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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Bill Clinton electrifies a British Labor Party conference with a more sweeping vision for global peace and progress than the current president has been able to muster.
Oct 3, 2002 |
Editor's note: Former President Bill Clinton delivered the following remarks before the Labor Party Conference in Blackpool, England, on Wednesday. The speech, which ranged from Africa to Iraq to his differences with Bush conservatism, was hailed in the Guardian as the work "of a true political master ... At times, it was as if Mr. Clinton was calling on Mr. Blair to rescue America from Bushism ... What a speech. What a pro. And what a loss to the leadership of America and the world." The Mirror was even more exuberant: "It was a magnificent speech from a man who is rapidly becoming the greatest figure in world politics, second only, perhaps, to Nelson Mandela."
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By Bill Clinton
I am sort of getting used to being the spouse of an election official instead of one, but it is flattering when someone who no longer has a shred of power is asked what he thinks, so I thought I would show up and say it. It is also fun to be in a place where our crowd is still in office and I am glad to be here. (Applause). But the real reason I came here today is because politics matters. It matters to the people whom you represent, and because we live in an interdependent world and what you do here matters to all of us across the globe.
I have just come here from a trip to Africa which provided me with all kinds of fresh evidence of the importance of politics. I spent a week working on issues that are central to the mission I follow now that I am no longer in office and to the future of Africa; increasing economic opportunity for the continent's poor, fighting HIV and AIDS, building bridges of reconciliation between races, tribes and religions, supporting still new democracies. Time and again I was reminded of the importance of politics to the lives of ordinary people.
(I visited) Ghana where a new president is working with a great Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, to bring the assets of poor people -- their houses, farms, businesses -- into the legal system so they can be collateral for loans and they can grow their own families' incomes and the nation's income. I met a woman there who gave me a shirt made in a factory of 400 Ghanaians that came into being because of the trade bill I signed in 2000 in Nigeria, where decades of corruption and poverty amidst all that oil wealth had led some of the states in desperation to adopt Shariya law, under which a young mother of three was recently sentenced to death by stoning for bearing her last child out of wedlock -- and where I pled for her life.
(I also visited) Rwanda, where the government has established a reconciliation village and welcomed me with amazing evidence of new beginnings in the aftermath of the terrible genocide just eight years ago which claimed the lives of over 10 per cent of the country's population. I met a Tutsi widow in that village whose husband died in the slaughter, standing right next to her neighbor, a Hutu woman whose husband is in prison awaiting trial for participating in the slaughter. I saw Hutu and Tutsi children dancing together in a ceremonial dance for me, for what the governor said was the very first time since 1994. These kids were smiling again, they were young again, they were beginning to trust each other again because of a decision made by the government to establish a village and to welcome them all to come and live together.
In Mozambique I saw the president, Mr. Chissano, who is struggling to fight AIDS, overcome the effects of massive flooding and build a modern economy. In South Africa I met with university students who are looking past all their problems with confidence towards a multi-racial democratic future. I saw President Mbeki leading the continent to adopt Africa's very first home- grown economic plan called NEPAD: it is a third-way document because it calls on the developed world and Africa to work in genuine partnership and assume mutual responsibilities; and I saw Nelson Mandela, 84 years young, still getting me to do things he wants me to do. (Applause)
On this particular day he got me involved in his effort to challenge young people to take personal responsibility for reversing the AIDS epidemic through prevention and engaging in more citizen service. So politics matters, and even if you are a former president there are some things that we can accomplish for the common good only through the common instrument of our elected officials.
It was a wonderful trip and I had such a good time, I asked one of my traveling companions to come with me today, Kevin Spacey, who is over here. (Applause).
Since humanity came out of Africa eons ago, the whole history of our species has been marked by human beings' attempts to meet their needs and fulfill their hopes, confront their dangers and fears, through both conflict and cooperation. We have come to define the meaning of our lives in relationship to other people. We derive positive meanings through positive associations with our groups and we give ourselves importance also by negative reference to those who are not part of us. There has never been a person in any age, and I bet it applies to everyone in this room, who has not said at least once in your life to yourself if not out loud, "Well, I may not be perfect but thank God I am not one of them." That has basically been the pattern of life. But since people first came out of caves and clans, we have grown ever more steadily inter- dependent and wider and wider in our circle of relations. And that has required us constantly to redefine the notion of who was "us" and who is "them."
Yet the prospect for a truly global community of people working together in peace with shared responsibilities for a shared future was not institutionalized until a little less than 60 years ago with the creation of the United Nations and the issuance of the universal declaration of human rights. Such a community did not even become a possibility until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
The history of civilization as we know it -- with writing and urban life -- is just a little over 6,000 years old. Human beings have been on the planet, depending on how you read the evidence, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years. I say that to begin on a note of optimism. The world has a whole lot of problems, but we have not had a chance to bring it together for very long. You should be upbeat and grateful that your party is in power at a time that you have a chance to make all the difference in the world. (Applause).
So, here we are in this interdependent world of open borders, easy travel, mass migration, universal access to information and technology, drenched in global media. I will just give you a stunning example that occurred to me on the way over here. When Kevin and I walked over to the hotel and got into our van to ride here, his cellphone rang and two friends of ours were calling from Paris to say they had just watched us walk out of the hotel in Blackpool, and how nice we looked. So I said, "Well, it's a slow day for news in Paris," but it is a good example of our interdependent world.
This world has brought great benefits to the British people and the American people and to people everywhere who are prepared to make the most of it and have the right values, the right vision and do the right things. But there is a big problem with our interdependent world; it does not include a lot of us yet.
