Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Hillary and I went to a Rosh Hashana service the other night in our own little village of Chappaqua. We lost a person out of the temple on September the 11th. I met one of the two men there who escaped from the 84th floor of the World Trade Center carrying a disabled woman all the way to safety. When I went into the family crisis center at Pier 94, a man came up to me and said to me: "Why, Mr. President, I haven't seen you since Oklahoma City." And I said, "How did I see you there?" He said, "You came to console me. My wife was blown up in the bombing of Oklahoma City and I had no one to talk to. So when I saw that this happened, I told my boss I was taking two weeks off, and I got in my car and I drove here. I sit here all day, every day talking to people. I had no one to talk to and I thought I might be of help."
I have visited many of the firemen. The fire department is a marvelous organization in the modern world. It's more like a medieval army, where instead of sitting behind and issuing orders, the leaders lead. And so in our fire department, we lost the chief, his three top aides, the chaplain and over 200 other officers, out of 340 killed. No one took a backseat when it came to sacrifice. I think those who believed that this would weaken us have misjudged us. All over America, there has been a tremendous outpouring of caring -- over $600 million pledged. I thank the workers and the people at Yale for the work you did, for those who lost loved ones or feared they had. We are going to be all right.
Still, we must realize that we have a formidable adversary and a difficult challenge. Partly, because in every conflict throughout human history, defense lags offense by a little bit. This has always happened. But so far, the human race is still around because self-preservation and decency catches up and triumphs. Nevertheless, I think we have to take this seriously and see it for exactly what it is -- I believe we are engaged in the first great struggle for the soul of the 21st century. We must understand terrorism in the modern world and ask ourselves what we have to do, not only to prevent terrorism and protect ourselves, but to undermine the conditions and attitudes that bring to the terrorists their foot soldiers and sympathizers.
If I had asked you on September the 10th the following question, what would your answer be? What is the dominant trait of the world in the early 21st century? If you are an optimistic person, it seems to me you might have given one of four answers. You might have said, "Well, it's the globalization of the economy and culture that has lifted more people out of poverty in the last 20 years than any time in all history and brought America unprecedented opportunity." Or you might have said, if you are a "techie," "It is the information technology revolution." When I became president in January of 1993, there were 50 sites on the World Wide Web. When I left office, there were 350 million. There was never anything like it in the history of communications. Or you might have said, if you were a scientist, "It's the evolution in the sciences." We're going to find out what's in the black holes in the universe. Last year, we found two new species of life, in previously unexplored river bottoms. The human genome has been sequenced and soon women will bring home babies from the hospital with little gene cards saying, "Here are the kid's problems and the kid's strengths." Soon babies born in America or any country with a good health system will have a life expectancy in excess of 90 years. We have scientists working on digital chips to replicate the nerve functions of damaged spinal cords, raising the prospect that a chip might do for a spine like what a pacemaker does for the heart, and people thought to be permanently paralyzed might get up and walk. And all of this is truly amazing.
Or if you are a political scientist, you might say the dominant force of this period is the explosion of democracy around the world and diversity at home. For the first time in human history, more than half the world lives under governments of their own choosing, and in our country and others with strong economies, there is an explosion of diversity. America is a lot more interesting place than it was 30 years ago. If we had had this meeting 30 years ago, you wouldn't look like you do. It's a lot more fun to be here, more educational, and more exciting because of that.
It seems to me if you are optimistic, on September 10, when I said, "What is the dominant strength of the 21st century world?" you could have given one of those four answers: the global economy, the explosion of democracy and diversity around the world, the information technology explosion, the scientific revolution.
On the other hand, if you are a little more pessimistic, or if you are what Hillary refers to as your family's "designated worrier," you might have mentioned four negative things. First, climate change. Nine of the hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 12. If the climate warms at the same rate in the next 50 years as it has in the last 10, we will lose several Pacific island nations, the Florida Everglades and 50 feet of Manhattan Island. Agriculture will be disrupted all over the world, creating millions of food refugees. There is a terrible water shortage in the world already. One in four people on the globe never gets a clean glass of water. There is a serious deterioration in the quality of our oceans, which provide so much of our oxygen. If we don't reverse these trends we will have terrible problems.
Or you could say, "No, no, before that happens, we will be engulfed by health crises." This year one in four people in the world will die of AIDS, TB, malaria or infections related to malaria. Thirty-six million people have AIDS. The fastest growing rates are in the former Soviet Union, on Europe's back door, and in the Caribbean, on our front door. China just admitted they have twice as many AIDS cases as they had previously thought, and only 4 percent of the adults there know how the disease is contracted and spread. At present trends we will have 100 million AIDS cases by 2005. That is a recipe for turmoil and violence.
Or you could say, "No, the real problem is the flip side of globalization." Half the world's people aren't a part of it. It is true that more people have been lifted out of poverty by globalization in the last 20 years than ever before. It is also true that half the people in the world still live on less than $2 a day, that a billion of our people still live on less than a dollar a day. Think about that the next time you buy a cup of coffee. A billion go to bed hungry every night. That too is a recipe for revolution, compounded by the fact that 100 million children never go to school at all. Or even on September 10, you might have said, "No, the biggest problem will be terrorism, coupled with weapons of mass destruction, rooted in racial and religious and ethnic hatreds."
Here is what I would like to say: Whether you would have given a positive answer, or a negative answer, there is something that all eight answers have in common. They all reflect the astonishing increase in global interdependence. We have seen the collapse of distances and barriers bringing us closer together for good or ill. Terrorism is simply the dark side of our increasing interdependence. We have not repealed human nature or the fact some people see reality very differently than we do. With more open societies, organized forces of destruction simply take advantage of the same forces that make our lives richer, more diverse and better.
Therefore, all the great questions of the 21st century boil down to one: Is this new age going to be good or bad, for me, my family, my community, my nation and the world? That's why Yale's mission in its fourth century, to build a truly global university, is so important. I was delighted, Mr. President, when my former deputy secretary of state and my old roommate, Strobe Talbott, became the head of your Globalization Center and his wife Brooke Shearer agreed to run the World Fellows Program. I said I would like to be a world fellow, and I was informed that I no longer qualify as a young world leader. So today you are stuck with my opinions without the benefit of further Yale study.
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