[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[April 12, 1999]
[Pages 540-546]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at the Seventh Millennium Evening at the White House
April 12, 1999
[The First Lady made brief opening
remarks and introduced Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who then gave the evening's featured lecture entitled
``The Perils of Indifference: Lessons Learned From a Violent Century.'']
The President. Ladies and gentlemen, we have all been moved by one
more profound example of Elie Wiesel's lifetime
of bearing witness.
Before we open the floor for questions, and especially because of
the current events in Kosovo, I would like to ask you to think about
what he has just said in terms of what it means to the United States, in
particular, and to the world in which we would like our children to live
in the new century.
How do we avoid indifference to human suffering? How do we muster
both the wisdom and the strength to know when to act and whether there
are circumstances in which we should not? Why are we in Kosovo?
The history of our country for quite a long while had been dominated
by a principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations.
Indeed, for most of our history we have worn that principle as a badge
of honor, for our Founders knew intervention as a fundamentally
destructive force. George Washington warned us against those
``entangling alliances.''
The 20th century, with its two World Wars, the cold war, Korea,
Vietnam, Desert Storm, Panama, Lebanon, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia,
Kosovo, it changed all that. For good or ill, it changed all that. Our
steadily increasing involvement in the rest of the world, not for
territorial gain but for peace and freedom and security, is a fact of
recent history.
In the cold war, it might be argued that on occasion we made a wrong
judgment, because we saw the world through communist and noncommunist
lenses. But no one doubts that we never sought territorial advantage. No
one doubts that when we did get involved, we were doing what at least we
thought was right for humanity.
Now, at the end of the 20th century, it seems to me we face a great
battle of the forces of integration against the forces of
disintegration, of globalism versus tribalism, of oppression against
empowerment. And this phenomenal explosion of technology might be the
servant of either side or both.
The central irony of our time, it seems to me, is this: Most of us
have this vision of a 21st century world with the triumph of peace and
prosperity and personal freedom; with the respect for the integrity of
ethnic, racial, and religious minorities within a framework of shared
values, shared power, shared plenty; making common cause against disease
and environmental degradation across national lines,
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against terror, organized crime, weapons of mass destruction. This
vision, ironically, is threatened by the oldest demon of human society,
our vulnerability to hatred of the other. In the face of that, we cannot
be indifferent, at home or abroad. That is why we are in Kosovo.
We first have to set an example, as best we can, standing against
hate crimes against racial minorities or gays, standing for respect, for
diversity. Second, we have to act responsibly, recognizing this unique
and, if history is any guide, fleeting position the United States now
enjoys of remarkable military, political, and economic influence. We
have to do what we can to protect the circle of humanity against those
who would divide it by dehumanizing the other. Lord knows we have had
enough of that in this century, and Elie talked about it.
I think it is well to point out that Henry Luce coined the term
``the American Century'' way back in 1941. A lot of terrible things have
happened since then, but a lot of good things have happened as well. And
we should be grateful that, for most of the time since, our Nation has
had both the power and the willingness to stand up against the horrors
of the century, not every time, not every place, not even always with
success, but we've done enough good to say that America has made a
positive difference.
From our successes and from our failures, we know there are hard
questions that have to be asked when you move beyond the values and the
principles to the murky circumstances of daily life. We can't, perhaps,
intervene everywhere, but we must always be alive to the possibility of
preventing death and oppression and forging and strengthening
institutions and alliances to make a good outcome more likely.
Elie has said that Kosovo is not the Holocaust but that the
distinction should not deter us from doing what is right. I agree on
both counts. When we see people forced from their homes at gunpoint,
loaded onto train cars, their identity papers confiscated, their very
presence blotted from the historical record, it is only natural that we
would think of the events which Elie has chronicled tonight in his own
life.
We must always remain awake to the warning signs of evil. And now,
we know that it is possible to act before it is too late.
The efforts of Holocaust survivors to make us remember and help us
understand, therefore, have not been in vain. The people who fought
those battles and lived those tragedies, however, will not be around
forever. More than 1,000 World War II veterans pass away every day. But
they can live on in our determination to preserve what they gave us and
to stand against the modern incarnations of the evil they defeated.
