Saturday, July 31, 2004
Taking things a bit too far:
"...Bush has a fierce cadre of devoted followers, mainly among Shiites and Kurds who suffered under Saddam Hussein. They are the silent minority.
Abbas (not his real name) is one of them. Every morning as he's leaving the house he pauses by the door. "I put my faith in God," he says, according to Muslim tradition. Then he takes a little picture of George W. Bush out of his wallet, and kisses it.
"And then I put the picture of George W. Bush back in my wallet, so it will be like a prayer," says Abbas, a video store owner.
"I made a vow: that whoever saved me from Saddam, I will kiss him every morning," says Abbas, his craggy face cracking into a grin. "So believe me, I kiss George Bush every morning."
"...Bush has a fierce cadre of devoted followers, mainly among Shiites and Kurds who suffered under Saddam Hussein. They are the silent minority.
Abbas (not his real name) is one of them. Every morning as he's leaving the house he pauses by the door. "I put my faith in God," he says, according to Muslim tradition. Then he takes a little picture of George W. Bush out of his wallet, and kisses it.
"And then I put the picture of George W. Bush back in my wallet, so it will be like a prayer," says Abbas, a video store owner.
"I made a vow: that whoever saved me from Saddam, I will kiss him every morning," says Abbas, his craggy face cracking into a grin. "So believe me, I kiss George Bush every morning."
All Things to All PeopleBy DAVID BROOKS
BOSTON — There were so many military men at the Democratic convention I almost expected John Kerry to mount the stage in full body armor and recite the war speech from "Henry V." As it is, he called for bulking up the military, doubling the size of the Special Forces and crushing the terrorists. He hit Bush from the right, and when he got around to bashing the Saudis, I thought I'd wandered into a big meeting of The Weekly Standard editorial board.
Not only that, Kerry's speech followed an all-hawk medley. Gen. John Shalikashvili called for appreciably increasing the size of the Army. Joe Lieberman called for muscular and idealistic internationalism. Joe Biden said we must "win the death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." Gen. Wesley Clark said we're in "a life or death struggle" against terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.
John Edwards gave a speech that eschewed talk about Halliburton, W.M.D., misleading the country into war - the entire liberal catechism. Instead he talked about defeating "every enemy in this new world" and confronting Syria and Iran so they don't interfere with the emergence of a democratic Iraq.
Around the arena I spotted some of the people most often talked about as senior officials in a Kerry administration: Richard Holbrooke, Biden, Rand Beers and Dick Gephardt. On the international economy side: Roger Altman, Steve Rattner, John Spratt. On Thursday night I saw Mr. Sober and Serious himself, Robert Rubin, sitting next to Teresa. These are tough centrists from the Washington-Wall Street axis who would be heroes in any crisis.
And so I dared to dream. Maybe the Democratic Party is going to recapture the security policy credibility it had during the Truman and Kennedy years. Maybe this display of McCainiac muscular moderation is not just a costume drama, but the real deal. Maybe hope is really on the way!
I should never have gone back and read the speech again. I should never have gone back on Friday morning, in the unforgiving light of day, and re-examined the words Kerry had so forcefully uttered the night before.
What an incoherent disaster. When you actually read for content, you see that the speech skirts almost every tough issue and comes out on both sides of every major concern. The Iraq section is shamefully evasive. He can't even bring himself to use the word "democratic" or to contemplate any future for Iraq, democratic or otherwise. He can't bring himself to say whether the war was a mistake or to lay out even the most meager plan for moving forward. For every gesture in the direction of greater defense spending, there are opposing hints about reducing our commitments and bringing the troops home.
He proves in the speech that he can pronounce the word "alliances," and alliances are important, but alliances for what? You can't base an entire foreign policy on process.
Then I remembered that, of course, the Great Co-opter has to try gauzily to please everyone. He has to play to the 86 percent of the delegates who say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq, as well as the Clintonite foreign policy elites who supported the war. He has to play to the Sharptons as well as the Liebermans.
