[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 29, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1427-E1431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A GREAT MAN WHO CONTINUES TO OFFER EACH OF US INSIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
______
HON. JENNIFER DUNN
of washington
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
Ms. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to notify the House of
Representatives of a speech recently given by the former Speaker of the
House, Newt Gingrich. In May, with the other Republican women Members
of Congress I invited women from around the country to attend the
second annual Republican Women Leaders Forum.
At the forum there were many speeches given, but one of the
highlights was a speech given by Newt Gingrich on the morning of May
12, 1999. His speech was heard by over 1,000 women and received ten
standing ovations. The speech moved me and many of my colleagues who
were in attendance.
As the man who led us in capturing and holding a Republican majority
in Congress for the first time since 1928, his comments continue to
offer each of us insight for the future.
Speech of Newt Gingrich, Republican Women's Leadership Forum, Ronald
Reagan International Trade Center, Washington, DC, May 12, 1999
Thank you very, very much, and thank you Sue, [Myrick] and
thank you Jennifer [Dunn] for inviting me and I also want to
mention Mac Collins a colleague from Georgia who came by a
few minutes ago. It was great to see him. This is actually
the first serious policy speech I've made since stepping down
as Speaker.
And I want to say, first of all, how grateful I am to be
here. I had many offers, obviously, but what Jennifer Dunn
has done in bringing together women leaders from all over the
country is so important, and when she called me a couple of
months ago, I said this was a date I would circle and be
here.
And I'm honored to be here with all of you. And remember,
those of you who were here last year, I revealed that--just
as many of you are soccer moms. I was a ballet dad.
[laughter] And so I think our concern for children our
concern for how they grow up, we share a lot of that.
I also couldn't help but think as Sue was talking about the
fact that the first two women to be officers of the House
were under the Republicans. The Democrats had never had a
woman as officer of the House. The first women to chair full
committees were Republicans; the first time we had three
women in the leadership was under the Republicans.
[[Page E1428]]
And I noticed something that has not yet been reported in
Washington, but I think will, by next spring, be a serious
gender-gap issue nationwide, and I just want to be clear
about this as a starting point for this speech: I don't know
why there is no Democratic woman who feels confident enough
to run for president, but I am proud that it is the
Republicans who have produced the first serious, nationwide
woman candidate for president. [applause]
And maybe the Democrat women are too intimidated by the
White House style of leadership, [laughter] maybe the
Democratic women are too shy, maybe they are too busy waiting
for Hillary to make up her mind, but I am proud that
Elizabeth Dole is making a serious campaign, in a serious
way, and frankly I would so much prefer her to either Gore or
Bradley, that I am proud that she is out there campaigning
across this country. [applause]
And for all of our friends who may watch this later on C-
SPAN, I am not endorsing anybody, but I think that it is
exciting for the Republican Party to have that caliber of
leadership.
Let me also thank you for your help. Sue also made the
point, which is exactly right, that with your help, in 1994,
we ran an entirely positive campaign. We outlined a Contract
With America. With the help of the National Committee, our
biggest single ad was in TV Guide, it was small print, no
pictures, didn't mention the Democrats or Bill Clinton. It
said, ``if you hire us, this is our contract, this is what
we'll do.'' When we elected a new generation, and Sue was one
of the leaders, a brand new team came to Washington and much
to the shock of people, we actually kept our word.
We passed welfare reform three times. Twice the president
vetoed it, the third time it was very popular, we were close
to the election, he announced he had invented it in Arkansas,
was sorry it took so long, and took full credit and signed
it.
But the fact is, for the Republicans who fought for it,
today 43% fewer people are on welfare, and 43% more folks are
working, and that is a key reason we have a better economy,
not Bill Clinton's malarkey. [applause]
The fact is, with Jennifer Dunn, and Sue Myrick, and
another presidential candidate, John Kasich, who had the
sheer courage as Budget Committee Chairman to produce the
first balanced budget in a generation, [applause] you are now
at a point where if you don't elect another liberal congress,
and you don't elect another liberal president, we will have a
generation of balanced budgets for the first time in 70
years. And that has lowered interest rates, and that has been
a factor in this economy, not Bill Clinton's malarkey.
[applause]
And let's be clear: Bill Clinton was for a balanced budget
after the 300th focus group. He fought us every step of the
way until he decided he had no choice, and for him to take
credit is just a sign that he is the man we know he is.
