[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20361-20364]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         TERRORISM WILL NOT WIN

  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor today to 
share with my colleagues a speech that former President Clinton gave 
earlier this month to the Greater Washington Society of Association 
Executives. It is an excellent speech that underscores a point many of 
us have made right here on this floor: the terrorists will not win, 
because we will not allow them to win.
  If the terrorists thought they would succeed in dividing us, they 
need only read this strong endorsement of President Bush by President 
Clinton.
  If the terrorists thought they could use terror to force us to 
withdraw from the world, they need only read this blueprint for greater 
U.S. engagement across the globe.
  And, if the terrorists thought that they would get us to succumb to 
fear, they need only read this testament to the bravery shown by 
thousands of Americans since September 11.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that President Clinton's 
October 9, 2001 speech be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

Former President Clinton's Remarks at the Greater Washington Society of 
                         Association Executives

       Thank you.
       I never imagined that I could draw a crowd like this just 
     because my wife is a senator. Well, Helen, you'll have a lot 
     of mentions in the index. When I was told Helen Thomas was 
     going to introduce me, I said, ``God, I hope she's doesn't 
     get to ask a question.'' I thought her questions to me were 
     term-limited. You know when Helen left the UPI, some 
     reporters wrote that she had given up her front row seat at 
     the White House press conferences. But it turned out not to 
     be so. In a town where power is supposed to be vested in the 
     office and not the individual, she is the exception to the 
     rule: The only person powerful enough to quit her job and 
     still keep her seat, and I am profoundly honored to be with 
     her tonight. America is a better place today because of the 
     50-plus years she has given to the noble work of journalism.
       Tonight, as we ask God's blessings on our men and women in 
     uniform and their allies on their mission and pray that they 
     return home safely, I thank the Greater Washington Society of 
     Association Executives for going forward with this event, 
     consistent with President Bush's request to us to go on with 
     normal life in America.
       Of course, it is not quite normal, and having been 
     president and having been used to being second-guessed a bit, 
     I want to make sure that anything I say here tonight about 
     where we are and where we're going will be understood in the 
     context of my complete support as an American for our 
     president, his national security team and our allies in our 
     efforts to deal with the challenges of terrorism.
       Now, this bipartisan thing's getting down-right amazing. 
     Last week Bob Dole and I taped a public service announcement. 
     To--he did make sure I sat on the left and he sat on the 
     right. To make America aware of the Families of Freedom 
     Scholarship Fund which has been established to raise $100 
     million for the children and spouses of those

[[Page 20362]]