And it all brings back the memories of Kerry the senator. For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam - mostly in the Senate. It's not true that Kerry is a flaming lefty (he's a genuine budget hawk and he voted for welfare reform), but he was wrong about just about every major foreign policy judgment of the last two decades. He voted against the first gulf war, against many major weapons systems. He fought to reduce the defense budget. He opposed the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980's. He supported the nuclear freeze. His decision to authorize war in Iraq but vote against financing the occupation is the least intellectually coherent position of all possible alternatives.
So now I'm disillusioned. What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there's been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else.
BOSTON — There were so many military men at the Democratic convention I almost expected John Kerry to mount the stage in full body armor and recite the war speech from "Henry V." As it is, he called for bulking up the military, doubling the size of the Special Forces and crushing the terrorists. He hit Bush from the right, and when he got around to bashing the Saudis, I thought I'd wandered into a big meeting of The Weekly Standard editorial board.
Not only that, Kerry's speech followed an all-hawk medley. Gen. John Shalikashvili called for appreciably increasing the size of the Army. Joe Lieberman called for muscular and idealistic internationalism. Joe Biden said we must "win the death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." Gen. Wesley Clark said we're in "a life or death struggle" against terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.
John Edwards gave a speech that eschewed talk about Halliburton, W.M.D., misleading the country into war - the entire liberal catechism. Instead he talked about defeating "every enemy in this new world" and confronting Syria and Iran so they don't interfere with the emergence of a democratic Iraq.
Around the arena I spotted some of the people most often talked about as senior officials in a Kerry administration: Richard Holbrooke, Biden, Rand Beers and Dick Gephardt. On the international economy side: Roger Altman, Steve Rattner, John Spratt. On Thursday night I saw Mr. Sober and Serious himself, Robert Rubin, sitting next to Teresa. These are tough centrists from the Washington-Wall Street axis who would be heroes in any crisis.
And so I dared to dream. Maybe the Democratic Party is going to recapture the security policy credibility it had during the Truman and Kennedy years. Maybe this display of McCainiac muscular moderation is not just a costume drama, but the real deal. Maybe hope is really on the way!
I should never have gone back and read the speech again. I should never have gone back on Friday morning, in the unforgiving light of day, and re-examined the words Kerry had so forcefully uttered the night before.
What an incoherent disaster. When you actually read for content, you see that the speech skirts almost every tough issue and comes out on both sides of every major concern. The Iraq section is shamefully evasive. He can't even bring himself to use the word "democratic" or to contemplate any future for Iraq, democratic or otherwise. He can't bring himself to say whether the war was a mistake or to lay out even the most meager plan for moving forward. For every gesture in the direction of greater defense spending, there are opposing hints about reducing our commitments and bringing the troops home.
He proves in the speech that he can pronounce the word "alliances," and alliances are important, but alliances for what? You can't base an entire foreign policy on process.
Then I remembered that, of course, the Great Co-opter has to try gauzily to please everyone. He has to play to the 86 percent of the delegates who say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq, as well as the Clintonite foreign policy elites who supported the war. He has to play to the Sharptons as well as the Liebermans.
And it all brings back the memories of Kerry the senator. For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam - mostly in the Senate. It's not true that Kerry is a flaming lefty (he's a genuine budget hawk and he voted for welfare reform), but he was wrong about just about every major foreign policy judgment of the last two decades. He voted against the first gulf war, against many major weapons systems. He fought to reduce the defense budget. He opposed the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980's. He supported the nuclear freeze. His decision to authorize war in Iraq but vote against financing the occupation is the least intellectually coherent position of all possible alternatives.
So now I'm disillusioned. What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there's been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else.
Friday, July 30, 2004
If the Dead Could Talk.
They’d teach us a thing or two about war.
The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the Hürtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc, and then juxtapose such visits with the daily pabulum in the International Herald Tribune, CNN, and the European dailies. And after two weeks, I think most would prefer the wisdom of the noble dead to the ignorance of the shameful living.
There are over 10,400 Americans resting in the World War II cemetery at St. Avold in the Lorraine — more dead here than at the Normandy grounds. No sitting American president, I am told, has ever visited the graveyard. One should.
The necropolis of thousands of uniform white crosses and Stars of David leaves the visitor mute — sadly, unlike the experience of visiting many of the World War II museums in Holland and Germany. The inscriptions at American graveyards admonish the visitor to remember sacrifice, courage, and freedom; they assume somebody bad once started a war to hurt the weak, only to fail when somebody better stopped them.
