National security related exerpts from the the second presidential debate between President Clinton and Republican Bob Dole in San Diego, CA.
Mr. Lehrer: The next question is for Senator Dole from here.
Yes, sir?
Q: Senator Dole, my name is Jason Milligan, active duty military and a small business owner. And my question is, what is your position on closing the gap between military and civilian pay scales?
Mr. Dole: Jason, I appreciate that very much, being a former military man myself.
You know, we have 17,000 men and women today wearing our uniform that receive food stamps. It shouldn't happen in America. We have men and women wearing our uniform in sub-standard housing. It shouldn't happen in America. And it's time we take a look at the pay scales.
Did get a 3 percent increase this year, but that's not enough.
If we're going to ask young men and young women to protect us and defend us around the world, and we've had more deployments under this administration than any time in history -- 50 times we deployed troops around the world -- every time you do that, you take a risk -- somebody you know, maybe your son, maybe your grandson, maybe somebody else. But I think anybody who wears a uniform is a great American. Remember Vietnam, remember when people almost used to walk across the street rather than have contact with somebody who was in Vietnam. That's all behind us now, and it should be behind us. And the forgotten war, the Korean War, that I guess, I can just answer you very plainly, Jason, thank you for doing what you're doing. America owes you a debt of gratitude.
President Clinton: May I ask you a question? What kind of -- which service are you in?
Q: I'm in the United States Navy, sir.
President Clinton: And what kind of small business do you have?
Q: I have an Amway business.
President Clinton: Good for you. Well, let me say -- Senator Dole mentioned this. I just signed a bill that we got through Congress to increase the amount of pay increase we could give for military personnel and to make sure the pay increase this year was above the rate of inflation. I also had presented to the Congress, and they adopted, a large package of quality-of-life improvements which are very important. I spent a lot of time talking to military families, as well as military members, all over the world and in bases all across the United States, and I became convinced after talking to the families and the personnel in uniform that we needed to not only have the pay raise, but we needed to invest more in child care, housing and other things to support families, especially when there are longer deployments because of the down-sizing of the military.
So we're going to better, and we'll do better still. But this is a commitment I think that all Americans share without regard to party.
Mr. Lehrer: Senator Dole?
Mr. Dole: Well, Jason, I don't disagree with anything the president said except he waited four years to do these things.
And my view is it ought to be -- it'll be done on day one. We'll start working on it on day one in the Dole-Kemp administration. This is important. Now, we only have 10 divisions now; we used to have 18. We had 25 fighter wings; we're down to 13. We had 536 ships; we're down to 336. I mean, we've cut defense spending too much in the first place. The president told you in '92 he would cut it 67 billion (dollars). He cut $112 billion. So we're right on the edge right now. But the last thing we ought to do is make those who wear the uniform sacrifice.
Mr. Lehrer: Next question here for President Clinton.
Yes, ma'am, here on the front row.
Q: President Clinton, my name is Cecily Kelly.
Yesterday Yasser Arafat said in Palestine that he thinks the key to success in the Middle East is the commitment of the Americans. Would you, as president, send American troops to Israel or the West Bank as peacekeepers?
President Clinton: Let me just take two seconds of my time because I'm the commander in chief to respond to one thing that was said.
I propose to spend $1.6 trillion on defense between now and the year 2002. And there's less than 1 percent difference between my budget and the Republican budget on defense.
Now, on the Middle East, as you know, I've worked very hard for peace in the Middle East. The agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis was signed at the White House, and the agreement, the peace treaty with Jordan I was -- went to Jordan to sign that, be there. But -- and I think the United States could do whatever we reasonably can.
I can say this: I do not believe Yasser Arafat wants us to send troops to the West Bank. We have never been asked to send troops to the West Bank.
I saw the agreement that Prime Minister Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed on the West Bank.
It had 26 separate maps they had to sign, literally thousands of delineations of who would do what on the West Bank. And I believe if the parties will get together and in a good faith manner make that agreement, that they'll be able to do it.
If -- we cannot impose a peace on the Middle East. My position has always been that the job of the United States was to minimize the risks of peace. You know, if they ask me to be part of some monitoring force, as we are in the Sinai and have been since 1978, to monitor the peace between Egypt and Israel, frankly, I would have to think about it; I would have to see what they wanted to do. But I don't believe that will be the request. I think what Mr. Arafat wants us to do is to make sure that everybody honors the agreements they've already made. That's why I brought the leaders to Washington a few days ago. I think they will, and I think we'll get there. Don't be too discouraged.
Mr. Dole: Well let me, Jason, come back to you a minute because there is a big difference in the defense budget. We had $7 billion this year, and $10 billion more than the president.
He puts his money in the out years -- even if he were reelected, you know, he'd be gone before anything happened. And nothing's going to happen, because we don't have modernization now. If we don't build more B-2 bombers in California -- and we lost about 500,000 jobs out in California because of this devastation, these big, big cuts. We had to make cuts; we didn't have to make the cuts the president promised he'd make then he doubled. And so I think we need to go back and take a look. We're increasing defense reasonably -- not too much, but we are increasing defense some -- because we want to be prepared in case somebody here gets called up, Jason.
I would say I didn't hear what Yasser Arafat had to say, but I don't want to -- you know, I think foreign policy is something we want to be very careful about. And I'm not here to argue about the president on some ongoing foreign policy matter. What I want the president to do, and I think he may have done it in his last statement, is call for an unconditional end to the violence and have the parties keep on talking, as they should talk, and have a resolution. The last thing we want to do is commit more forces anywhere.
But let's sort of keep this out of politics, because it's pretty dicey right now.
President Clinton: When the change of government occurred in Israel, the people of Israel were saying, ``We don't want to abandon the peace process. We want more security.'' Then, a lot of mutual distrust developed. A lot of things happened which maybe shouldn't have happened.
When I asked Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to Washington and got them together and they talked alone for three hours, I was convinced that they had to have a chance to make that peace. Again, I'd say if they asked us to play some reasonable role, I don't know how I would respond. It would depend entirely on what they ask us to do. But the real secret there is for them to abide by the agreements they've made and find a way to trust each other. And they're going to have to spend some time and trust each other.
Prime Minister Rabin gave his life believing that that trust could be materialized, and I still think it can be.