Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich share a laugh as they wave before the first New Hampshire Republican presidential debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., Monday, June 13, 2011. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is at left. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Republican Presidential Debate In New Hampshire pt.9
KING: Welcome back. Seven Republican candidates for president debating on the campus of St. Anselm Congress in beautiful Manchester, New Hampshire — St. Anselm College, excuse me. We want to turn to foreign policy now.
I want to move up to Hancock and Jean Mackin, and she’s got a question.
MACKIN: I’m here with John Brown from Swanzey, New Hampshire. He’s retired from the U.S. Navy, 25 years of service. Right now, he has three sons serving in the Navy. So you can imagine he has a very important question. What would you like to ask tonight, John?
JOHN BROWN, VOTER: Osama bin Laden is dead. We’ve been in Afghanistan for ten years. Isn’t it time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan?
KING: Governor Romney, take the lead on that one. ROMNEY: It’s time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the word that comes to our generals that we can hand the country over to the Taliban military in a way that they’re able to defend themselves. Excuse me, the Afghan military to defend themselves from the Taliban. That’s an important distinction.
I want to say, first of all, thank you to you for the sacrifice of your family and your sons in defending the liberty that we have and our friends around the world. Thank you for what you’ve done.
KING: Congressman Paul?
ROMNEY: Let me — let me continue. That is I think we’ve learned some important lessons in our experience in Afghanistan. I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals.
But I also think we’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan’s independence from the Taliban. Thank you.
KING: Congressman Paul, do you agree with that decision?
PAUL: Not quite. I served five years in the military. I’ve had a little experience. I’ve spent a little time over in the Pakistan/Afghanistan area, as well as Iran. But I wouldn’t wait for my generals. I’m the commander in chief.
I make the decisions. I tell the generals what to do. I’d bring them home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn’t start a war in Libya. I’d quit bombing Yemen. And I’d quit bombing Pakistan.
I’d start taking care of people here at home because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars.
Our national security is not enhanced by our presence over there. We have no purpose there. We should learn the lessons of history. The longer we’re there, the worse things are and the more danger we’re in as well, because our presence there is not making friends let me tell you.
KING: Governor Pawlenty, a growing number of Republicans are more skeptical of these foreign involvements. But I want you to take what Congressman Paul just said there. Let’s focus on one.
He said no bombing in Yemen. The strikes in Yemen have been targeted at al Qaeda leaders, at al Qaeda operatives, who the president of the United States, who happens to be a Democrat in his case, views as serious threats against this nation. Do you agree with Congressman Paul there or do you agree with President Obama and the strikes?
PAWLENTY: Let me first say to John, thank you for your family’s commitment to our nation, to your service, to the sacrifices that you made and to the burdens that you bear. I know I speak for everyone in this room and all across this country when we say we’re grateful to you. We wouldn’t have the country without people lie you and your sons. Thank you very much.
Beyond that, John, I start with this perspective. On September 11th, 2001, individuals and groups killed 3,000 or so of our fellow Americans. They would have killed not 3,000, but 30,000 or 300,000 or 30 million if they could have. If they had the capability to do that in their hands — and as soon as they get it, they’ll try.
The first duty of the president of the United States, as the leader of this nation and commander in chief, is to make sure the nation is safe. You bet. If there are individuals I have intelligence on, or groups in Yemen that present a threat to our security interests in that region or the United States of America, you can bet they will hear from me and we’ll continue the bombings.
KING: Let’s stay on foreign policy. I want to move the questioning. Tom Foreman up in Rochester. Tom. We lost him.
(CROSSTALK)
QUESTION: I’d like to know your opinion on your involvement with Libya.
KING: Congresswoman Bachmann, should the president have supported and jointed more U.S. presence, but now a NATO operation? Was that the right thing to do? Is that in the vital national interest of the United States of America?
BACHMANN: No, I don’t believe so it is. That isn’t just my opinion. That was the opinion of our defense secretary, Gates, when he came before the United States Congress. He could not identify a vital national American interest in Libya.
Our policy in Libya is substantially flawed. It’s interesting. President Obama’s own people said that he was leading from behind. The United States doesn’t lead from behind. As commander in chief, I would not lead from behind.
We are the head. We are not the tail. The president was wrong. All we have to know is the president deferred leadership in Libya to France. That’s all we need to know. The president was not leading when it came to Libya.
First of all, we were not attacked. We were not threatened with attack. There was no vital national interest. I sit on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. We deal with the nation’s vital classified secrets.