In contrast, the "folly" of war — to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman — is what one gleans at most World War II museums in Europe. The displays, tapes, and guides suggest that a sudden madness once descended equally upon normal-thinking Europeans and Americans at places like Nijmegen and Remagen. "Stupidity," a European visitor at Arnhem lectured me, best explains why thousands of young men killed each other for no good reason over "meaningless" bridges. Perhaps — but I suppose the answer to that also depends on whether in September 1944 you ended up on the German or on the Allied side of Arnhem.
At places like Nejmegen one now reads less about the Holocaust, the invasion of Poland, and the Nazi hijacking of German culture, and much more about the need for eternal peace, along with notes about the necessity to stop racism and oppression.
Europe now really does believe that such evil disappeared spontaneously, without Willies and Joes driving to their flaming deaths in thin-skinned Sherman tanks to stop SS murderers in 70-ton Tigers. But then in a world where George Bush last year was said to be a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein, why should one be surprised that affluent Westerners perhaps feel SS killers led by Sepp Dietrich were as much victims of war as the defenseless Belgian civilians they butchered? It was not always so: The message of Verdun is not just the wastage of a million men, but also the courage of the outmanned and outgunned French turning back and stopping a different — and far worse — vision of Europe's future.
July has been a bad month for our civilization. Islamic terrorists right out of Gibbon's pages on Attila are caught with heads of their victims in their refrigerators in Saudi Arabia — while Britain and the United States squabble over the extradition of an Islamic fascist whose career was dedicated to convincing Muslims in the West to destroy the United States while whining that infidels were occupying the ancient caliphate. In fact, the opposite is true: Detroit is the largest community of expatriate Arabs in the world outside the Middle East. Emigrants flock to gracious hosts in Michigan to live under tolerance and freedom impossible in their own Arab countries.
In response, crazy al Qaeda videos keep airing on their official mouthpiece, al Jazeera, depicting Western interlopers squatting on "Arab lands." Can someone please tell the Arab world that its millions are stampeding to the Christian infidel West, while very few Americans want to go to the "Holy Lands." Saying that Mr. Johnson had no business in Saudi Arabia is like saying that a million Arabs have no business in the American Midwest.
So the genius of bin Ladenism is that to either applause or silent approval it promulgates lies that make Hitler's best perfidies seem mild. And such untruths do seem to galvanize an Arab world that is increasingly guilty of an inability to sort truth from fiction. The receptive Arab Street lives in a perpetual world of asymmetrical thinking — nursing fantasies, inventing false grievances, and above all demanding from the West what it would never offer to others. But, after all, the Middle East once was furious at Baghdad Bob not because he lied daily but because his lies were proven ludicrous and then humiliating on the world stage by the U.S. military.
So for the record: More Arabs go to the West than Westerners go eastward. Most U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia; billions of American dollars flow to Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. We have even given billions to that wretched Arafat kleptocracy and saved Muslims from Kuwait to Bosnia. U.S. jets, not deranged riff-raff from Afghanistan, stopped Milosevic. There is no legitimate complaint of the Arab world against the United States — any more than Hitler had a right to Czechoslovakia or the Japanese to Manchuria. Just because the Japanese whined that the cutting-off of U.S. petroleum forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor didn't make it true.
Those who follow bin Laden may be poor and confused; so were many of the Hitlerjugend who murdered their way into Normandy. But like the Hitler Youth, for the killers of the mujahideen all efforts at compromise and mutual understanding are the mere parlor games of the academic. We do not need to educate the Arab world that we are better than bin Laden any more than we had to beg Arab immigrants to try out new lives in an 'unknown' United States. They know what we are about, they know...
At this point the American message of religious tolerance, equality of women, democracy, and secularism is too well known — and it is no more welcome to Islamicists than the idea of tolerating Jews was to an SS Panzer division. Yet, like Hitler's young minions, the masked men in bathrobes and machetes have not yet learned to fear the power of Western democracy that could, if it so wished — as the 10,000 resting at St. Avold have so proved — put a stop to their cowardly murdering rather quickly and thus end the Arab tolerance of these beheading fanatics.
