    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [April 5, 1996]
    [Pages 549-553]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma
    April 5, 1996

        Thank you very much. Governor Nigh, Mrs. Nigh, Congressman Istook,
    Mr. Mayor, Mr. Speaker, the other distinguished guests on the platform,
    and to the students and the other members of the University of Central
    Oklahoma community and family, Governor David Walters and Mrs. Walters,
    and to all the people who are here with me today because of the mission
    we are on.
        Let me say it's good to be back here. I heard the students laughing
    when Governor Nigh announced that I was here 8 years ago, and I was
    thinking, most of the students were in grade school the last time I was
    here. [Laughter] Later this year I'll be eligible for my AARP card--
    [laughter]--but I'm still glad to be here.
        As all of you know, and as the Governor said, I came here today to
    Oklahoma to pay my respects nearly a year after the tragedy of the
    bombing, to attend a memorial service for the families of those who were
    victims, for the survivors and their families, and others who were
    Federal employees who worked there, and to help your State officials to
    dedicate the beginning of the child care center which will be rebuilt,
    which is a remarkable accomplishment, and to meet with this scholarship
    committee, which informed me of the results which were just announced to
    you by Governor Nigh.

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        And it is coming at an especially sad but ironically appropriate
    time, just a couple of days after we suffered the loss of our Secretary
    of Commerce and a number of fine Federal employees--some of them very
    young, barely older than some of the students here--a number of fine
    U.S. military personnel, and some of our country's most outstanding
    business leaders in that plane crash in Bosnia.
        I would like to make just two points briefly. I know it's cold and
    you've been waiting a long time, but I ask you to reflect on two things.
    That plane went down in Bosnia full of people who have worked very hard
    to help the American people fulfill their potential. Ron Brown was
    immensely proud of the fact that more than any other Commerce Secretary
    and Commerce Department in our history, they had been instrumental in
    opening new avenues for people to buy American products and American
    services and create jobs for Americans, so that when young people get
    out of college they can get jobs, good jobs, jobs that pay better than
    average, jobs with a good future.
        But these people went to Bosnia with only the most modest
    expectation of any personal gain for themselves. They went there to try
    to use the power of the American economy to help bring opportunity to
    the Bosnians so that peace wouldn't fall apart and instead would take
    hold.
        But the main thing I want to say is that my friend Ron Brown, who
    grew up in Harlem, never forgot where he came from and spent his
    lifetime trying to help other people realize their dreams. When our
    hearts were breaking over what happened in Oklahoma City--it was this
    madness that somebody for some perverted political purpose could take
    everyone else's life away from them who weren't even standing in the
    way, they just happened to show up in the wrong time in the wrong place.
    And so I would like to say two things to you today.
        First of all, all of us need to ask ourselves a year later, what are
    our responsibilities not only to help the children who were tragically
    robbed of their parents in Oklahoma City to fulfill their dreams but to
    provide that opportunity for all people? I've worked very hard to expand
    the quality and availability of college loans and the college
    scholarships for children of modest incomes. I'm still hoping we'll pass
    a balanced budget amendment in our legislation in this Congress that
    will include a tax cut that gives families a deduction for the cost of
    college tuition, because I think it's the best possible tax break we
    could give America, to do that.
        But this is not a political issue. Every American has an interest in
    seeing every other American be able to live out their dreams. And we
    have certain positive responsibilities, just like Ron Brown believed
    that we did, to try to do that, and access to higher education is,
    perhaps, the most important one.
        The second thing I want to ask you about, especially the young
    people, is to think about where do we go from here. And as horrible and
    personal as the bombing of the Federal building was to you, I want you
    to try to step back a minute and put it in a larger context. It was,
    first and foremost, an act of terror. What is terror? Terror is when
    someone, allegedly for some philosophical or political reason, believes
    they have the right to take innocent lives, not people who are fighting
    them in war, not people who are wearing uniforms, not people who are
    staring at them across a battle line but just to take an action that
    will take the lives of people who just happen to be in the wrong place
    at the wrong time.
        And we are seeing that all over the world, and you see it in two
    ways. First, you see homegrown terror, people in your own country that
    are so profoundly alienated they think they have a right to do this.
    You've been reading about the Unabomber in recent days. That's an
    example of that. You remember when the religious fanatics in Japan broke
    open poison gas in the Japanese subway and killed a lot of people and a
    few days later could have killed hundreds more, but miraculously, the
    second attempt was thwarted. That's an example of that.
        And then you have imported terrorism, where people come in from
    other countries and they try to wreck your life to pursue their
    political ambitions. An example of that is the World Trade Center
    bombing. And it's really tough when they're coming from right next door,
    which is what is tearing the heart out of the people in the Middle East
    now. And you remember how recently we saw the people there--innocent--
    not only innocent Israelis, innocent Palestinians, innocent Moroccans,
    little children just blown away because some crackpot believes that it
    is a legitimate way to pursue your political philosophy to kill innocent
    civilians.
        Now what I want to tell you today is--and I want you to think about
    this, especially the

