from Paul P..thanks!

Clinton calls terror a U.S. debt to past

Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

<http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011108-470100.htm>http://www.washtimes.com/\
national/20011108-470100.htm
Published 11/8/2001



Bill Clinton, the former president, said yesterday that terror
has existed in America for hundreds of years and the nation is
"paying a price today" for its past of slavery and for looking "the
other way when a significant number of native Americans were
dispossessed and killed."
"Here in the United States, we were founded as a nation that
practiced slavery, and slaves quite frequently were killed even
though they were innocent," said Mr. Clinton in a speech to nearly
1,000 students at Georgetown University's ornate Gaston
Hall.
"This country once looked the other way when a significant
number of native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get
their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as
less than fully human.
"And we are still paying a price today," said Mr. Clinton, who
was invited to address the students by the university's School
of Foreign Service.
Mr. Clinton, wearing a gray suit and orange tie, arrived 45
minutes late for the event. Some students camped out overnight
to obtain tickets. The former president, a member of the Jesuit
university's Class of 1968, opened his 50-minute speech by
thanking a former teacher.
"He never abandoned me over all these years, even though he did
not succeed in convincing me to become a Jesuit," said
Mr. Clinton, drawing laughter and then cheers from the almost
entirely white crowd of students.
Mr. Clinton spoke from notes about the world after September 11.
He sought to dispel fears of terrorism and "this anthrax
business."
"I submit to you that we are now in a struggle for the soul of
the 21st century and the world in which you students will live to
raise your own children and make your own way," he said.
Mr. Clinton said the international terrorism that has only just
reached the United States dates back thousands of years.
"In the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took
Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it and
proceeded to kill every woman and child who was a Muslim on the
Temple Mount. I can tell you that story is still being told
today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it."
Mr. Clinton said America needs to pay more attention to its
enemies and to the way the United States is viewed by the rest
of the world.
"There are a lot of people that see the world differently than
we do. It is quite important that we do more to build the pool of
potential partners in the world and to shrink the pool of potential
terrorists. And that has nothing to do with fighting, but that has
to do with what else we do.
"This is partly a Muslim issue, because there is a war raging
within Islam. We need to reach out and engage the Muslim
world in a debate."
Mr. Clinton referred to stories in the media about some American
citizens cheering the terrorist attacks and suspected
mastermind Osama bin Laden.
"This debate is going on all over America. We've got to stop
pretending this isn't out there," he said.
Addressing matters of globalization, Mr. Clinton pondered the
importance of such issues as technology, poverty,
democracy, diversity, the environment, disease and terrorism.
"Here's how I think you ought to think about it," he said. "We
cannot ignore the fact that we have vulnerability at home
because of our interdependence."
The answer, Mr. Clinton said, is to spread freedom and
democracy, reduce global poverty, forgive billions in debt, improve
health care systems and encourage — even fund — education in
developing countries.
"We ought to pay for these children to go to school — a lot
cheaper than going to war," he said.
Perhaps most important, he said, is democracy.
"It's no accident that most of these terrorists come from non-
democratic countries. If you live in a country where you're
never required to take responsibility for yourself, where you never
even have to ask whether there's something you should be
doing to solve your own problems, then people are kept in kind of a
permanent state of collective immaturity and it becomes
quite easy for them to believe that someone else's success is the
cause of their distress.
"We've got to defeat people who think they can find their
redemption in our destruction. And then we have to be smart
enough to get rid of our arrogant self-righteousness so that we don't
claim for ourselves things we deny for others."
The former president, who left office just 10 months ago after
an eight-year tenure, said the federal government is "woefully"
lacking on several key terrorism-prevention areas.
"We need to strengthen our capacity to chase the money and get
it, and we need some legislation on that," said Mr. Clinton,
coincidentally on the same day President Bush, who has made freezing
terrorist assets a "front" of his war on terrorism,
announced the United States has moved to block the assets of 62
persons and groups associated with two financial networks
linked to bin Laden.
"And one area where we are woefully lacking is the simple use of
modern computer tech to track people that come into this
country," he said.
While he criticized "the governmental capacity" now, he said "we
all must support our current government in whatever
decision they make."
"This is not a perfect society but it is stumbling in the right
direction," he said.
At the end of his speech, Mr. Clinton — who was impeached for
lying under oath about a sexual relationship with a
21-year-old White House intern — said the entire issue revolves
around "the nature of truth."
"This battle fundamentally is about what you think about the
nature of truth," he said, noting that God has imposed on us the
inability to ever know "the whole truth."
He also championed women's rights in Afghanistan, saying the
reason "you see all those sanctimonious guys beating those
women with sticks" is because the country's rulers demand strict
adherence to the rules.
Students crowded around to shake the former president's hand
after his speech. There were no detractors in the crowd,
despite the fact that the university newspaper in September 1998
called on Mr. Clinton, then mired in scandal, to resign.
"The American public," the Hoya said in a 1998 editorial, "has
forgotten that international and domestic terrorism requires a
proactive defense plan. Terrorists must be caught before they strike,
and we must remember that those strikes always come
when our head is turned toward other matters."

Copyright © 2001 News World
Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.


=====
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