Meanwhile, the U.N. scolds Israel about its fence to keep out suicide murderers to the applause of the European and Arab worlds. Yet both sit mostly powerless while Arabs in turn systematically mass murder black Africans in the Sudan. Can we at least drop the falsity: In the new global CNN media circus, an Arab must kill 1,000 innocents deliberately to warrant the condemnation that the world allots to a Jew who kills one Arab inadvertently.
Back at home, we are told that the 9/11 Commission is to be praised for its pedestrian conclusions that we cannot afford more Taliban-like rogue regimes and thus must provide a message to match our bullets. How brilliant. But while the commission members are basking in unearned praise — remember the grandstanding of Messrs. Ben Veniste and Kerrey to the cheap applause of the gallery — would they please also tell us what to do about real problems, such as an Iran that is building a bomb, harbored many of the 9/11 terrorists, and is the natural depot of al Qaeda planners from Saudi Arabia? Preaching that we must avoid another terrorist badlands is easy; warning that we cannot any longer tolerate a fascistic Iran, well that is another thing altogether. That raises nasty, hurtful ideas like deterrence, collective action, and, yes, that evil notion of preemption.
Worse still, the commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?
For rare honesty in a dishonest age, I would prefer to return to the wisdom of those inscriptions on granite in our military resting places abroad than listen to the new global nonsense, which is as intellectually dishonest as it is dangerous in conveying the lie that ignorance, rather than evil, causes war — or that wars break out over craziness rather than the murderous intent of an aggressive party. I don't think those asleep at St. Avold would like to hear that we fought the German Nazis and Japanese fascists the "wrong way" by relying too much on the Third and Seventh Armies, and too little on education, mutual understanding, and "getting the message out."
Once, the Belgians in places like Wiltz and St. Vieth were not complaining about Americans "exporting democracy" — when Panzers were stopped in their countryside from renewing their murderous work. They did not believe that America needed quickly to join the League of Nations instead, or that the next election in Germany would bring them a better reprieve.
And the tens of thousands sleeping under their white marble crosses in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg from the Meuse-Argonne to Hamm would not agree that had we only been more reasonable and less bellicose we would have been more popular and liked. You see, they would not concede that millions followed Hitler because it was America's fault in not offering the German people an alternative to barbarism. In fact, they didn't much care why Germany hated America, only how to defeat it and then — but only then — to guide it on a new path away from its savage past.
Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.
Sleep in peace, you ten thousand of St. Avold, and let us pray that we, the smug beneficiaries of your ultimate sacrifice, may still wake up from our own slumber.
They’d teach us a thing or two about war.
The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the Hürtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc, and then juxtapose such visits with the daily pabulum in the International Herald Tribune, CNN, and the European dailies. And after two weeks, I think most would prefer the wisdom of the noble dead to the ignorance of the shameful living.
There are over 10,400 Americans resting in the World War II cemetery at St. Avold in the Lorraine — more dead here than at the Normandy grounds. No sitting American president, I am told, has ever visited the graveyard. One should.
The necropolis of thousands of uniform white crosses and Stars of David leaves the visitor mute — sadly, unlike the experience of visiting many of the World War II museums in Holland and Germany. The inscriptions at American graveyards admonish the visitor to remember sacrifice, courage, and freedom; they assume somebody bad once started a war to hurt the weak, only to fail when somebody better stopped them.
In contrast, the "folly" of war — to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman — is what one gleans at most World War II museums in Europe. The displays, tapes, and guides suggest that a sudden madness once descended equally upon normal-thinking Europeans and Americans at places like Nijmegen and Remagen. "Stupidity," a European visitor at Arnhem lectured me, best explains why thousands of young men killed each other for no good reason over "meaningless" bridges. Perhaps — but I suppose the answer to that also depends on whether in September 1944 you ended up on the German or on the Allied side of Arnhem.
At places like Nejmegen one now reads less about the Holocaust, the invasion of Poland, and the Nazi hijacking of German culture, and much more about the need for eternal peace, along with notes about the necessity to stop racism and oppression.