     killed or disabled on September the 11th, including people 
     from other nations. These people are going to make a big 
     contribution to our national life in the years ahead if we 
     make sure that we don't forget them, even in three, five, 10, 
     15 years. An amazing number of the men who died left wives 
     who were pregnant. And this endeavor will therefore carry 
     forward at least 21 years.
       I thank the Greater Washington Society of Association 
     Executives for assisting with a very special fund-raising 
     event on October the 23rd from 5 to 7 at the Washington 
     Hilton where President Gorbachev will be talking about the 
     world after September the 11th. Attendance there will be 
     free, but those attending are asked to bring a check payable 
     to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund.
       Thank you very much for supporting this effort.
       Since September the 11th, I have spent a lot of time in New 
     York with rescue and recovery workers, with survivors, with 
     the families of the victims, with schoolchildren and their 
     teachers, with people working to help people find answers and 
     help people deal with their problems.
       Today I attended the funeral of New York Fire Department 
     Captain Fred Ill, a man who used to support my trips to New 
     York as president. He was one of 10 firemen lost in one small 
     firehouse in Midtown Manhattan and a remarkable man, who 
     leaves a beautiful wife and three children, including a 22-
     year-old son who is a New York fireman. The fire department, 
     you know, is like a Medieval army. The generals lead the 
     charge. They don't sit on a hill and direct. So after this 
     terrible incident, we lost our fire chief and his top three 
     deputies. We lost the Catholic chaplain who was a friend of 
     Hillary's and mine. Over 300 firemen died and it required the 
     New York Fire Department to promote over 200 of its firemen 
     to fill the ranks of their superiors who went in first. But 
     because they did, thousands and thousands of others who would 
     have died did not.
       After one person in the temple of our home town of 
     Chappaqua perished, Hillary and I were invited to come to 
     Rosh Hashanah service there. And I happened to meet one of 
     those two amazing men who was on the 84th floor of the World 
     Trade Center Tower, which was hit on the 85th floor. He 
     immediately told everybody to get in the stairs and go down 
     and then, with another man, carried a women in a wheelchair 
     84 floors to safety.
       I have been to the crisis center, first at the old armory 
     on 26th and Lex and now at Pier 94, three times. There a man 
     came to me and said President Clinton, ``I'm glad to see you 
     again. I first met you in Oklahoma City.'' And I said, ``How 
     did we come to meet?'' He said, ``You came to console me. My 
     wife was in the building and I lost her.'' And he said, ``The 
     minute this happened, I took a leave of absence, got in my 
     car and drove to New York because I had no one to talk to who 
     knew what I was going through. And I thought maybe I could be 
     there for these people.'' So he said, ``I just come in and 
     sit here all day and the people who are working with the 
     victims bring them to see me.''
       I've met a lot of victims' families from all over the world 
     and every conceivable group here in America. I met the 
     British and the Germans and the Italians, the Chinese, the 
     Japanese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis. I've 
     met people from several African countries, from Mexico, 
     Brazil, the Caribbean and elsewhere.
       I've been in three schools, and two of them had double 
     student bodies because the schools took in grade school kids 
     in one case and high school kids in another who were blown 
     out of their schools on September the 11th. One of these 
     schools has a principal whose sister was killed at the World 
     Trade Center. And she knew immediately that her sister might 
     have been lost, but after her school was vacated, she walked 
     five miles to the central office of the New York City school 
     system to tell them that her children and teachers were well, 
     and that as soon as they found them a building, they would 
     conduct school again.
       I have also had the great good fortune in the last few days 
     of talking to people like you in Chicago, Los Angeles, El 
     Paso, Little Rock and New Haven. And there are so many 
     questions people have. You probably do too.
       In the schools, the children want to know, the 9- and 10-
     year-olds, why do they hate us so much? How did bin Laden get 
     all of these people to commit suicide anyway? If we hit them, 
     won't they retaliate? The kind of things that you can't 
     imagine a 9- or 10-year- old should ever have to think about. 
     And I do my best to give them honest answers.
       The men I talked with often speak with awe and admiration 