[laughter] [applause]
Finally, with your help, we passed tax cuts. A pro-family
five-hundred-dollar tax credit, against liberal opposition. A
capital gains tax cut to create more jobs, against liberal
opposition. A cut in the death tax to strengthen family ties,
against liberal opposition. And that helped the economy grow,
with zero help from Bill Clinton and Al Gore, except they
caved in at the end and signed the bill they opposed.
[applause] So let's be clear about why this economy's
healthy.
But it happened because of your help. It happened because
you were willing to work hard, elect a Republican Congress,
stand by us and make us--not only were we the first
Republican majority in 40 years in the House, we were the
first Republican majority re-elected in the House since 1928.
And because of your help, we were also the first Republican
majority in the House elected to a third term since 1926.
Now, I made a very difficult decision three days after the
election. Because I talked with my colleagues, and I reached
a conclusion that I'd been trying to do two jobs. One to be a
visionary, a strategist and a teacher, to tell the truth as I
saw it. And the other to manage the House on a daily basis.
And the two jobs weren't the same job.
One job required patience, endurance, willingness to
listen, a willingness to get every day the best you could get
and move on. That's the Speaker of the House. It's a tough,
tough job, and my heart goes out to Denny Hastert. He's a
great American, and I think as he learns the job he's going
to be better and better, and you're going to be very proud by
next year. And compared to Dick Gephardt, Denny Hastert is
absolutely the Speaker we need, and Denny Hastert was the
person I backed strongly personally, because he has the
instincts to be a good legislative leader. Which means, he's
not always going to look good in the press. That's not the
job of a Speaker. Tim O'Neil didn't always look great in the
press, but he was a very effective Speaker for the Democrats.
But he will get the job done. He passed a budget this year,
which I couldn't get done last year. And he'll keep getting
things done, because that's the job of the Speaker.
But it meant that for two years, I have been drowning. I
couldn't do what I did differently, which is to tell the
truth as I understand it. It's not the ``truth;'' the
``truth'' is known by God and the rest of us seek it. But to
try every day to tell where we have to go. The way we
developed the Contract.
The last five months I've had a chance to be out around the
country. To be beyond the beltway, to not watch the Sunday
shows, to ignore all the babble that his city mistakes for
dialogue. [laughter] [applause]
And, I've had a chance to really think about where we are,
and where we've going. And I decided that what I want to do
today, is share with you some thoughts about Littleton, and
about Kosovo. I haven't talked on either one, and I probably
won't do it again for a good while. But if I'm going to come
here and be with you, I'm going to try to be who I've always
been, which is a person who tried to described what he really
believed.
Let me start by saying that the thing that most clearly
hits you, when you get beyond the elite media, is that this
is a great country, filled with good people, and many of them
achieve amazing things.
For every child who ends up on the cover of a magazine
because they killed somebody, there are literally a million
children going to school, trying to understand their role in
life, trying to be decent to their fellow citizens.
For every child who ends up in a way that is tragic, there
are hundreds of thousands of children who are trying very
hard to learn to be American citizens. To be the kind of
person their family can be proud of.
And I think we need to start by placing in perspective both
Littleton and Kosovo.
We are the greatest society of freedom in the history of
the human race. More people pursue happiness, of more racial
backgrounds, with greater religious diversity than in any
country in the history of the world, and we should be proud
that for most of the time, America works, despite the news
media mis-coverage of this country. [applause]
And if my friends in the press think I'm tough on them,
they're right. The truth is, if Thomas Edison invented the
electric light bulb today, it would be reported tonight on
the networks with a story which began, ``the candle making
industry was threatened today.'' [laughter] [applause]
But, we are also not only a remarkable country, we are the
only global superpower in the history of the human race. No
other country has ever had the potential power that we have.
And yet, as a great country, and a good society of decent
people, we have Littleton. As the most powerful nation in the
history of the world, we have Kosovo.
And every Sunday you hear all the local self-appointed
experts babble on with whatever trivia they heard that week.
I want to give you my honest, personal thoughts on both
those topics. Some of this may be a little controversial. And
it should be.
And I want to do it in a spirit, as a history teacher, of
Emile Zola, who wrote J'Accuse, ``I accuse.`` A Jewish
officer in the French army had been framed, largely because
of anti-Semitism. The elite culture had covered up the
framing they were all going to go along with destroying him,
and Emile Zola wrote a public letter saying, ``this is
wrong.''