Some say--and perhaps there will be some discussion about it
tonight--that evil is an active presence, always seeking new
opportunities to manifest itself. As a boy growing up in my Baptist
church, I heard quite a lot of sermons about that. Other theologians,
like Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, argued that evil was more the absence
of something, a lack of knowledge, a failure of will, a poverty of the
imagination, or a condition of indifference.
None of this answers any of the difficult questions that a Kosovo, a
Bosnia, a Rwanda present. But Kosovo is at the doorstep or the
underbelly of NATO and its wide number of allies. We have military
assets and allies willing to do their part. President
Milosevic clearly has established a
pattern of perfidy, earlier in Bosnia and elsewhere. And so we act.
I would say there are two caveats that we ought to observe. First of
all, any military action, any subsequent peacekeeping force cannot cause
ancient grudges and freshly opened wounds to heal overnight. But we can
make it more likely that people will resolve their differences by force
of argument rather than force of arms and, in so doing, learn to live
together. That is what Romania and Hungary have done recently, with
their differences. It is what many Bosnian Croats, Serbs, and Muslims
are struggling to do every day.
Second, we should not fall victim to the easy tendency to demonize
the Serbian people. They were our allies in World War II; they have
their own legitimate concerns. Any international force going into Kosovo
to maintain the peace must be dedicated also to protecting the Serbian
minority from those who may wish to take their vengeance.
But we cannot be indifferent to the fact that the Serbian
leader has defined destiny as a license
to kill. Destiny, instead, is what people make for themselves, with a
decent respect for the legitimate interests and rights of others.
In his first lecture here, the first Millennium Lecture, the
distinguished historian Bernard Bailyn argued
how much we are still shaped by the ideals of our Founding Fathers and
by
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their realism, their deeply practical understanding of human nature,
their understanding of the possibility of evil. They understood
difficult moral judgments. They understood that to be indifferent is to
be numb. They knew, too, that our people would never be immune to those
who seek power by playing on our own hatreds and fears and that we had
more to learn about the true meaning of liberty, equality, and the
pursuit of happiness.
Here in this house, we have tried to advance those ideals with our
initiative against hate crime, the race initiative, AmeriCorps, the
stand against the hatred that brought us Oklahoma City and paramilitary
groups, the efforts to forge peace from Northern Ireland to the Middle
East.
But our challenge now, and the world's, is to harmonize diversity
and integration, to build a richly textured fabric of civilization that
will make the most of God's various gifts, and that will resist those
who would tear that fabric apart by appealing to the dark recesses that
often seem to lurk in even the strongest souls.
To succeed, we must heed the wisdom of our Founders about power and
ambition. We must have the compassion and determination of Abraham
Lincoln to always give birth to new freedom. We must have the vision of
President Roosevelt, who proclaimed four freedoms for all human beings
and invited the United States to defend them at home and around the
world.
Now, we close out this chapter of our history determined not to turn
away from the horrors we leave behind but to act on their lessons with
principle and purpose. If that is what we are, in fact, doing, Kosovo
could be a very good place to begin a new century.
Thank you very much. [Applause] Thank you.
We have hundreds of questions, I know. Ellen, do you want to
describe what we're going to do?
White House Millennium Council Director Ellen Lovell. Well, I think, Mr. President, you have a question for
Mr. Wiesel. And then I'm going to begin the questioning from the room,
and Mrs. Clinton will take the questions from the Internet.
The President. I would like to ask you a
question about what you think the impact of the modern media and sort of
instantaneous news coverage will be. It is obvious to me that we built a
consensus in the United States and throughout Europe for action in
Bosnia in no small measure because of what people saw was going on
there. It is obvious to me that the support in the United States and
Europe for our actions in Kosovo have increased because of what people
see going on.
And I think I worry about two things, and I just would like to hear
your thoughts on it. Number one, is there a
chance that people will become inured to this level of human suffering
by constant exposure to it? And number two, is there a chance that even
though people's interest in humanity can be quickened almost overnight,
that we're so used to having a new story every day that we may not have
the patience to pay the price of time to deal with this and other
challenges? A lot of these things require weeks and months, indeed,
years of effort. And that seems to be inconsistent with, kind of, rapid-
fire new news we are used to seeing.
