Bob Dole: “I would like to take a few moments to review the other arguments made by some who question lifting the arms embargo and…”

“I would like to take a few moments to review the other arguments made by some who question lifting the arms embargo and to respond to them. First, lifting the embargo would stop the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Albert Wohlstetter described this argument as grotesque. In my view Margaret Thatcher said it best, "Feeding or evacuating the victims rather than helping them resist aggression makes us accomplices as much as good samaritans." If the Bosnians are armed, they have enough manpower to deliver their own convoys of food. Moreover, as the recent GAO report on the effectiveness of U.N. operations in Bosnia discovered, the United Nations has had only limited success in delivering humanitarian aid because it has not been consistently assertive. Second, we cannot do it. There are all of these technical problems associated with arming the Bosnians. Some say it will not be easy to deliver arms or that the Bosnians will need training. It seems to me that these same arguments were made before we decided to arm the Afghan resistance. I remember a lot of debate we had in here on the Afghan resistance or to provide arms to the Salvadorans. In any event, the Bosnians are better trained overall than the Afghans were. While logistics may be difficult, they are not impossible, since the Bosnians and Croatians managed to bring in some arms themselves. The bottom line is that the Bosnians have not asked us to solve these problems. They have not asked us to do that.”