And because of the moral courage of his letter, French
society talked to itself, there was a great crisis, and it
changed. Captain Dreyfuss was exonerated, and the people who
had framed him were punished.
So in the tradition J'Accuse, and Emile Zola, I want to say
to the elite of this country, the elite news media, the
liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse
you in Littleton, and I accuse you in Kosovo, of being afraid
to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to
take responsibility for the things that you have done, and
instead foisting on the rest of us pathetic banalities
because you don't have the courage to look at the world you
have created. [applause]
Let me talk first about Littleton. A great tragedy. A
tragedy that should frighten every one of us. Both for those
who were killed, and for the killers. Because it means that
any of us, in any school, no matter how good, could lose our
children. And it means any of us, in any home, could lose our
child.
And we should have a national, open discussion about ``how
did we get here?'' How did this great country, filled with
good people who do amazing things allow it to degenerate to a
point where young boys could think such weird, perverse
thoughts and then act on them. Where the innocent could die
for no reason.
Let me give you my answer. One which I'm sure I'll be
castigated for, and I'm sure my usual critics will write
harsh columns about. But it is the truth, and it makes them
very guilty and very uncomfortable, and they reflect that in
their attacks.
We have had a thirty-five year experiment, in a unionized,
bureaucratic, credentialed, secular assault on the core
values of this country. And we should not be surprised that
they eventually yield bad fruit, because they are bad seeds.
They make no sense as a society.
For thirty-five years, God has been driven out of the
classroom, and we have seen it result in a secular, atheistic
system [applause] in which God is not allowed to exist.
[applause]
For thirty-five years the political and intellectual elites
of political correctness have undermined the core values of
American history, so that young people may not know who
George Washington is, or they may not know who Abraham
Lincoln is, but they do know what MTV is, and that is not
progress, that is decadence, and we should say it bluntly.
[applause]
For thirty-five years, bureaucratic, credentialed unions
have driven knowledge out of the classroom, so today you can
have a certified teacher who can't speak a foreign
[[Page E1429]]
language try to teach it, while the person who can speak it
can't teach it because they either don't pay the union dues
or haven't gotten credentialed, and that is madness.
[applause]
We keep looking at our physics scores and say ``why do they
decline?'' And then you find that in the inner city we have
people who don't know any physics teaching physics. And you
have a student who sits there and knows their teacher doesn't
know.
You can't have authority unless you earn it. And you can't
have a bureaucratic, unionized, credentialed system that has
any authority left, because it drives out the very skills and
the very capacities that are necessary.
And most teachers are decent, and most teachers are hard
working, and most teachers are trying. And I am a product of
the public schools, and I actually care about them enough to
try and change them, not just have a mantra of paying off the
unions while doing nothing to save the schools. [applause]
Let me say his very clearly. And it will be very
controversial. For a generation, Hollywood and computerized
games have undermined the core values of civility and it is
time they were stopped by a society that values free speech
enough to protect it. [applause]
One of the great founders of CBS News, Edward R. Murrow's
producer, had a wonderful saying, ``Just because you have the
right to say it, doesn't mean it is the right thing to say.''
And let us say to Hollywood, and let us say to the Nintendos
and the other games, if you are going to be sick, we are
going to find a way to protect this country from you, and
whether that means exposing movies to liability
litigation, whether that means exposing computerized games
to litigation, whether it means challenging the Democrats
to cut off the fund-raising in a verse. Don't tell us you
care about children, and then have the people corrupting
their lives raise your money, while you tell us you care
about traditional values. [applause]
So, if Al Gore and Bill Bradley really want to help
America, they can lay a standard down. They won't raise a
penny in Hollywood from anybody who doesn't sign a standard
that says they will make movies of voluntary decency.
You don't have to allow the most corrupt, the most
depraved, the most violent, just because you personally don't
have the guts for your career to say ``I won't do it.'' And
they could set a standard and say, ``we're only going to do
fund-raisers with producers and stars who do decent films,''
and you would suddenly see a crisis of identity in both the
Democratic party and Hollywood. [applause]
And I'm not using that just to make a partisan point, I'm
trying to make a deeper point. Don't tell us the Constitution
blocks us from civility. Don't tell us that freedom of speech
means the freedom to be so depraved, so violent, so
disgusting that our children grow up in a world where they
think that killing someone else is a reasonable behavior. And
it's true on television, it's true in the movies, it's true
in these games.