Mr. Wiesel. Mr. President, usually, in this
room, people ask you questions. [Laughter]
The President. That's why I like this. [Laughter]
Mr. Wiesel. What you said is correct. The
numbness is a danger. I remember during the Vietnam war, the first time
we saw on television, live, the war in Vietnam--usually, of course, the
networks broadcasted during dinner. So we stopped eating. How can you
eat when people kill each other and people die? After 2 weeks, people
went on eating. They were numb. And it's a danger.
But nevertheless, I don't see the alternative. Except I hope that in
the next millennium, the next century, those who are responsible for the
TV programs, for the news programs, will find enough talent, enough
fervor, enough imagination to present the news in such a way that the
news will appeal to all of us day after day. I do not see an
alternative. We must know what is happening.
And today we can know it instantly. If the American people now are
behind you, it is because they see it on television and they see it in
newspapers. They see the images. They see the pictures of children in
the trains, as you said, in the trains. So how can they remain
indifferent? And therefore, I am--the risks are there, but I have faith
that we shall overcome the risks. But we must know.
[At this point, Ms. Lovell and the First Lady
led the question-and-answer portion of the
[[Page 543]]
evening. Ms. Lovell called on Chief Joyce Dugan
of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, who briefly described
atrocities in her people's history and asked Mr. Wiesel how to overcome indifference to suffering, in order to
avoid having to resort to military action. Mr. Wiesel responded that
those who listened to the beauty in another culture's past would not be
indifferent. The First Lady cited Bernard Bailyn's remarks at the first
Millennium Evening, that people too often overlook or ignore painful
segments of history.]
The President. I'd just like to say one thing specifically,
Chief. First of all I'm glad you're here, and
I'm glad you're here for this. I think that Hillary and I have spent
more time on Native American issues and with Native American leaders
than any previous administration, at least that I know anything about.
And with all respect, one of the things that I think is killing us in
this country--still is a big problem--is a phenomenal amount of
ignorance, on the part not just of schoolchildren but of people in very
important positions of decisionmaking, about the real, factual history
of the Native Americans in the United States.
And you can almost find no one who understands the difference in any
one tribe or another. And you can almost find no one who understands
that, yes, a few tribes are wealthy because of gaming, because of the
sovereignty relationship, but also the poorest Americans are still in
Native American communities. And I think this disempowerment, this
stripping of autonomy and self-respect and self-reliance and the ability
to do things that started over a century ago, still in subtle ways
continues today.
And from my perspective, I've been terribly impressed with a lot of
the elected leaders of the tribes all across the country. And I think
that we really have a huge job to do to not have kind of a benign
neglect or not benign, a malign neglect, under the guise of preserving
this sovereignty relationship. And we need to recognize what we did and
what is still there that's a legacy of the past, so that we can give the
children of the Native American tribes all over this country the future
they deserve.
I think it's a huge issue, and I still think ignorance is bearing
down on us something fierce. And I thank you for
being here.
[The question-and-answer portion of the evening continued. Dr. Odette
Nyiramilimo of Rwanda, a Tutsi survivor
of the 1994 genocide, asked how governments and individuals could now
demonstrate that they were not still indifferent to the fate of Rwanda.
Mr. Wiesel responded that nations might be
intervening in Kosovo because they had not prevented the massacre in
Rwanda.]
The President. I think we could have prevented a significant amount
of it. You know, it takes--the thing about the Rwanda massacre that was
so stunning is it was done mostly with very primitive weapons, not
modern mass-killing instruments, and yet it happened in a matter of just
a few weeks, as you know.
And I want to give time for others to ask their questions, but let
me say I have thought about this a great deal, more than you might
imagine. And we went to Kigali when we were in Africa, and we talked to
a number of the survivors, including a woman who woke up to find her
husband and six children all hatcheted to death, hacked to death. And
she, by a miracle, lived and was devoting herself to the work of helping
people like you put your lives back together.
One of the things that made it, I think, more likely that we would
act in Kosovo, and eventually in Bosnia, is that we had a mechanism
through which we could act, where people could join together in a hurry,
like with NATO. And one of the things that we are trying to do is to
work with other African countries now on something called the Africa
Crisis Response Initiative, where we send American soldiers to work with
African countries to develop the ability to work with other militaries
to try to head these kinds of things off and to do it in a hurry.