     of what happened on the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. 
     We ask each other whether we would have had the guts to take 
     it down too.
       When my oldest friend in the world, Mack McClarty called me 
     and asked me how I was doing, and I asked him how he was 
     doing and whether we would have had the guts to take the 
     plane down if we had been on it, he said, ``I think so and I 
     sure hope so.''
       The mothers I talked to--and an astonishing number of women 
     that Hillary and I know who are mothers of young children, 
     have called me. They just, almost uniformly say, ``Bill, is 
     it going to be all right? Tell me it's going to be all 
     right.''
       Tonight I'd like to sort through those questions with you, 
     and I'd like to make these points.
       First of all, though neither I nor anyone can tell you 
     there will not be another terrorist attack on American soil, 
     it will be all right, if we unite behind the president and 
     our allies to fight terror now, if we spread the benefits and 
     shrink the burdens of the 21st century all across the globe, 
     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 in New York. The terrorists died 
     to kill people, and they died to save them.
       Make no mistake about it, this conflict represents a 
     fundamental struggle that will go on for the next few years 
     to define the soul of the 21st-century world. Mr. bin Laden, 
     the Taliban have one set of answers. America and all the 
     people who have rallied to our side, we have another.
       Here's how, at least I think about this question. Try to 
     imagine yourself on September the 10th. If I had asked you on 
     September the 10th, ``What do you believe is the dominant 
     factor of the 21st-century world?'' what would you have 
     answered?
       If you're an optimist, you might have said, ``The 
     globalization of the economy.'' After all, its lifted more 
     people out of poverty in the last 20 years than have ever 
     been lifted out in all of human history; brought America 22.5 
     million jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years; and 
     brought benefits to people around the world.
       If you're into technology, you might say, ``No, no, it was 
     the explosion of information technology.'' Think about this, 
     when I became president in January of 1993, there were only 
     50 sites on the World Wide Web--50.
       Unbelievable. It was still the private province of research 
     physicists. When I left office in January of 2001, there were 
     350 million. Today, 30 times as much--as many messages are 
     sent by e-mail as by the postal service or what the kids call 
     snail mail.
       If you're interested in politics and society, you might 
     say, ``No, it's the explosion of democracy and diversity 
     within democracies.''
       I was honored to be president when, for the first time in 
     all of human history, more people lived under governments of 
     their own choosing than every before. And America became 
     wildly more diverse. And I might 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, ``No, it is the advances in science that 
     will shape the early 21st century.'' We're going to find out 
     what's in the black holes 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 the hospital. And really quite soon, countries with good 
     health systems will be seeing babies born with life 
     expectancies in excess of 90 years.
       Scientists are working on digital chips to replicate the 
     incredibly sophisticated nerve movements in the spines, 
     raising the specter that we might be able to implant a chip 
     at the base of the spine that will work like a heart 
     pacemaker and enable people with damaged spines confined to 
     wheelchairs to stand up and walk.
       So you might say that will be the dominant thing in this 
     new century.
       On the other hand, if you're not much of an optimist, or if 
     you're what Hillary refers to as the designated worrier in 
     your family, you might mention negative things that you think 
     are the dominant forces of the 21st century.
       You might have said that environmental challenges will 
     dominate the next 50 years and if not addressed they will 
     swamp all these positive developments. Climate change, the 
     water shortage, the deterioration of the oceans, nine of the 
     hottest 11 years recorded since 1400 occurred in the last 
     decade or so. If the Earth warms for the next 50 years at the 
     rate of the last 10, we'll lose 50 feet of Manhattan island, 
     the Florida Everglades I worked so hard to save, the sugar 
     cane fields in Louisiana, 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 New 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 and the 
     northern Hawaiian Islands and the coast there.
       Or you might say, ``No, no, long before global warming gets 
     us, the public health