And I would challenge the lawyers of America: Don't tell me
how cleverly you can protect those who are bad, tell me how
well you can find some solution to bring Hollywood to its
senses and to bring the game people to their senses.
And I'm not for censorship. But I am for the society
setting standards and shaming those who refuse to have a
standard that makes sense. [applause]
And for two generations we have raised the taxes on working
families so that the second spouse has no choice except to go
to work, almost entirely to pay the family's taxes. Then we
talk about ``latch-key kids,'' when it is the very liberal
politicians who raised the taxes who created the latch-keys.
[applause]
But about Littleton, liberal politicians and the elite
media yell ``gun-control'' because they can't talk about
their values, and the effect they have had.
Let me set some simple standards. When Al Gore talks God
and Faith, is he for voluntary school prayer, or isn't he?
Does he want to bring God back in, or does he want to give us
psychobabble? Yes or no? Don't tell me why you're ``sort of
for it,'' and ``Littleton is certainly a tragedy,'' and I
certainly ``feel.'' We've had eight years of that.
Let's be serious. This was a mistake to take God out of the
classroom. [applause] It was a mistake to take the right to
pray out of the classroom. Now, are you for changing the
mistake, or not changing the mistake? [applause]
But don't tell us you're really worried about the
consequences, but you don't want to change the cause.
When politicians talk about families, is Bill Bradley for
more tax cuts, so families have more time with their
children, or is he against tax cuts? Does he want to abolish
the death tax so we strengthen family bonds, or is he for the
death tax, even though it clearly makes no sense as a society
to punish grandparents and parents for saving for their
children and grandchildren. It is the socially dumbest tax we
have. [applause]
When a liberal talks about values, would he or she actually
like us to teach American history? Would they actually like
young children to learn that George Washington was an ethical
man? A man of standards? A man who earned the right to be
father of this country? Would they actually like us to learn
that Lincoln agonized, or is discussing those kind of moral
values culturally inappropriate? Because we have to be a
multi-cultural society, where you get to pick and invent your
own culture? Something which historically no civilization has
ever successfully done because it means you've got thirteen
to fifteen year olds in total confusion, and they're being
asked to invent a reasonable civilization?
It takes thousands of years to create a civilization, and
then we learn it, and we stand on the shoulders of the
lessons of every generation that paid in blood to learn these
lessons. And to ask young people of thirteen and fifteen to
invent a civilization is not only ahistorical, it violates
everything we know about how human beings function.
And we should say something simple: Every child should know
the Declaration of Independence, and why it says, ``We hold
these truths to be self-evident.'' Every child should learn
the Declaration of Independence, and why it says, ``We are
endowed by our Creator.''
When those children killed in Littleton, they were killing
the children of God, who had been endowed with the
unalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. And I will bet you those kids didn't know it, they
didn't believe it, they didn't understand it, because for two
generations the elite liberals in academia and in the news
media have babbled on about somehow getting rid of all this
western ethnocentric whatever . . . it is irrelevant what
your color is. It is irrelevant what geography you come from.
When you come to America, you learn to be an American and
that means you are endowed. [applause]
So, I ask each of you, you go back to your state. You ask
your state legislatures and your governor, let's reestablish
teaching the Constitution, let's reestablish teaching the
Declaration of Independence, let's make sure every child
knows what Creator means, and then let's see how the liberals
try to go to the Supreme Court to argue that you can't talk
about the Creator in class when in fact it is a historical
document about a historic fact that the Founding Fathers all
believed in God, including Thomas Jefferson, thank you very
much, it's his language. [laughter] [applause]
And so, on Littleton, let me simply say, most children are
good. Most schools are safe, but we have been given a wake up
call that the experiment in secular liberalism has failed,
and we had better truly change, or there will be more
symptoms of the pain. And every time our friends on the left
babble about gun-control, or some psycho-therapy, or some
other kind of feel good stuff, we ought to come back to the
basics.
Are you prepared to cut taxes on working families? Are you
prepared to eliminate the death tax? Are you prepared to
actually have teachers who know something as a requirement of
teaching? Are you prepared to reinstate American history and
learning about America? Are you prepared to talk about the
Creator, and are you prepared to allow children to pray
voluntarily? And if you're not for those things, you're not
for the changes that are necessary to make sure that we have
fewer Littletons and more children who are happy and stable.
[applause]
Now, and let me say that avoiding future Littletons
requires real change. This has been a mistake. For thirty-
five years, we have gone in the wrong direction. This is
about real change. And without real change, it won't change.