Half the world's people live on less than $2 a day, a million people live on less than a dollar a day, including people in three of the five nations I visited on my recent trip to Africa.
A billion people are hungry every night, a billion and a half people never have any clean water, 130 million kids never go to school, 10 million children die every year of preventable childhood diseases, even though overall life expectancy is up and infant mortality down, even in the developing world.
One in four people this year who perish will die of AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to diarrhea. And it is not just the economic, health and education divides; there are large numbers of people who simply do not have the values and vision necessary to be part of an interdependent world because they think their differences -- whether they are religious or political or racial or tribal or ethnic -- are more important than our common humanity. They believe the truth they have justifies their imposition of that truth on other people, even if it means the death of innocents.
What happened to us in September 2001, is a microcosmic but painful and powerful example of the fact that we live in an interdependent world that is not yet an integrated global community -- which means that people who do not share the same values and vision and interests still have access to open borders, easy travel, technology and information that the al-Qaida network used to murder 3,100 people in the United States, including over several hundred Muslims and over 200 British citizens, among those from over 70 countries who perished.
It would be boring if we were all the same. Britain and America are more interesting countries than they were 30 years ago because they are more diverse. But the only way we can really live together is if we say that the celebration of our differences requires us to say that our common humanity matters more. (Applause)
There are a lot of obstacles in the road towards that kind of world. There are terrorists, there are tyrants, there are weapons of mass destruction, there are all these people who are not part of our prosperity -- and there are a lot of people on our side who think that we can for ever claim for ourselves what we deny to others. There are a lot of obstacles in the way. But let us be realistic; none of you believe that we will ever be completely defeated by terrorists. We will not allow ourselves to be defeated by tyrants with weapons of mass destruction; that will not happen. But we could reduce the future that we can build for our children if we respond to the challenges in the wrong way.
Yes, we have to care for the security of our nation. This means, among other things, of course that we have to fight terrorists. But we also have to build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. Of course we have to stand against weapons of mass destruction -- but if we can, we have to do it in the context of building the international institutions that in the end we will have to depend upon to guarantee the peace and security of the world and the human rights of all people everywhere. (Applause).
You clapped when I made that comment about the United Nations and I am glad you did, but one of the challenges we face today is that all the international institutions in which we place such hope are still becoming, they are still forming. We have only really had a chance to make them work for a little over a decade. The European Union is not what most people think -- and at least I hope -- it will be in five, 10 or 20 years; it is becoming. The United Nations is not what I hope it will be in five, 10 or 20 years. There are still people who vote in the United Nations based on the sort of old-fashioned national self-interest views they held in the cold war or even long before, so that not every vote reflects the clear and present interests of the world and the direction we are going.
I take it almost everybody in this room supports what Prime Minister Blair and I did in Kosovo. (Applause). It was a clear and present emergency; you had a million people being driven from their homes. But in the end, even though we had all the Muslim world for it and most of the developing nations for it, all of NATO for it, we could not get a U.N. resolution because of the historic ties of the Serbs to the Russians. So we went in anyway and as soon as the conflict was over, the Russians came in and did a very responsible job participating with the United States in an international U.N. peacekeeping environment. Why? Why did that happen? Because the U.N. is still becoming.
You also see the same thing when we, the United States, do not contribute in my view as much as we should to international institutions. (Applause) You know I have a difference in opinion with the Republicans about whether we should be involved in the Kyoto protocol, the comprehensive test ban treaty, the international criminal court, and all these things, but these things stand for something larger which is our larger obligation to create an integrated world. You cannot have an integrated world and have your say all the time. And America can lead the world towards that, but we cannot dominate and run the world in that direction. There is a big difference. (Applause)
So, having said that, do we want to strengthen these institutions? Yes. Why? Because they contribute to an integrated global community. But if we cannot solve all the problems, what else do we do? One thing we know is that whenever possible the outcome is likely to be better if Great Britain and the United States -- and if the United States and Europe -- are working together. We have half a century of evidence to support that.
I am profoundly grateful for the partnership that we enjoyed in the years when I served as president -- in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in the Middle East, in Africa, in East Timor; in bringing China into the World Trade Organization and the community of nations; in trying to build alliances with Russia between the United States and Europe; all of the things we did together for global debt relief, and a hundred other issues; whenever we were working together the outcome was likely to be better.
I am profoundly grateful for Britain's involvement with the United States and with others in diplomatic efforts and where necessary in military ones. You were there when we turned back Slobodan Milosevic and the tide of ethnic cleansing which threatened every dream people had of a Europe united, democratic and at peace for the first time in history.
You were there in 1991 when the United States and the global alliance turned back Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. When Saddam Hussein threw the weapons inspectors out in 1998 and we attacked Iraq, you were there. And when you were working towards peace in Northern Ireland, we were there. (Applause).
Whatever America did for Britain and Northern Ireland in the Irish peace process, you repaid 100 fold in the aftermath of September 11. Prime Minister Blair's firm determined voice bolstered our own resolve, his calm and caring manner soothed our aching hearts; and the British people pierced our darkness with the light of your friendship. In the aftermath of September 11th, we went to work against terror in a world rudely awakened to its universal threat, and much more willing to support the actions necessary to prevail.
I still believe our most pressing security challenge is to finish the job against al Qaida and its leaders in Afghanistan and any other place that they might hide. I would support even committing war forces to that. We have only about half as many forces in Afghanistan today that we had in Bosnia after the conflict was over and we were keeping the peace. I applaud Britain's commitment to finish the job in not only the conflict but to winning the peace, to staying in Afghanistan with an international force and with the kind of support necessary to make sure that we do not have the disaster that occurred when the West walked away from them 20 years ago. (Applause).