Europe now really does believe that such evil disappeared spontaneously, without Willies and Joes driving to their flaming deaths in thin-skinned Sherman tanks to stop SS murderers in 70-ton Tigers. But then in a world where George Bush last year was said to be a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein, why should one be surprised that affluent Westerners perhaps feel SS killers led by Sepp Dietrich were as much victims of war as the defenseless Belgian civilians they butchered? It was not always so: The message of Verdun is not just the wastage of a million men, but also the courage of the outmanned and outgunned French turning back and stopping a different — and far worse — vision of Europe's future.
July has been a bad month for our civilization. Islamic terrorists right out of Gibbon's pages on Attila are caught with heads of their victims in their refrigerators in Saudi Arabia — while Britain and the United States squabble over the extradition of an Islamic fascist whose career was dedicated to convincing Muslims in the West to destroy the United States while whining that infidels were occupying the ancient caliphate. In fact, the opposite is true: Detroit is the largest community of expatriate Arabs in the world outside the Middle East. Emigrants flock to gracious hosts in Michigan to live under tolerance and freedom impossible in their own Arab countries.
In response, crazy al Qaeda videos keep airing on their official mouthpiece, al Jazeera, depicting Western interlopers squatting on "Arab lands." Can someone please tell the Arab world that its millions are stampeding to the Christian infidel West, while very few Americans want to go to the "Holy Lands." Saying that Mr. Johnson had no business in Saudi Arabia is like saying that a million Arabs have no business in the American Midwest.
So the genius of bin Ladenism is that to either applause or silent approval it promulgates lies that make Hitler's best perfidies seem mild. And such untruths do seem to galvanize an Arab world that is increasingly guilty of an inability to sort truth from fiction. The receptive Arab Street lives in a perpetual world of asymmetrical thinking — nursing fantasies, inventing false grievances, and above all demanding from the West what it would never offer to others. But, after all, the Middle East once was furious at Baghdad Bob not because he lied daily but because his lies were proven ludicrous and then humiliating on the world stage by the U.S. military.
So for the record: More Arabs go to the West than Westerners go eastward. Most U.S. troops are leaving Saudi Arabia; billions of American dollars flow to Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. We have even given billions to that wretched Arafat kleptocracy and saved Muslims from Kuwait to Bosnia. U.S. jets, not deranged riff-raff from Afghanistan, stopped Milosevic. There is no legitimate complaint of the Arab world against the United States — any more than Hitler had a right to Czechoslovakia or the Japanese to Manchuria. Just because the Japanese whined that the cutting-off of U.S. petroleum forced them to bomb Pearl Harbor didn't make it true.
Those who follow bin Laden may be poor and confused; so were many of the Hitlerjugend who murdered their way into Normandy. But like the Hitler Youth, for the killers of the mujahideen all efforts at compromise and mutual understanding are the mere parlor games of the academic. We do not need to educate the Arab world that we are better than bin Laden any more than we had to beg Arab immigrants to try out new lives in an 'unknown' United States. They know what we are about, they know...
At this point the American message of religious tolerance, equality of women, democracy, and secularism is too well known — and it is no more welcome to Islamicists than the idea of tolerating Jews was to an SS Panzer division. Yet, like Hitler's young minions, the masked men in bathrobes and machetes have not yet learned to fear the power of Western democracy that could, if it so wished — as the 10,000 resting at St. Avold have so proved — put a stop to their cowardly murdering rather quickly and thus end the Arab tolerance of these beheading fanatics.
Meanwhile, the U.N. scolds Israel about its fence to keep out suicide murderers to the applause of the European and Arab worlds. Yet both sit mostly powerless while Arabs in turn systematically mass murder black Africans in the Sudan. Can we at least drop the falsity: In the new global CNN media circus, an Arab must kill 1,000 innocents deliberately to warrant the condemnation that the world allots to a Jew who kills one Arab inadvertently.
Back at home, we are told that the 9/11 Commission is to be praised for its pedestrian conclusions that we cannot afford more Taliban-like rogue regimes and thus must provide a message to match our bullets. How brilliant. But while the commission members are basking in unearned praise — remember the grandstanding of Messrs. Ben Veniste and Kerrey to the cheap applause of the gallery — would they please also tell us what to do about real problems, such as an Iran that is building a bomb, harbored many of the 9/11 terrorists, and is the natural depot of al Qaeda planners from Saudi Arabia? Preaching that we must avoid another terrorist badlands is easy; warning that we cannot any longer tolerate a fascistic Iran, well that is another thing altogether. That raises nasty, hurtful ideas like deterrence, collective action, and, yes, that evil notion of preemption.
