Get your own Free Home PageThe terrorists died to kill people , and the New York firemen and police died to save them
Address by Fmr. Pres. Bill Clinton (from C-SPAN) Sponsored by the Greater Washington Society of Association Executives. Topic: Leadership & National & International Issues. [Tuesday, October 09, 2001] - Washington, DC
The mother's I have talked to, an astonishing number of mother's that Hillary and I know who are mother's of young children have called me. They allmost uniformly say; "Bill, is it going to be allright?"
First of all, though neither I nor anyone can tell you there will not be another attack on American soil, it *will* be allright.
If we unite behind the president and our allies to fight terror now.
If we spread the benifits and shrink the burdens of the twenty first century.
If we bring freedom, today, to people who don't have it.
And, if we continue our efforts to become the people we ought to be, the polar opposite of what the terrorists represent.
We saw that in the sacrifices of the men and women of the police and fire departments of New York.
The terrorists died to kill people , and they died to save them.
...
If I had asked you on September the tenth: "what do you believe is the dominant factor of the twentieth century world?" What would you have answered?
If you are an optimist, you mght have said; "the globalization of the economy." After all, it has lifted more people out of poverty in the last twenty years, than have ever been lifted out in all of human history, brought America twenty two and a half million jobs, the lowest unemployment in thirty years, and it has brought benifits to people around the world.
If you're into technology, you might say; "no, no, it was the explosion of information technology.
Thing about this. When I became president in January of 1993, there were only 50 sites on the World Wide Web. Unbelievable! It was still the private proovince of research physicists. Wehn I left office in January of 2001 there were 350 million. Today, 30 times as many messages are sent by email as by the postal service, or what the kids call "snail mail".
If you are interested in politics and society, you might say; "It's the explosion of democracy and diversity within democracies." I was honored to be president at a time when, for the first time in human history, more people lived under governments of their own choosing than ever before. And America became wildly more diverse, and I maight add, much more interesting, as a consequence of it.
The children I saw in lower Manhattan, who were blown out of their schools, represented at least 80 different ethnic groups, and many, many different religions.
Or, you might say, "It is the advances in science that will shape the early twenty first century." We're going to find out what is in the black holes in outer space, we're still finding new forms of life at the deepest points of our rivers and oceans. The sequencing of the human genome which was announced a couple of years ago is going to enable us to give genetic profiles of young babies to mothers when they bring them home from hte hospital and, quite soon, countries with good health systems will be seeing babies born with life expectancies of 90 years.
Scientists are working on digital chips to replicate the incredibly sophisticated nerve movements in the spine. It is raising the specter that we might be able to implant a chip at the base of the spine that will work like a heart pace-maker, and enable people with damaged spines, confined to wheelchairs, to stand up and walk.
So, you might say that will be the dominant theme in this new century.
On the other hand, if you're not much of an optimist, or of you are what Hillary refers to as "the designated worrier" in your family, you might mention the negative things that you think are the dominant forces in the twenty first century.
You might have said that environmental challenges will dominate the next 50 years, and if not addressed, they will swamp all of these positive developments.
Climate change, the water shortage, the deterioration of the oceans.
Nine of the hottest eleven years recorded since 1400 occurred in the last decade or so. If the earth warms in the next 50 years at the rate of the last ten, we will lose 50 feet of Manhattan island, the Florida Everglades I worked so hard to save, the sugar cane fields in Louisianna, several Pacific Island nations. We will totally disrupt agricultural patterns all across the world and create tens of millions of food refugees, meaning more fighting and more terrorism.
We have a terrible water shortage in the world. One in four people here today never get a clean glass of water. It also threatens agricultural production and the stability of life on the planet.
And of course, the oceans provide most of our oxygen. There is now a dead space in the Gulf Of Mexico the size of New Jersey, and many people believe the deterioration of the oceans is a serious threat. Which is one of the reasons we protected so much of the great coral reefs in hte northern Hawiian Islands.
