[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 66 (Thursday, May 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5314-S5315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO FORMER SENATOR GEORGE MITCHELL

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, April 10, 1998 was not only Good Friday and

[[Page S5315]]

Passover for millions of people around the world. It was a day that 
marked a beginning for the people of Northern Ireland. A beginning on a 
path toward peace after thirty long years of civil conflict that 
claimed over 3000 lives. Although a great deal of work lies ahead to 
ensure that the peace agreement signed in Belfast is adopted by all 
parties and faithfully implemented, the agreement is an achievement of 
immense historic significance.
  Over the years, like so many Americans who are proud of their Irish 
heritage, I have wondered if I would live to see this day. Some years 
ago, not long after the first cease-fire began, I traveled to Northern 
Ireland and met with both Catholics and Protestants. Both longed for 
peace. Both asked me to urge President Clinton, who had taken a chance 
for peace when he granted a visa to Gerry Adams, to stay the course. We 
all knew there would be setbacks. We knew more innocent blood would be 
lost. But while some longed for a past that was gone and others for a 
future that could never be, most knew that violence could not bring 
peace and that the only way to a better life was through compromise.
  The April 10th agreement represents the culmination of a tremendous 
amount of effort, and a great deal of courage, by many people. As party 
leaders, John Hume, whom I consider it a great privilege to call a 
friend, Gerry Adams, and David Trimble brought their constituents' 
longing for peace to the negotiating table and understood the 
responsibility history had thrust upon them and the need to find the 
middle ground. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish 
counterpart, Bertie Ahern, deserve enormous praise for putting the full 
weight of their offices and their personal reputations behind the 
negotiations.
  Several other people I want to pay tribute to are former Irish Prime 
Ministers Albert Reynolds and John Bruton, and former Foreign Minister 
Dick Spring, who put the peace process in motion and labored day and 
night to keep it moving forward despite setbacks. Throughout this 
period Former Irish Ambassador Dermot Gallagher and his successor Sean 
O'Huiginn played a critical role keeping us informed here in Washington 
as they worked to further the peace process.
  But I want to make particular mention of our former Senate colleague, 
George Mitchell, whose wisdom, steady perseverance and total dedication 
to the cause of peace enabled the parties to find a way to put the 
years of hatred behind them and look to a new day.
  Senator Mitchell came from humble beginnings. Born to Lebanese and 
Irish immigrants in rural Maine, he worked his way through Bowdoin 
College and Georgetown Law School. As a federal judge and from the time 
he joined the Senate in 1982, he demonstrated patience, even-handedness 
and commitment to the public good. As Majority Leader, he served as an 
articulate national spokesman, a trusted colleague and a good friend.
  As the first serving U.S. President to visit Northern Ireland, 
President Clinton made a commitment to the peace process early on, 
courageously put his prestige on the line by granting a visa to Gerry 
Adams, and showed great foresight in his appointment of Senator 
Mitchell as chairman of the negotiations. As I said at that time, I 
could not have imagined a person better suited to bring the sides 
together and forge a common path to the future. George Mitchell managed 
to do what many in the foreign policy establishment said was 
impossible. As the crafter of the agreement, he has given hope to 
millions of Irish citizens, and in doing so he has shown the world that 
even the most seemingly intractable conflicts, even the most bitter 
hatred, can be overcome.
  Mr. President, an April 18, 1998 article by Mark Shields in the 
Washington Post gives a good description of Senator George Mitchell and 
his latest achievement. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 18, 1998]

                         The Politics of Peace

                           (By Mark Shields)

       After hearing the happy news from Ireland that peace could 
     actually break out there, I found my notes from a campaign 
     speech given in 1993 by an American politician. This is what 
     he said then about his earlier career as a federal judge:
       ``In that position, I had great power. The one I enjoyed 
     exercising most was when I presided over what are called 
     naturalization ceremonies.
       ``They're citizenship ceremonies. People who come from all 
     over the world who had gone through the required procedures 
     now gathered before me in a federal courtroom, and in that 
     final act I administered to them the oath of allegiance to 
     the United States. And then, by the power invested in me 
     under the Constitution, I made them Americans.
       ``It was always a very emotional and moving ceremony for me 
     because my mother was a Lebanese immigrant and my father was 
     the orphan son of Irish immigrants.
       ``My parents had no education. My mother could not read or 
     write English. And they worked--my mother in a textile mill, 
     and my father as a janitor--all of their lives, to see that 
     their children had the education and the opportunity they did 
     not have. . . .
       ``And after every one of those ceremonies, I spoke 
     personally with each of the new citizens. I asked them where 
     they came from, how they came, why they came. Their answers 
     were as different as their countries of origin. But through 
     those answers ran a common theme best summarized by a young 
     Asian man who, when I asked him why he came here, responded 
     in slow and halting English.
       `` `I came here,' he said, `because here in America 
     everybody has a chance.' A young man who had been an American 
     for five minutes summed up the meaning of our country in a 
     single sentence.
       ``Many of us, most of us in this room, derive great 
     benefits from our citizenship. And most of us are citizens by 
     an accident of birth, not by an act of free will.
       ``With those benefits come responsibility, and foremost 
     among those responsibilities is our obligation to see to it 
     that those who follow us, the generations yet unborn, have 
     opportunity, have hope, have the right to a good, decent 
     life, a good job, a good-paying job, the opportunity to feed, 
     clothe, house and educate one's children in the best way 
     possible.''
       Much, too much, has been written in recent years about the 
     politics of values. That 1993 speech expressed 
     straightforwardly the values of an American politician--
     George Mitchell, Democrat from Maine, former Senate majority 
     leader--who, over the past 22 months, through a combination 
     of heroic patience, consummate prudence and a near-unique 
     ability to publicly submerge his own ego, has crafted the 
     peace plan for Northern Ireland.
       Politics is the peaceable resolution of conflict among 
     legitimate competing interests. That is what Mitchell brought 
     to Belfast from Waterville, Maine, after working his way 
     through Bowdoin College and night law school at Georgetown 
     University. A committed partisan, he helped run the two 
     losing national campaigns of his mentor, Sen. Edmund Muskie 
     of Maine.
       Neither a plaster saint nor politically invincible, 
     Mitchell himself ran in 1972 for the chairmanship of the 
     Democratic National Committee and lost to Robert Strauss of 
     Texas. In the Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats 
     swept nearly everything, Mitchell still lost the governorship 
     of Maine to an independent. When Muskie left the Senate in 
     1980 to become secretary of state, Mitchell was chosen to 
     succeed him.
       At the 1987 Iran-contra hearings, Mitchell gave a civics 
     lesson to the nation, as he bluntly advised the grandstanding 
     Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North to ``recognize that it is 
     possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the 
     contras and still love God and still love this country as 
     much as you do.
       ``Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not 
     take sides in American politics. And in America, disagreement 
     with the policies of the government is not evidence of lack 
     of patriotism.''
       British Prime Minister Tony Blair was indispensable to the 
     peace agreement. So, too, was Irish Prime Minister Bertie 
     Ahern. And the courageous Protestant and Catholic leaders in 
     the North. President Clinton, against the jaded opposition of 
     the foreign policy establishment and over the objections of 
     his own State and Justice Departments, took the bold risks 
     for peace. He has been a leader.
       But it was the son of George and Mary Saad Mitchell of 
     Waterville who was to grow up and remind us in Easter week 
     1998 that politicians can also be peacemakers.

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