Worse still, the commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?
For rare honesty in a dishonest age, I would prefer to return to the wisdom of those inscriptions on granite in our military resting places abroad than listen to the new global nonsense, which is as intellectually dishonest as it is dangerous in conveying the lie that ignorance, rather than evil, causes war — or that wars break out over craziness rather than the murderous intent of an aggressive party. I don't think those asleep at St. Avold would like to hear that we fought the German Nazis and Japanese fascists the "wrong way" by relying too much on the Third and Seventh Armies, and too little on education, mutual understanding, and "getting the message out."
Once, the Belgians in places like Wiltz and St. Vieth were not complaining about Americans "exporting democracy" — when Panzers were stopped in their countryside from renewing their murderous work. They did not believe that America needed quickly to join the League of Nations instead, or that the next election in Germany would bring them a better reprieve.
And the tens of thousands sleeping under their white marble crosses in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg from the Meuse-Argonne to Hamm would not agree that had we only been more reasonable and less bellicose we would have been more popular and liked. You see, they would not concede that millions followed Hitler because it was America's fault in not offering the German people an alternative to barbarism. In fact, they didn't much care why Germany hated America, only how to defeat it and then — but only then — to guide it on a new path away from its savage past.
Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.
Sleep in peace, you ten thousand of St. Avold, and let us pray that we, the smug beneficiaries of your ultimate sacrifice, may still wake up from our own slumber.
'We Have It in Our Power to Change the World Again'
Following is Senator John Kerry's speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination last night in Boston, as recorded by The New York Times:
I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.
We are here tonight because we love our country. We're proud of what America is and what it can become.
My fellow Americans, we're here tonight united in one purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.
A great American novelist wrote that you can't go home again. He could not have imagined this evening. Tonight, I am home. Home where my public life began and those who made it possible live. Home where our nation's history was written in blood, idealism and hope. Home where my parents showed me the values of family, faith and country. Thank you. Thank you, all of you, for a welcome home I will never forget.
I wish my parents could share this moment. They went to their rest in the last few years. But their example, their inspiration, their gift of open eyes, and open mind, and endless heart, and world that doesn't have an end are bigger and more lasting than any words.
I was born, as some of you saw in the film, in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Colorado, when my dad was a pilot in World War II. Now, I'm not one to read into things, but guess which wing of the hospital the maternity ward was in? I'm not kidding. I was born in the West Wing.
My mother was the rock of our family as so many mothers are. She stayed up late to help me with my homework. She sat by my bed when I was sick. She answered the questions of a child who, like all children, found the world full of wonders and mysteries.
She was my den mother when I was a Cub Scout and she was so proud of her 50-year pin as a Girl Scout leader. She gave me her passion for the environment. She taught me to see trees as the cathedrals of nature. And by the power of her example, she showed me that we can and must complete the march towards full equality for all women in the United States of America.
My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt, my first bicycle. He also taught me that we are here for something bigger than ourselves. He lived out the responsibilities and sacrifices of the greatest generation to whom we owe so much.
And when I was a young man, he was in the State Department, stationed in Berlin when it and the world were divided between democracy and communism. I have unforgettable memories of being a kid mesmerized by the British, French and American troops, each of them guarding their own part of the city - and Russians standing guard on that stark line separating East from West. On one occasion, I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin. And when I proudly told my dad, he promptly grounded me.
But what I learned has stayed with me for a lifetime. I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people towards the United States for all that we had done. I felt goose bumps as I got off a military train and I heard the Army band strike up "Stars and Stripes Forever." I learned what it meant to be America at our best. I learned the pride of our freedom. And I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America.
Mine were "greatest generation" parents. And as I thank them, we all join together to thank a whole generation for making America strong, for winning World War II, winning the cold war, and for the great gift of service which brought America 50 years of peace and prosperity.
My parents inspired me to serve. And when I was in high school, a junior, John Kennedy called my generation to service. It was the beginning of a great journey - a time to march for civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, for peace. We believed we could change the world. And you know what? We did.
