Political Quotes

“The main obstacle is that as long as I'm President, I'm not going to put American forces into a troubled situation unless I can see what the mission is, I can see how that mission is going to be achieved, and then I can see how those troops come out. I'm old enough to have learned something from my own experience in uniform. One of it was World War II. We fought and won. Everybody had everything they needed to get the job done. Vietnam, we didn't. And the horrible problems that your loved ones face cannot be solved by putting the 82d Airborne division into Bosnia. It simply can't be done. He's torn because there's these tremendous historic ethnic rivalries that are now coming to the surface because of the collapse of Soviet communism and thus the iron hand that they once had over all these different, now independent countries. We are helping. The United States is helping with relief. We always do. We always should, as we are here, as we are in Somalia and elsewhere. But I don't want to act like we're going to solve this problem militarily. We took the lead at the United Nations in passing a no-fly zone, so those Serbian aircraft would not bomb the hapless citizens. And it is working. The question is what do we do in terms of enforcement if it doesn't work, and that's a question that any President will have to face at the appropriate time. But it does not lend itself--I say this to him with great angst--to put American kids on the ground, in these mountains, down into an area that looks like Dien Bien Phu. And I simply won't do that as President, unless my respected military leaders, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, come and say, ``Now, look, here's the way you get them in. Here's their mission. And here's when you get them out.'' We did it in Desert Storm. We'll do it--but I don't believe that's going to happen. Somalia Moderator. Mr. President, a followup to that. There are those who, having seen the pictures of the enormous tragedy in Somalia, the starving children, the death, the devastation there, feel that the United States with all of its wealth and traditional compassion has reacted too little and too late to assist the people of Somalia. Your response to that?”