Or you might say; "No, no, long before global warming gets us, the public health crisis will get us." The health systems are breaking down all over the world, and we're going to be awash in epidemics, AIDs is the beginning. There are now 36 million cases of AIDs in the world, 22 million people have died, if present trends continue, there will be 100 million AIDs cases in four years. And while 70 percent of todays cases are in Africa, the fastest growin rates are in the former Soviet Union, on Europes back door. The second fastest growin rates, in the Carribean, on our front door.
Third fastest growin rates in India, the biggest democracy in the world with nearly a billion people. And the Chinese recently announced thay have twice as many AIDs case as had previously been thought, and tragically only four percent of their adults know how the disease is contracted and spread.
If that keeps going, it will be the biggest plauge since the bubonic plauge killed one fourth of Europe in the 14th century.
Or, you might say; "President Clinton, you've got it all backward, the global economy is not the positive development, it's the negative development, because half of the people in the world are still living on less than two dollars a day."
Think about that the next time you buy a cup of coffee.
Half of the people in the world are living on less than two dollars a day. A billion people are living on less than a dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry every single night. One in four people die of AIDs TB and malaria and complications from diarrea every year. Of all the deaths in the world, from wars, from terrism, from heart attacks, from strokes; one in four people die of AIDs, TB, and malaria and complications from diarrea, most of them little kids who never got a clean glass of water.
And, it is projected that in the next 50 years the worlds population will increase by 50 percent, allmost all of it in the countries that are poorest and least able to handle it, creating a breeding ground for terrorists, who feel that they can recruit among the dispossesed.
Or, even on September the tenth, if you had benn thinking about it a long time, "No, the thing that can shape the twenty first century most is the marriage of terrism with weapons of mass destruction and ancient racial, religious, ethnic, and tribal hatreds."
You might have pointed out that 700,000 people were killed in Rwanda, all innocents, with machetes, in three months.
Or, the Bosnia, a country of only six million, lot a quarter of a million innocents, in Milosovitch's campaign of "ethnic cleansing".
Or, that Kosovo had a million refugees created overnight.
Now, here's the question I would like to ask you, since, obviously, all eight of these things probably had some resonance of reality for each of you.
I mentioned four positive things; the global economy, the explosion of information technology, the advance of democracy and diversity, and the advances in medical sciences and other sciences.
I mentioned four negative things; environmental crises, health crises, half of the world in poverty, and the growth of terrorism rooted in ancient hatreds.
Here's the real question, what do all these things have in common, [both] the positive and the negative?
They all are manifestations of a breathtaking increase in global interdependence.
[Buckminster fuller wrote extensively about this]
And it is very important that we understand this. The reason that we have to be concerned about all of them, the positive and the negative, is that we live in a world where we have collapsed distances, torn down walls, and spread information.
For Americans it has brought us great bounty, and has been, on balance, an enoumous blessing.
But, it has also created vast new opportunities for the forces of destruction to come into our lives.
My wife represents New York in the Senate, they have a million Dominicans alone. If the carribean has the second fastest growing rates of AIDs in the world, can New York escape it?
We depend upon continually expanding markets for America's economy to grow, if half of the people are still living on two dollars a day, or less, ten years from now, can we continue togrow?
We haven't changed human nature, and therefore there will allways be organized forces of destruction, (unless we suceed in finding a pill to change human nature, or solve every problem on earth). So, if we take down barriers, collapse distances, spread knowledge, we are inevitably vulnerable here, in ways that we never were before, to those organized forces of destruction.
Therefore, what happened on September the 11th is the dark, flip side of the positive things that have come into a world without walls.
That means, that the great question of the twenty first century, is whether, on balance, it will be a good thing, for you and your family, your country, and people like you in every corner of the world.
Whether we can expand the forces and reach of positive interdependence, and shrink the impact of negative interdependence.