Let me now turn to foreign policy. Let me say that I have
watched with some amazement. I think it is fair to say that
of all the Republican leaders in the last six years, I was
the most consistently supportive of the president, because I
felt as an Army brat, having been overseas, having lived
through experiences where politicians back home were critical
and divisive, having been through the Vietnam war where some
American future politicians led demonstrations in foreign
countries, [laughter] having been through Desert Shield and
watched every elected Democrat leader vote against Desert
Storm, I know how unnecessarily divisive domestic politics
can be.
I also know that as a superpower we have a unique role, and
let me say, very clearly: I believe the United States must
provide leadership in the world, I believe we are
irreplaceable, and I oppose unalterably anyone who argues for
withdrawal and isolation, because I believe it is our
historic destiny and fate.
There is no other country big enough, complex enough, or
capable of providing leadership on a world-wide basis, and if
we pull back, this planet will become chaotic, and violent,
and our children and grandchildren will pay in blood for our
timidity.
Now having said that, let me also remind you, you can lead
your neighborhood without fixing breakfast for all your
neighbors. [laughter] You can lead a community clean-up drive
without cleaning out every garage yourself.
But let me talk about Kosovo in the historic setting
because, in the last few weeks the crisis has begun to mount
in a way that I would have thought, in January, unthinkable.
For fifty years, we led NATO to keep Russia out of places
like Yugoslavia, which was the only anti-Soviet communist
state in Europe. And now, in a few short months, the Clinton-
Gore administration, has fashioned a policy to bring
Russia into one of the places we invented NATO to keep
them out of. This is a significant mistake.
For the entire history of the human race, the Chinese have
never been actively involved in Europe. And now in a few
short
[[Page E1430]]
months, the Clinton-Gore administration has managed to
fashion a policy which gives the Chinese a voice in Europe.
The scapegoating in this city will be pathetic, and has to be
described honestly as scapegoating.
Let me give you the example of the Chinese embassy. The
Clinton-Gore administration ignores intelligence, because as
good liberals, they don't believe in a strong America leading
the world. They under-fund it, they reduce the number of
analysts. They have too few people. They send liberals out to
run the agency in such a way--this is not the current
director, but the preceding director and his staff--but they
undermine the morale of our most effective intelligence
agency.
The first director, Jim Woolsey, got to see the president
one time. In fact there was a joke that when the plane
crashed into the White House, it was Woolsey trying to get in
to see the president. [laughter] I did not make that up, you
can ask Jim Woolsey. [laughter]
So, for six and a half years the Clinton-Gore
administration under-funds intelligence, abuses it, neglects
it--go ask how many people there are in the Central
Intelligence Agency that speak Serbian. Having had nine years
to prepare for Kosovo, beginning in 1990, how much did we
beef up? Or ask them how many can speak Chinese? How big is
the shortage of Chinese language experts in the American
intelligence community?
So having had six and a half years of under-funding, the
CIA makes a mistake. But the Commander-in-Chief is not
responsible. The Commander-in-Chief is never responsible. If,
in a war, the president is not accountable, then what does
the Constitution mean? COMMANDER-in-Chief. [applause]
In all of this Washington babble about who is responsible,
the Clinton-Gore administration had six-and-a-half years,
almost seven years, to beef-up our intelligence capabilities.
They didn't do it.
I forced the extra funding last fall, finally, and it is
still too little, and if we are going to be the superpower
that leads the entire planet we need a dramatically bigger
intelligence capability.
It doesn't mean you need to overhaul the CIA. It doesn't
mean you don't have to re-think our intelligence capability,
but I am tired of liberals yelling ``reform'' when what they
mean is ``don't fund them,'' and then blaming the people they
didn't fund for the mistake that was human error.
We got it last year when the Indian nuclear explosion was
not detected because we don't have enough analysts, and we
don't have enough satellites to watch everything, and now we
are getting it this year. The fact is that the Clinton-Gore
Administration under-funds intelligence and we are now paying
the price with the Chinese for the Clinton-Gore failure to
provide adequate funding. [applause]
The fact is, the Clinton-Gore Administration has under-
funded defense, and God help us if either the North Koreans
or the Iraqis decide to take advantage of our current
disposition. Does this administration honestly believe that
nobody else in the world watches CNN? [laughter]
The reason you have to have, and I'm very serious, this is
a matter of life and death. The reason is you have to have a
military big enough to do three things: One campaign; be
ready for a second campaign; and retain a training and
procurement base for a third campaign.