[[Page 20363]]

     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 today's cases are in Africa, the 
     fastest growing rates are in the former Soviet Union, on 
     Europe's back door. The second fastest growing rate is in the 
     Caribbean on our front door. The third fastest growing rate 
     is in India, the biggest democracy in the world with nearly a 
     billion people. And the Chinese recently announced they have 
     twice as many AIDS cases as had previously been thought, and 
     tragically, only 4 percent of their adults know how the 
     disease is contracted and spread. If that keeps going, it 
     will be the biggest plague since the bubonic plague killed 
     one-fourth of Europe in the 14th century.
       Or you might say, ``President Clinton, you have got it all 
     backwards. The global economy is not the positive 
     development; it's the negative development, because Americans 
     are getting rich, but half of the people in the world are 
     still living on less than $2 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 $2 a day. A billion people are 
     living on less than $1 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 diarrhea every year. 
     That's how--of all of the deaths in the world from wars, from 
     terrorism, from heart attacks, from strokes, from accidents, 
     one in four people die of AIDS, TB, malaria and complications 
     from diarrhea, most of it little kids that never got a clean 
     glass of water because they are poor. And it is projected 
     that in the next 50 years the world's population will 
     increase by 50 percent, almost 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 disposed.
       Or even on September the 10th, if you'd been thinking about 
     it a long time, you might have said, ``No, the thing that 
     could shape the 21st century most is the marriage of 
     terrorism 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 
     that Bosnia, a country of only 6 million, lost 250,000 
     innocents in Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing. Or 
     that Kosovo had 1 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 in 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 the world in poverty and the 
     growth of terrorism rooted in ancient hatreds.
       Here's the real question: What do all things have in 
     common, the positive and the negative? They all are 
     manifestations of a breathtaking increase in global 
     interdependence. And it is very important that we understand 
     this. The reason 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 enormous 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 Caribbean 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 the people are 
     still living on $2 a day or less 10 years from now can we 
     continue to grow? We haven't changed human nature. And 
     therefore, there will always be organized forces of 
     destruction unless we succeed 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 21st century is 
     whether, on balance, it'll 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 into some perspective. In the 
     whole of human history, no terrorist campaign has ever won on 
     its own. Even when coupled with a successful conventional 
     military strategy, terrorism has almost always backfired. In 
     the great crusade that succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, the 
     Christian soldiers burned a synagogue and killed 300 Jews, 
     and proceeded to slaughter every man, woman and child who was 
     a Muslim on the Temple Mount. And I promise you that story is 
     being told today in the Middle East. We are still paying for 
     it, and it was not necessary for the military campaign.
       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 about how General Sherman marched to the sea by burning 
     all of the farms and burning Atlanta. It was, in fact, a 
     brilliant military campaign, and by modern and ancient 
     standards, rather tepid terrorism. He didn't kill innocent 
     women and children. He just burned all of 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 afterward.
       The terrorist 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, and they want us to be 
     afraid of the future--don't get on an airplane, don't put any 
     money in the stock market, don't expand your business, lay 
     people off, the Moslem sitting next to you might have a gun 
     or a knife and they're 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 interrelated, 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 awful 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 '80s when our soldiers were killed by the 
     suicide truck bomb in Lebanon. In my time, they stopped 
     planned attacks on the Holland Tunnel, on airplanes flying 
     from Los Angeles to the Philippines, on the pope. During the 
     millennium celebration alone, a dozen planned terrorist 
     attacks were thwarted, including planned attacks on the 
     northeast and the 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 11th. So 
     we have to make our defenses better. Airline security is 
     being improved. We are also facing the fact that we have to 
     do a much better job of using modern technology to track 
     people when they are in our country. That will be done. And 
     the president in the current campaign against the Taliban and 
     Mr. bin Laden, with the help of our allies, is bringing to 
     bear military forces to support our law enforcement efforts. 
     And I might add, doing it in a way which deserves our 
     commendation, accompanying it with humanitarian aid and 
     making every effort not to do what bin Laden wants us to do, 
     which is to kill as many civilians as he did so he can say 
     we're no better than him. And I applaud the way this campaign 
     has been conducted. Now, so we have to continue to do this.
       But the second thing I want to say is that though nothing 
     can ever justify the killing of innocents and terror tactics, 
     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 to reduce global poverty and to 
     increase economic empowerment through education and other 
     proven strategies.
       We had a huge bipartisan 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 economic 
     development. We should do more of that. We funded 2 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 administration has pledged $300 million, I think, to 
     the Secretary General's Global Health Fund to fight AIDS, TB, 
     malaria and

[[Page 20364]]

