried — our country’s tried to create an Africa crisis responseteam there, and we’ve met some resistance. We have had some luck withNigeria, but in Sierra Leone. And that, now that Nigeria’s become ademocracy — and we hope it stays that way — then maybe we can build on that.
But because we had no allies and because it was very unclear thatwe could actually accomplish what we would want to accomplish byputting military forces there, I think it was the right thing not tojump in, as heartbreaking as it was, but I think we should have comein much quicker with the humanitarian mission.
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