And [RNC] Chairman [Jim] Nicholson knows this. He is a West
Point graduate. He served in Vietnam. He understands these
things. The reason you have to do all three simultaneously is
because you are in a dangerous world.
And when you focus on Iraq, and the President did for a
little while in 1997. And I was with him, because I thought
he was doing the right thing? And then he forgot it. Saddam
is still there, but none of the stated goals--remember all
the worries, the sack of sugar, the danger of biological
weapons. They didn't go away. It is just that this
administration's attention span is relatively short.
So Saddam is still there. The world is getting more
dangerous. He is doing every single thing that Bill Clinton
and Bill Cohen told us to worry about, but we're not in that
campaign right now because we can't afford to be.
The North Koreans are lying to us about nuclear weapons. We
know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. The
Chinese, the South Koreans, and the Japanese know they are
lying. And they know we know they are lying. And the North
Koreans are routinely irrational. Despite 50 years of effort
we know almost nothing about North Korea because it is the
most sealed off society in the world. And it is preeminently
dangerous.
And then you have Kosovo. A campaign designed as though all
of military history ceased to exist. As though there are no
lessons of Vietnam. The very people who were opposed to
Vietnam are now bringing us a European Vietnam, and they have
learned nothing from the Vietnam campaign. [applause]
Compare the lessons of Desert Storm and Kosovo. In Desert
Storm, President George Bush, Secretary of State Jim Baker,
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of
Defense Dick Cheney, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin
Powell said very clearly to the theater commander Norman
Schwartzkopf, ``what is it going to take to win decisively
with minimum American casualties in the shortest possible
time.'' And they spent six-months in a majestic, slow,
careful buildup of overwhelming military force. They
launched an air campaign that in six weeks pulverized the
Iraqis and they launched a four-day ground campaign. It is
the textbook study of a how a Democracy prepares
relentlessly to impose victory with minimum American
casualties.
Now I don't know what General Clark was thinking about,
because he knows better. And I don't know what the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs was thinking about, because he knows
better. And I don't know why none of the Joints Chiefs have
resigned [applause] because this campaign is a violation of
every rule I know of in how you design a campaign. Instead of
Theodore Roosevelt's speak softly and carry a big stick,
we've yelled and carried a toothpick.
And what has happened? The people we were protecting were
driven out, killed, or raped. The people that are under the
shelter of the United States of America are no longer in
Kosovo. The Serbians accepted a brutal choice: we get to kill
them, and they get to kill Albanians. But they've accepted
it.
The Russians are now reestablished as a power in Europe.
The Chinese are getting engaged in Europe. We are wasting our
resources. Our prestige is diminishing. And all over the
world we look like a violent, helpless, pathetic country.
Would you want to be protected by a Clinton Administration
that guaranteed that protection meant you would be driven out
of your home? They allowed it to happen to the Kurds in
northern Iraq. They are allowing it to happen now to the
Albanians in Kosovo.
And the President, of course, isn't responsible because he
is in a permanent campaign, so he doesn't have to be
Commander-in-Chief unless we are seeing him step off the
airplane to be saluted by military people who know better.
They know this is a pathetic disaster for the United States.
[applause]
Finally, with the Chinese having carefully orchestrated
riots because even when they try to buy an administration,
they can't always get what they want. Let's be clear, the
Clinton Administration's Justice Department did everything it
could to block an honest investigation of the Chinese money
laundering, and we know far less today about either the
Chinese cash or nuclear secrets.
And by the way, I don't blame the Chinese for stealing our
secrets, they are a sovereign power. They should do what's in
their interest. I blame the Clinton Administration for not
protecting the American secrets from China. [applause]
The Chinese staged these riots, which you know are staged,
because the Chinese lock up people who get up and say ``hi,
I'd like to have free speech.'' Five years in jail.
[laughter] ``I'd like to go riot against the Americans.'' Can
we give you a bus? [laughter] I mean, who's kidding whom;
these are staged, organized government dictatorship riots.
We are a country without a defense against Chinese
ballistic missiles. We could lose some of our men and women
in Kosovo. We could lose a lot of people if the Iraqis or the
North Koreans try to take advantage of our weakness. We could
lose an American city, and there is no ballistic missile
defense.