What are we going to do, now?
First, let me try to put this in some perspective.
In the whole of human history, no terrorist campaign has ever succeeded on it's own. Even when coupled with a successful conventional military strategy, terrorism has allmost allways backfired.
In the great crusade, that succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, the Christian soldiers burned a synagogue, and killed three hundred Jews, and proceeded to slaughter every man, woman, and child who was a Muslim, on the Temple Mount.
I promise you that story is being told today in the Middle East.
We are still apying for it, and it was not necessary.
When I was a boy growing up in the South, when we should have been focusing on Civil Rights, and equal rights for African Americans, instead, young white boys still learned the story of how General Sherman marched to the sea by burnig all the farms, and burning Atlanta. It was, in fact, a brillian millitary campaign, and by modern and ancient standards, rather tepid terrorism. He didn't kill innocent women and children, he just burned all the farms and burned Atlanta, to break their spirit and make them hungrier.
But, it was dumb politics, that our efforts at national unity had to deal with, for a century afterwards.
The terrorists, therefore, cannot win, unless they affect the way we think and act. They want us to be afraid of them, they want us to be afraid of each other, nd they want us to be afraid of the future. Don't get on an airplane, don't put any money into the stock market, don't expand your business. Lay people off. The Muslim sitting next to you might have a gun or a knife. And their coming again.
They want us to shrink, and they believe that terrorism might work in this modern world to achieve their objectives, because we have collapsed distances, and because the filaments of our economy are so delicately inter-related. So that they can have a big economic impact in southern Manhattan, and scare the living daylights out of people all over the world, who see it unfold.
But, they still can't win, unless we give them permission.
We are not about to give them permission.
So, what are we going to do?
First, we have to support the president and all those who are leading us in the fight against the present terrorist threat.
We will get better at this. Better at playing defense, better at offense.
You should know that hundreds and hundreds of your fellow citizens, dedicated public servants, have been working at this for years to protect you from the awfull thing that occurred on September the 11th. And they have had some astonishing successes, since we got our own wake up call back in the early eighties when our soldiers were killed by hte suicide truck bomb in Lebanon.
In my time, they stopped planned attacks on the Holland Tunnell, on airplanes flying from Los Angeles to the Phillipines, on the Pope. During the millenium celebration alone, a dozen planned terrorist attacks were thwarted, including planned attacks on the Northeast and Northwest of our country by bombers who were picked up coming across from Canada. A plan to put a bomb at the Los Angeles Airport, a plan to blow up the biggest hotel in Amman Jordan. A plan even to blow up one of the Christian holy sites in the Holy Land.
For those things which have been done, many people have been arrested and put in jail, or executed. But, obviously, everything that was done was not enough to prevent what happened on September the 11th. So we have to make our defenses better. Airline security is being improved.
We are alos facing the fact that we have to do a much better job of using modern technology of tracking people when they are in our country.
And the president in the surrent campaign against Mr. bin Laden, with the help of our allies, is bring to bear nillitary forces to support our law enforcement efforts.
And I might add, doing it in a way which deserves our commendation. Accompanied with humanitarian aid, and making every effort not to do what bin Laden wants us to do, which is to kill as many civillians as he did. So he can say we're no better than him.
I applaud the way this campaign has been conducted. So we have to continue to do this.
But the second thing I wanted to say is, that though nothing can ever justify a killing of innocents, and terror tacticts, we have to realize that we must do more to reduce the pool of potential terrorists. This is manifestly not about blaming America. I don't belong to that crowd.
But it is about knowing our enemy, understanding the threats, and acting according to our interests, and our values.
So many of the countries where terrorists recruit have 50 or 60 or more percent of the people who are under 18. Kids who never go to school, or if they do are mostly indoctrinated instead of educated, and know they won't have a job when they get out.
So America must continue to work ...[satellite signal interrupted] ... [through] economic empowerment, through education, and other proven strategies.