     diarrhea-related disease. We should do more of that. We 
     should reduce the pool of potential terrorists by showing 
     people 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 the most fertile recruitment 
     grounds for terrorists in the world occur in countries that 
     are not democracies. Because when people cannot exercise any 
     responsibility for themselves, they are kept in a state of 
     permanent collective immaturity, and it becomes quite easy if 
     they are in 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 military campaign is over.
       But if you look at the Middle East, it's no accident that 
     perhaps the stablest country is not the richest. Jordan is a 
     country that is ripe for trouble. A majority of its people 
     are no longer Jordanians; they are Palestinians. Indeed, the 
     young 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 monarchy as a relevant 
     institution in modern times to give the people of Jordan some 
     greater say over their own lives. So they began to have 
     elections, real elections where real parties could run, 
     including militant Islamic fundamentalists who could get 
     elected to parliament. The problem is, as we all find, after 
     the campaign when you get one of these jobs, you actually 
     have to show up for work. And when you have to 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 years in America.
       The same thing will happen in other countries with people 
     of different views. The king of Jordan can still replace the 
     prime minister. He is still the spokesperson and the leader 
     of the state and the person who charts a course in foreign 
     affairs. He comes to see our president in times like this. 
     But it's an example of the kind of thing that we need more 
     of. Because if people have no outlet for their frustrations 
     at home and never have to take any responsibility 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 and to make the most of it if 
     it comes.
       This is a big issue and will grow larger in the years 
     ahead.
       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 military power was to protect the 
     lives of poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. We lead the world 
     in the debt forgiveness campaign I just mentioned. We stood 
     for a fair and a just peace in the Middle East, which would 
     have given the Palestinians their state, and their equities 
     in their religious sites and a chance to make a genuine 
     economically successful partnership with the Israelis.
       We are not the enemy of the poor of Islam in the Middle 
     East or anywhere else in the world.
       I also think it's 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 in large carried out 
     by people who are angry and scared and still ignorant of the 
     roots and the diversity of Islam, because we're still 
     learning about each other.
       Sikhs have been attacked because they wear turbans and the 
     Taliban does too. An Indian Christian was attacked because he 
     looked like he might have been one of them.
       We're still getting it right here. One the most moving 
     encounters I've had since I started going into New York was 
     outside the armory crisis center when I was talking to all of 
     these victim's families, this huge guy was a head taller than 
     me, was standing there, and he had big tears in his eyes. And 
     I said, ``Have you lost someone?'' He said, ``Not in my 
     family.'' But he said, ``I am an Egyptian Muslim American.'' 
     And he said, ``Believe it or not, I probably regret 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 founders' injunction about making 
     a more perfect union.
       The last thing I want to say is this: This is about more 
     than what we do, it's about who we are, who they are and what 
     the 21st century's going to be about. For between ourselves 
     and the Taliban and Mr. bin Laden, there are radically 
     different views about the nature of truth, the value of life 
     and the content of community. It is at the root of all of 
     this, would not be solved if we had perfect policies in all 
     the areas that I mentioned.
       They believe they have the truth. And if you agree with 
     them, you've got it too. And if you don't--well, you know 
     that.
       We believe, and have believed 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're in a different 
     place than Earth; that we are humans, be definition, 
     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 counts, 
     everybody has a role to play, everybody deserves a chance. We 
     have to learn from each other. They believe there are three 
     categories of people: the people who accept their truth, who 
     are Muslims; the Muslims who don't, who are heretics; and 
     those that are Muslims, who are infidels. And if you are in 
     the latter two categories, well, just to hell with you, even 
     if you are a 6-year-old girl who just wanted to go to work 
     with her mother on September the 11th at the World Trade 
     Center.
       They believe a community is people--made up of people who 
     are all the same, who have the same religion, and the same 
     beliefs and practice the same way, and that those beliefs 
     have to be enforced by rigorous authority so we see on the 
     television the excerpts from that movie, ``Behind the Veil,'' 
     with those Afghan women imprisoned in their burqas--I don't 
     even know how they breathe 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 30 years ago because we have 
     people here from everywhere. We've got people in this room 
     here tonight from everywhere. Now our kind of community has a 
     lot of problems. We still have hate crimes. We still have--
     because we're more open, we're vulnerable to the things that 
     happen that we deplore. But it has created a lot of good, and 
     it's given a lot of people from everywhere a chance to live 
     their dreams.
       Their kind of community has created 4.5 million refugees. 
     So people are voting even there.
       It's very important that you understand that we are up 
     against a worthy adversary: a man of great intelligence, 
     great wealth, great boldness who honestly believes he has the 
     truth with his top aides.
       It's also important that you believe--even though sitting 
     here tonight you agree with me, that you understand this is 
     very hard to do. We all organize the world into categories so 
     we can think and function. We have to. Men, women, boys, 
     girls, adults, children, black, white, Muslim, Christian, 
     Ba'hai. 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 we can come to understand 
     the unity of the human spirit and the human community. But 
     it's 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 Sikhs.
       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 military service to make peace with Israel.
       My friend Yitzak Rabin killed, not by a Palestinian 
     terrorist, but by an angry Israeli who thought he should not 
     reach across the divide to recognize the legitimate 
     aspirations of the Palestinians and try to bring an end to 
     decades of slaughter and insecurity.
       Mandela survived, praise God, but only after giving up 27 
     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 the road to reduce those 
     negative resources and spread the reach of those positive 
     ones so that what we have sought for America we can one day 
     offer to all of the world, and so that our children will see 
     that we met this task in a way that not only helped their 
     lives, but the children like them in every corner of the 
     Earth.
       Thank you, very much.

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