We to this day don’t yet know who the rebel forces are that we’re helping. There are some reports that they may contain al Qaeda of North Africa. What possible vital American interests could we have to empower al Qaeda of North Africa and Libya? The president was absolutely wrong in his decision on Libya. KING: Mr. Speaker, address the same question. Was it in the vital national interest of the United States? As you do so, I had a conversation with a soon-to-be candidate who is not here tonight, Governor Huntsman, recently, who said he didn’t think when it came to vital national interest. And he also said we can’t afford it right now.
Should the price tag be a factor when you’re the commander in chief of the United States?
GINGRICH: Sure. The price tag is always a factor, because, as General Eisenhower once he was president pointed out, as Abraham Lincoln understood, as George Washington understood, that’s part of the decision.
But I think what Congresswoman Bachmann just said ought to really sober everybody about how much trouble we’re in. Ten years after 9/11, our intelligence is so inadequate that we have no idea what percent of the Libyan rebels are, in fact, al Qaeda. Libya was the second largest producer of people who wanted to kill Americans in Iraq.
I think that we need to think fundamentally about reassessing our entire strategy in the region. I think that we should say to the generals we would like to figure out to get out as rapid as possible with the safety of the troops involved. And we had better find new and very different strategies because this is too big a problem for us to deal with the American ground forces in direct combat.
We have got to have a totally new strategy for the region, because we don’t today have the kind of intelligence we need to know even what we’re doing.
KING: Mr. Cain, take 30 seconds, please. People might say he’s a businessman. He has no experience in government. How would you look at your responsibilities, draw that line, vital U.S. national interests as commander in chief?
CAIN: It starts with making sure we understand the problem, which I don’t think we did. We didn’t have the intelligence. Number two, is it in the vital interest of the United States of America? If the answer is no, then we don’t go any further. If it’s not in the vital interest of America, To paraphrase my grandmother, with the situation in Libya and many of these other situations, they’re not simple situations. It’s a mess. It’s just an absolute mess.
And there’s more that we don’t know than we do know, so it will be very difficult to know exactly what we do until, like others have said, we learn from the commanders in the field.
KING: Let’s stay on how you would all focus as a commander in chief. Let’s move down. Jennifer has a voter with a question.
VAUGHN: Staying on this topic, John, thank you. I’d like you to meet Greg Salts, who lives here in Manchester, New Hampshire. What’s your question tonight for the candidates? GREG SALTS, TRUCK DRIVER: Well, I support the U.S. military. But frankly, we’re in debt up to our eyeballs. We have nation building going on around the world. We’re the world’s police force. World War II is over. The Korean War is over. But we still have military bases all over Europe, all over Asia.
We have something like 900 military bases all around the world. I want to know if there’s a candidate on the stage who is willing to shut down the bulk — not the bulk of these bases, but the bases that aren’t vital to our national security, and take that money to pay off our national debt?
KING: Senator Santorum, why don’t I start with you on this one?
SANTORUM: We have actually closed down a lot of bases overseas. Look, what we’re dealing with is a failure of leadership on this administration’s part to actually put together a strategy where we can confront our enemies. And our enemies are asymmetric threats: terrorism.
That means that they are not just the positioned in the Middle East, but around the world. That means we have to have the ability to confront those threats from around the world, which means we need basing around the world.
So number one, we do need that basing. We do need to be able to be nimble and to be able to attack where we’re attacked because it’s not just a threat. We don’t need to build bases in Germany for a threat from the Soviet Union.
Its much broader threat, number one. So we have to engage our allies and have our allies know that we have their back. The president has not done that. He’s done everything he can, whether it’s Israel or Honduras or whether it’s Colombia or whether it’s Czechs, the Poles — he has turned his back on American allies and he has embraced our enemies.
Our enemies no longer respect us. Our friends no longer trust us. And we have a foreign policy that unfortunately now we’re probably going to need more of a presence, because we’ve created such a vacuum. Thus, all the contingency operations you’re seeing here as a result of America’s fecklessness in dealing with the threats that confront us.
KING: I need to step in on time here. We have to take our last break of the evening. I know a lot of you have a lot of things to say. We’ll get to more issues.
As we do some, if you take a look up here, you’ll see the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of good questions. Would you have released the bin Laden photos? Would you support Israel at any cost if they’re attacked by surrounding hostile countries.
Good questions from our viewers there. We’re here on the campus of St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Seven Republican candidates for president. We’ll be right back.
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