We had a huge bi-partisan effort last year to lead the world to its first big round of targeted debt relief, for the 24 poorest countries in the world. So they got the debt relief, but only if it went to education, health care, or econmomic development. We should do more of that.
We funded two million micro-enterprise loans for economic empowerment among the world's poor. We should do more of that.
We tripled overseas efforts to reduce AIDs by treatment and prevention, and the current adminstration has pledged 300 million dollars [to treat] TB, malaria, diarrea related diseases. We should do more of that.
[signal interrupted]....that we will not claim for ourselves what we would deny to them.
We should continue to promote Democracy throughout the world.
It is no accident...[that terrorists mostly come from countries].. that are not democracies. Because when people can't exercise any responsibillity for themselves, they are kept in a state of permanent collective immaturity. And it becomes quite easy, because of their distress, to convince them that our success is the cause of their problems. This creates, I might add, agonizing dilemmas for leaders of such countries, many of whom have been our friends, but also are terrified by stirring dissent in their own countries.
And, it is going to be a significant challenge for us when the current millitary campaign is over. If you look at the Middle East it is no accident that perhaps the stablest country is not hte richest. Jordan is a country that is ripe for trouble. A majority of it's people are no longer Jordanians, they are Palestinians. indeed, the yound queen of Jordan is a Palestinian.
But, the late King Hussein, several years ago recognized that he had to find a way, if he wished to preserve the monarcy as a relevant institution in modern times, to give the people some greater say over their own lives. So they bagan to have elections. Real elections, where real parties could run.
Including millitant Islamic fundamentalists who can get elected to Parliament. The problem is, as we all find, after the campaign, if you get one of these jobs, you actually have to show up for work. And, when you show up for work, people expect you to deliver. Especially if they can hold you accountable.
And, so, people of highly extreme political views have to reconcile them to get decisions made so that the country can go forward.
You may have noticed some of that occurring in the previous few years in America.
The same thing will happen in other countries with people of different views. ...it's an example of the kind of thing that we should have more of. Because if people have no outlet for their frustration at home, and no responsibillity for themselves, then they will never have an awareness of what they have to do to solve their own problems and to get the help that they may well deserve.
...
Finally, we have to continue our efforts to show people all over the world that America is not the enemy of any faith, or any people.
Actually, Mr. bin Laden has a pretty hard case to make against America, if you look at all the facts. The last time we used millitary power was to protect the lives of poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. We led the world in the debt forgiveness campaign I just mentioned. We stood for a fair and just peace in the Middle East, which c=would have given the Palestinians their state, and their equities in their religious sites, and a chance to make a genuine economically successfull partnership with the Israelies.
We are not the enemy of the poor, or of Islam, in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world. I also think it is important to point out, however, That we'll have to keep working on this. We've got more to do there.
And, we have to keep working at home. I was very encouraged when the President went to the Mosque and met with the Muslim leaders to point out to the American people that Islam is not our enemy. The attacks on Muslims and Mosques are regrettable. They are, by and large, carried out by people who are angry and scared, and still ignorant of the roots and the diversity of Islam.
We're still learning about each other.
...
In New York, outside the Armory Crisis Center, when I was talking to all of these victim's families, this huge guy, who was a head taller than me was standing there and had tears in his eyes and I said:
"Have you lost someone?".
He said; "Not in my family". "But I am an Egyptian-Muslim-American. Believe it or not, I probably hate what happened more than you do. And I am so afraid my fellow Americans will never trust me again."
That's one of the things they want, And we can't give it to them.
We have to continue to live up to our founder's injunction, about making "a more perfect union".
Tge last thing I want to say is this:
This is about more than what we do, it is about what we are, who they are, and what the Twentyfirst Century is going to be about.
For between ourselves, the Taliban, and Mr. bin Laden, there are radically different wiews about the nature of truth, the value of life, and the content of community. It is at the root of all of this. And this would not be solved if we had perfect policies in all of the areas that I mentioned.