Why? Because the party of trial lawyers believes that we
should have a legal document with a ``Soviet Union,'' which
disappeared in 1991, rather that using the best scientists
and the best engineers. And we need a crash program to apply,
not just for the U.S., but a global missile defense, so that
all of our allies can rest safe. And we need to adopt a very
simple rule.
Let me be very clear, I'm not arguing for being in Kosovo
or not. And I would actually urge most of my former
colleagues to just shut up about it. Having civilian
politicians give their ideas about their campaign plan is
sort of irrelevant.
We ought to have a very simple set of standards as a
country. If we say that we are going to do something, and if
the President comes to a joint session--which this President
should do, and should have done for three months, and how he
can get away with not addressing the Congress and talking to
the nation about Kosovo is beyond me. [applause]
We ought to have a standard rule, if you are going to
commit American forces, you address a joint session. I mean
this for all Presidents for our future. We've got to learn to
lead and we've got to learn to do it within our Constitution.
He should come to the Congress. He should say, ``This is
the problem. These are our values. These are our goals.'' He
should then say a simple thing: ``I have instructed the
chairmen of the Joint Chiefs to design a military campaign
plan that will achieve victory for America with minimum cost
in lives and minimum use of time. The chairman will be
expected to execute that campaign and if it fails, he would
be retired and his successor will be expected to design a
successful campaign.'' No elected politician should attempt
to micro-manage whether or not we move Apache helicopters.
[applause]
Let me just close with this personal testimonial, for
whatever it's worth. My stepfather served 27 years in the
U.S. Army infantry. It was at the end of the Second World
War, fought in Korea, fought in Vietnam. We lived--when I was
growing up, I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We lived
in Fort Raleigh, Kansas; Avignon, France; Stuttgart, Germany;
and then Fort Benning, Georgia; which is how I became a
Georgian.
[[Page E1431]]
He served his country because he loved it. He served his
country because he thought it really mattered. He thought a
world in which the Soviets dominated or the Nazis dominated
would be a horrible world. A world in which America led
would be a remarkably better world.
Not a perfect world, because people aren't perfect. If you
believe in God, you know how inadequate you are. But a world
in which a decent country, of decent people, of all races and
all nationalities could pursue freedom and safety, and could
create prosperity like no one has ever seen. Forty years ago,
he convinced me at the battlefield at Verdum, when I was
fifteen, that this is all real.
For 40 years, with the help of the Georgia Federation of
the Republican Woman, and the Young Republicans, and
thousands of volunteers and lots of donors, and the people of
Georgia, I was allowed to study, to learn. I was allowed to
run for office and lose twice. I as allowed to run a third
time and win. Ultimately, with your help, we created a
majority.
I have not talked about any issues for five months. I have
not really laid out what I feel from the heart, but I
couldn't come here today in the middle of the agony that each
of us must feel for the children and the families of
Littleton.
I couldn't come here today, and let's be honest, in the
tradition of Lincoln, we should feel as much agony for the
innocent Serbs that are being killed as we feel for the
Albanians. We are all humans. Our Creator endows us all.
And we have to be a great enough nation that our hearts go
out to everybody in a conflict. And that we want to help
everybody. We want to find a way to lead a world without
violence because our moral dedication, not our purity, let me
be clear to my liberal friends none of us are pure. That is
not what this is about. Purity of purpose doesn't mean purity
of execution, because we are humans.
This has been the greatest opportunity for simple, everyday
human beings to get up in the morning, to love their
families, to pursue happiness, to work for a living, to
create a better future than has ever been created. And we
have to save it domestically or we will have many more
Littletons. And we have to learn to lead in the world or we
will have many more Kosovos.
Sadly, not happily, because I tried for six years to work
with this administration. Sadly, the Clinton-Gore
Administration has proven both in their reaction to Littleton
and in their utter total mismanagement in Kosovo, that
liberalism once again has failed, and we have to be the
standard barriers.
Just as we were with Eisenhower, just as we were in 1968
with Nixon, who ended the Vietnam War that Johnson started,
just as we were with Ronald Reagan who created the cause of
freedom worldwide and defeated the Soviet Empire, just as we
were with George Bush, who had the nerve and the discipline
to let the military run a winning campaign, despite every
liberal Democratic elected leader in the Congress.
We have to have the nerve over the next eighteen months to
tell the truth to the American people. To let the news media
scream at us, and to count on the fact that, in the end, this
is a great country, filed with good people, and they know
better than the talking heads on Sunday morning.
Thank you, good luck and God Bless you, [applause]
____________________