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    young people--the world you're living in and the world we're moving
    toward is going to offer you more opportunities to succeed, if you have
    a good education, than any generation of Americans has ever known. But
    the same forces that offer you those opportunities to succeed offer
    people opportunities to commit terrorist acts. And therefore, we must be
    more vigilant, more active, more determined than ever before.
        Why is that? Well, just think about it. What's the world like now?
    Computer technology can now interface people all over the world. I'm
    trying to get every classroom and every library and every school in
    America connected to the Internet by the end of the decade. I know right
    now there are public schools in America where young junior high school
    students can get on the Internet and do research out of libraries in
    Asia and Australia, all over the world. Well, that also means that
    terrorist networks can get information about how to build bombs and how
    to wreak mischief if you just know how to find the right home page.
        We've got to have open borders in order to move products and
    services around the world, in order for people to travel around the
    world. We have to be able to get around in a hurry. The more open the
    borders are, the more open the information is, the more vulnerable we
    are to things like money laundering and terrorists moving out of
    countries.
        Now, that should not frighten you. The good news is we are reducing
    the traditional threats to your security and your future. Communism has
    failed. The cold war is over. We have agreed to treaties that will
    reduce by two-thirds the number of nuclear weapons that existed when the
    cold war was at its height. And for the first time in the history of
    nuclear weapons, for the last 2 years there's not a single nuclear
    weapon pointed at any American citizen. That is the good news.
        That's the good news. But in an open world of easy information,
    quick technology, and rapid movements, we are all more vulnerable than
    we used to be to terrorism and its interconnected allies, organized
    crime, drug running, and the spread of weapons of destruction. And so I
    spend a lot of my time as your President trying to think about what we
    can do to minimize those dangers.
        We've done a lot to try to fight terrorism. We've done a lot to try
    to fight drug trafficking. We've done a lot to try to fight the money
    laundering that goes along with all this, to try to help other countries
    stand up to organized crime, because nobody is immune from this. You see
    it in all of the places I cited. You see it when those terrible bombs go
    off in London. I saw it in Latin America where we have honest law
    enforcement officials in Colombia trying to help us crack the Colombian
    drug cartels. And the good news is we arrested seven top leaders in the
    last couple of years. The bad news is, 500 Colombians laid their lives
    down trying to break their country of the grip of drug cartels.
        So what we have to do is to ask ourselves, our generation--the
    generation that preceded us won World War II and then won the cold war.
    What we have to do now is to fight back these organized forces of
    destruction so all the opportunities that await you young people will be
    there and so you can pursue them without fear; so that if you're willing
    to work hard and obey the law and make the most of your own lives, you
    will be able to live out your dreams. That is what this is all about.
        The lessons we have to take out of what happened to us at the World
    Trade Center, what happened to us in Oklahoma City, what we were able to
    avoid when we stopped terrorist attacks in the last 2 years on our own
    soil and against our airplanes as they were flying over the oceans,
    those are the things we have to learn.
        Now, what I want to say to you is that, first, you've got to realize
    all these things work together. On the 19th of this month, when you all
    are observing the one-year anniversary, the reason I won't be here is I
    have to go to Russia to a nuclear summit. And part of it is about
    continuing to reduce nuclear weapons. But part of it is making sure that
    every place in the world that has the residue of the nuclear age, this
    nuclear material, make sure it is secure and safe and cannot be stolen,
    because we don't want our homegrown terrorists or our foreign terrorists
    to get their hands on nuclear material that, with just the size of a
    wafer, you could make a bomb 10 times more powerful than the one that
    destroyed your Federal building in Oklahoma City. So I have to go there.
    The United States has to be a part of that. And that's an important
    thing, but we also have to recognize that there are things that we have
    to do here at home.
        Last year I asked people in the other parts of the world to stand
    with the United States