They believe they have the Truth, and if you agree with then, you've got it too, and if you don't, well,... you know that.
We believe, and have beliveded, since we were founded as a Democracy, that no one has the Whole Truth. That the Truth is something we can only fully realize when we are in a different place than Earth.
That we are humans, by definituon fallible, we are on a journey toward understanding the truth.
This difference leads to radically different conclusions about the value of life. We believe everybody cuonts, everybody has a role to play, everybody has a chance. We have to learn from each other.
They believe there are three categories of people: The people who accept thrie truth, who are Muslims. The Muslims who don't, who are heretics, and those that are'nt Muslims, who are infidels.
And if you are in the latter two categories, well just; "to hell with you". Evnen if you're a six year old girl, who just wanted to go to work with her mother on September 11th at teh World Trade Center.
They believe a community is made up of people who are all the same, and have the same religion, and the same belief, and practive the same way. And that those beliefs have to be enforced by rigorous authority, so we see on the telivision, the excerpts from that movie, "Behind the Veil." With those Afghan women imprisoned in their burkhas, I don't even know how they breath in them, being beaten on the street by sanctimonious men with their little sticks. Or, in one case, shot.
We believe that anybody can be part of our community, as long as you accept the rules of engagement: Individual equality, mutual respect, obedience to the law.
We think we all do better when we work together, and this is a much more interesting country than it was thirty years ago, because we've got people here from everywhere.
We've got people in this room here tonight from everywhere.
Our kind of community has a lot of problems. We still have hate crimes. Becuse we're more open, we're vulmerable to things that we deplore. But it has created a lot of good, and it has given a lot of people from everywhere a chance to live their dreams.
Their kind of community has created four and a half million refugees. So people are voting, even there.
It is very important that you understand that we are up against a worthy adversary. A man of great intellignece, great wealth, great boldness, who honestly believes he has the truth, with his top aides.
It is important that you realize this is very hard to do.
We all organize the world into categories, so we can think and function, we have to. Men, wonem, boys, girls, adults, children, black, white, Muslim, Christian, Bahai, Buddhist. Business, Labor, government, education. We have to, we have to organize reality into these little boxes. And then our whole lives are spent acquiring the wisdom to understand that they do not reflect reality, they just capture a piece of it we can use, so that we can come to understand the unity of the human spirit and the human community.
But it is very hard. Look what happened to the greatest people of the age. Gandhi, killed, not by a Muslim, but by a Hindu, because he was a Hindu who wanted India for the Muslims and the Jains and the Seiks.
Sadat, killed, by the organization the number two guy in Afghanistan heads today. Not by an Israeli rocket, but by an angry Egyptian, who hated him for being willing to lay down a lifetime of millitary service to make peace with Isreal.
And my friend Itzak Rabin, killed, not by a Palestinian terrorist, but by an angry Israeli, who thought he sould not reach across the divide, to recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians and bring and end to decades of slaughter and insecurity.
Mandella survived, praise God, but onlyy after giving up twenty seven of the best years of his life, so that he was able to reach out to the other side, without having the people of his own ethnic group and political views think he had betrayed them.
This is not easy to do. But if you look at America's long journey, it is worth the effort.
So, yes, let us support the President. Let us win this battle. But let us look down this road to reduce those negative forces and spread the reach of those positive ones, so that what we have sought for America we can one day offer to all the World.
And so that our children will see that we met this task in a way that not only helped their lives, but to children like them, in every corner of the earth.
Thank you very much.
[trnscribed from a C-SPAN broadcast by Eldon New]
Sharon Naron: "Thanks for this. I hope it gets around to a lot of people."
Rick Ivy "Eldon, thanks for this. that must have been fun transcribing all that speech. i appreciate reading the words of 'my' President."
Jane Abraham: "Thank you so much for that. Peace, Jane"
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