I can only tell you that I will do my best to make sure that nothing
like this happens again in Africa. I do not think the United States can
take the position that we only care about these sorts of things if they
happen in Europe. I don't feel that way. And I think that we will, next
time, be far more likely to have the means to act in Africa than we had
last time, in a quicker way.
[An Internet questioner asked about the definition of human rights, and
the First Lady pointed out that the
United Nations had adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mr.
Wiesel commented that human rights organizations
had proliferated because people had lost confidence in the ability of
government to ensure those
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rights. He then suggested that the worst violation of human rights was
humiliation, such as by poverty, disease, or injustice.]
The President. Let me just say--there was another part to that
question. The young man asked a very good question. The only thing I
would say is you should get a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. You should read it. You will find that it also says, in addition
to what Mr. Wiesel says, that all people should have certain rights
against government. They should have the right to speak their mind. They
should have the right to dissent. They should have the right to
organize. They should have the right to chart their own course.
And then the last question you ask is a very important one. He said,
``Is human rights--are they different from country to country?'' And the
truth is that to some extent they are, but that's not because people can
use their own cultures or religion as an excuse to repress women and
young girls, for example, the way the Taliban does in Afghanistan. It's
because countries should be free to go beyond the baseline definition if
they choose.
For example, we have an Americans with Disabilities Act, which we
believe is sort of a further manifestation of the basic human rights. So
we don't want--when you say, are they the same in all countries?--no,
countries normally, when they have more wealth or a more advanced
democracy, find new ways to manifest those rights. And to that extent,
they can be different from country to country.
Countries do have different religious and cultural institutions, but
the whole purpose of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was so
that no country could get away with oppressing the basic humanity of any
person on the grounds that they were somehow different from some other
country. That's the most important point to be made. That's why there
needed to be a Universal Declaration.
[The question-and-answer portion of the evening continued. Professor
Azizah al-Hibri, University of Richmond
School of Law, founder of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human
Rights, pointed out that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all preach
love, kindness, and compassion, but that each had been used as a tool of
oppression and suffering. Mr. Wiesel responded
that this was due to fanaticism and that part of the solution had to be
education.]
The President. I would like to just offer a couple of observations,
if I might.
First of all, I think one of the most hopeful signs I have seen to
deal with this whole issue of religious fanaticism in the last few years
is the enormous support of Jews in America and throughout the world for
the Muslim populations of Bosnia and Kosovo. I think it doesn't answer
all the questions of what should be the details of the resolution
between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It doesn't solve all the
problems, but everybody should see that this is a good thing. I think
that the American Jewish community was maybe the most ardent community,
earliest, for the United States stepping forward in Kosovo. And I think
we have to see that as a good thing.
Secondly, I think this whole question of the treatment of women and
children by the Taliban has aroused a vocal opposition among members of
the Muslim community around the world who feel that they can say this
and not be betraying their faith. I think this is a good thing.
Now, I would just like to make two other points, one of which is to
agree with Elie on this one point. I agree on
education, but education for what? There are a lot of geniuses that are
tyrants. What is it that we're going to educate?
I believe that every good Jew, every good Christian, and every good
Muslim, if you believe that love is the central value of the religion,
you have to ask yourself, why is that? The reason is, we are not God; we
might be wrong. Every one of us--I might be wrong about what I've been
advocating here tonight. It's only when you recognize the possibility
that you might be wrong or, to use the language of Saint Paul, that we
see through the glass darkly, that we know only in part, that you can
give the other person some elbow room.
And somehow, one or two central scriptural tenets from Judaism, from
Islam, from the Koran, and from Christianity, need to be put in one
little place and need to be propagated throughout the world--to preach a
little humility, if you please. Otherwise, we'll never get there.
The second point I wanted to make is this: A lot of these people
that are saying this in the name of religion, they're kidding. They know
perfectly well that religion has nothing to do with it. It's about power
and control, and they're manipulating other people. And when it is, if
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it's someone who practices our faith, we've got to have the guts to
stand up and say that. And it's hard, but we have to.
[The First Lady agreed, saying that
the new century offered an opportunity for Jews, Christians, and Muslims
to work together against fanaticism.]