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    because we took a tough stand against the countries that support
    terrorism, against Iran and Iraq and Sudan and Libya. And I get
    frustrated when they don't help. But when those bombs blew up in Israel,
    it sobered a lot of countries up, and in 3 days the President of Egypt
    and I were able to persuade 29 countries to send high-level leaders,
    including heads of state, to Egypt to meet to stand up against
    terrorism. We had Arab countries condemning terrorism in Israel for the
    first time.
        So we've got--we're getting in a position now where the people are
    willing to say we can't let terrorism pay. We can't let terrorism pay.
    We've got to make sure that terrorists pay for what they're doing. We
    have to make sure that's true here and around the world.
        When I was in Israel--and I suppose they have about as much
    experience with terrorism as anybody--I talked to leaders of both
    political parties. And they hardly agree on anything over there; they
    fight just like we do. [Laughter] But you know what? They were both
    agreed on one thing. They said, ``You have got to continue to take the
    lead in the fight against terrorism, and you need to pass that
    legislation that you're trying to pass to crack down on the forces of
    terrorism in the United States and enable us to stand against them when
    they invade our country.''
        It's been almost a year since I was pledged that terrorism bill, and
    it's still not in the shape it needs to be. But let me just tell you
    three things that I think ought to be in it, and there's a big debate
    about it.
        We know what kind of bomb blew up the Federal building. We propose
    that we be able to have markers that go into explosives when people buy
    them. Contractors don't have a thing in the world to fear. People need
    to buy explosives; you can't do a lot of work without them. But if
    explosives are used to kill innocent civilians, we ought to be able to
    find out where they came from and who bought them. That's what I
    believe, and I hope you do, too.
        We ought to have explicit authority that permits the Attorney
    General of the United States to stop terrorist groups like Hamas from
    raising money in America. And if we catch people doing it, we ought to
    be able to throw them out of the country immediately--immediately, not
    after some long, drawn-out process.
        We ought to have the best technology available to our law
    enforcement officials to keep up with these terrorists that move around
    in a hurry, and they're very sophisticated and very hard to catch. And
    we can do that without violating the civil liberties of the American
    people, without undermining the constitutional rights of criminal
    defendants. But I'm telling you, folks, these people are smart. They
    understand computers. They understand information. They understand how
    to hide. They understand how to doctor bank records. They understand how
    to launder money.
        And when it all comes down to it, just think of what would happen if
    Oklahoma City had happened five or six or seven times within a month or
    two. Think what it would have done to the American people. Think what
    would have happened if 3,000 people had been killed at Oklahoma City and
    every American had felt like those people were within 50 miles of them.
    That's what happened in Israel just a few weeks ago. It can paralyze a
    country. It can take its heart out. It can take its confidence away. It
    can make young people believe they have no future.
        Now, I am very optimistic about America's future, and I am proud of
    the work that our law enforcement officials have done in catching these
    people. And I am proud of the fact that we have caught and deported more
    terrorists in the last 3 years than at any time in our history put
    together. I am proud of that.
        I am not saying these things to frighten any Americans. I am just
    telling you I have been around the world representing you; I've talked
    to people all over the world. I do not believe--if we can do our job and
    if we had just a little bit of luck--I do not believe that you will have
    to worry about a nuclear weapon wiping out a whole American community or
    killing lots of Americans in the way that our parents worried about us
    when I was growing up. But I do not believe you can fulfill your dreams
    and be totally free until we have taken the strongest possible stand
    against terrorism, organized crime, drug running, and weapon sales. And
    they are all related.
        So I ask you, I ask you because you will have more weight than most
    people--this State has suffered, this State has felt it, this State
    understands the human dimension of people killing innocent people for
    perverted, allegedly political reasons--to say in simple, clear terms,
    this is not a political issue; this is not a partisan issue; this is not
    an ideological issue. This is

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    a matter of America getting ready for the future and guaranteeing our
    young people the opportunities that they deserve to live out their God-
    given dreams and destiny.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:40 p.m. in the courtyard at the School of
    Education. In his remarks, he referred to George Nigh, president,
    University of Central Oklahoma, and his wife, Donna; Mayor Bob Rudkin of
    Edmond; Glen Johnson, speaker, Oklahoma State House of Representatives;
    and David Walters, former Oklahoma Governor, and his wife, Rhonda.