The President. I would like to make one more point which I think is
very important in the dealings between the West and the Islamic
countries, generally, and I will use Iran as an example.
It may be that the Iranian people have been taught to hate or
distrust the United States or the West on the grounds that we are
infidels and outside the faith. And therefore, it is easy for us to be
angry and to respond in kind. I think it is important to recognize,
however, that Iran, because of its enormous geopolitical importance over
time, has been the subject of quite a lot of abuse from various Western
nations. And I think sometimes it's quite important to tell people,
``Look, you have a right to be angry at something my country or my
culture or others that are generally allied with us today did to you 50
or 60 or 100 or 150 years ago. But that is different from saying that I
am outside the faith, and you are God's chosen.''
So sometimes people will listen to you if you tell them, ``You're
right, but your underlying reason is wrong.'' So we have to find some
way to get dialog, and going into total denial when you're in a
conversation with somebody who's been your adversary, in a country like
Iran that is often worried about its independence and its integrity, is
not exactly the way to begin.
So I think while we speak out against religious intolerance, we have
to listen for possible ways we can give people the legitimacy of some of
their fears or some of their angers or some of their historic
grievances, and then say they rest on other grounds; now, can we build a
common future? I think that's very important. Sometimes I think we in
the United States, and Western culture generally, we hate to do that.
But we're going to have to if we want to have an ultimate accommodation.
[The question-and-answer portion of the evening continued. Atiba de
Souza, a University of Maryland student who
emigrated from Trinidad as a child, suggested that in the next few years
the Nation's minorities would become the majority, and asked if and how
a global society could be achieved. Mr. Wiesel emphasized the importance
of education, in schools and through the media.]
The President. I would just make two points, I think. First of all,
I think given the fact that we're living in an age of globalization,
where, whether we like it or not, more and more of our economic and
cultural and other contacts will cross national lines, it is, in fact, a
very good thing that sometime in the next century there will be no
single majority racial group.
But I should also tell you that before we had large numbers of
African-Americans coming, who were not here or direct descendants from
slaves but others coming, like you did, from the Caribbean, and before
we had large numbers of Hispanics, 100 years ago, Irish immigrants to
this country were treated as if they were of a different racial group.
So we've always had these tensions.
But I think if we can learn to live together across our racial and
religious lines, in a way that not just respects but actually celebrates
our diversity, that does it within the framework, as I said, of a common
fabric of shared values and shared opportunity, I think that will be
quite a good thing for the 21st century. I think it will make America
stronger, not weaker. So I look forward to that.
The second thing I want to say is I think that to get there we're
going to have to more broadly find a way to have more economic and
educational balance in the share of wealth, in the share of knowledge,
across all of our racial and ethnic groups. There is no easy way to
achieve that. But I am convinced that--and I see your colleague, Mr.
Silber, out here, who's thought about this a
great deal in his life--I'm convinced that lowering standards for people
who come from poor backgrounds is not the answer.
I think we should raise standards and invest more resources in
helping people achieve them. And then I think we need to provide the
incentives in every neighborhood, in every Native American reservation,
in every rural area, that have made the economy work elsewhere. It will
never be perfectly done, but we can do a much, much better job of it.
And unless we do a much better job educationally and economically, then
we won't have all the benefits from our racial diversity that we could
otherwise enjoy.
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[The question-and-answer portion of the evening continued. Ms.
Lovell then thanked the participants and
invited the President's closing remarks.]
The President. I don't think there's much more to say, except to
thank you again for once again giving us your witness and for the
powerful example of your life. We thank your family for joining us. And
I thank all of you for caring about this.
I believe there's grounds for hope. I think the history of this
country is evidence. I think the civil rights movement is evidence. I
think the life and triumph of Nelson Mandela
is evidence. I think evidence abounds.
What we all have to remember is somehow how to strike the proper
balance of passion and humility. I think our guest tonight has done it
magnificently, and I thank him.
Thank you very much.
Note: The White House Millennium Evening began at 7:37 p.m. in the East
Room at the White House. In his remarks, the President referred to
President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro); John Silber, chancellor, Boston University; and
President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. The transcript released by the
Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks of the First
Lady and Elie Wiesel and the question-and-answer portion of the evening.
The discussion was cybercast on the Internet.