But we're not finished. The journey isn't complete. The march isn't over. The promise isn't perfected. Tonight, we're setting out again. And together, we're going to write the next great chapter of America's story.
We have it in our power to change the world. But only if we're true to our ideals - and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. As president, that is my first pledge to you tonight. As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.
I ask you to judge me by my record. As a young prosecutor, I fought for victim's rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put 100,000 police officers on the streets of America.
And then I reached out across the aisle with John McCain to work to find the truth about our P.O.W.'s and missing in action and to finally make peace in Vietnam.
I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the advice of the military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.
My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime. The stakes are high. We are a nation at war - a global war on terror against an enemy unlike we've ever known before. And here at home, wages are falling, health care costs are rising and our great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends, two jobs, three jobs - and they're still not getting ahead.
We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They say this is the best economy that we've ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can't do better.
We can do better. We can do better and we will. We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We're the can-do people. And let's not forget what we did in the 1990's. We balanced the budget. We paid down the debt. We created 23 million new jobs. We lifted millions out of poverty and we lifted the standard of living for the middle class. We just need to believe in ourselves and we can do it again.
So tonight, in the city where America's freedom began - only a few blocks from where the sons and daughters of liberty gave birth to our nation - here tonight, on behalf of a new birth of freedom, on behalf of the middle class who deserve a champion and those struggling to join it who deserve a fair shot, for the brave men and women in uniform who risk their lives and for their families who pray for their return, for all those who believe that our best days are ahead of us, with great faith in the American people, I accept your nomination for president of the United States.
I am proud that at my side will be a running mate whose life is the story of the American dream and who's worked every day to make that dream real for all Americans, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and his wife Elizabeth and their family. Thank you. This son of a millworker is ready to lead and next January, Americans will be proud to have a fighter for the middle class to succeed Dick Cheney as vice president of the United States.
And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know. She's down to earth, nurturing, courageous, wise and smart. She speaks her mind and she speaks the truth, and I love her for that, too. And that's why America will embrace her as the next first lady of the United States.
For Teresa and me, no matter what the future holds or the past has given us, nothing will ever mean as much as our children, as you could sense listening to them. We love them not just for who they are and what they've become, but for being themselves, making us laugh, holding our feet to the fire and never letting me get away with anything. Thank you, Andre, Alex, Chris, Vanessa and John.
And in this journey, I am accompanied by an extraordinary band of brothers led by that American hero, a patriot called Max Cleland. Our band of brothers doesn't march because of who we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers. We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra. We may be a little older, we may be a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country.
And standing with us in that fight are those who shared with me the long season of the primary campaign: Carol Moseley Braun, Gen. Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Al Sharpton. To all of you, I say thank you for teaching me and testing me, but mostly, we say thank you for standing up for our country and for giving us the unity to move America forward.
My fellow Americans, the world tonight is very different from the world of four years ago. But I believe the American people are more than equal to the challenge. Remember the hours after Sept. 11, when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran up stairs and risked their lives, so that others might live. When rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon. When the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's capital. When flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
I am proud that after Sept. 11 all our people rallied to President Bush's call for unity to meet the danger. There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. There were only Americans. And how we wish it had stayed that way.
Now I know that there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities, and I do, because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so.
As president, I will ask the hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation.
I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're just not sure that that's true.
As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values against a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson number one, this is the only justification for going to war.
And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.
I know what we have to do in Iraq. I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
Here is the reality: That won't happen until we have a president who restores America's respect and leadership so we don't have to go it alone in the world.
And we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us.
I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response. I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops - not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct antiterrorist operations. And we will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of the National Guard and reservists.
To all who serve in our armed forces today I say help is on the way.
As president I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal - our economic as well as our military might; our principles as well as our firepower.
In these dangerous days, there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals.
We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to, not just feared.
We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation, to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.
We need a strong military. And we need to lead strong alliances. And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose and we will win. The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.
And the front lines of this battle are not just far away, they're right here on our shores. They're at our airports and potentially in any city or town. Today our national security begins with homeland security. The 9/11 Commission has given us a path to follow, endorsed by Democrats, Republicans and the 9/11 families. As president, I will not evade or equivocate, I will immediately implement all the recommendations of that commission. We shouldn't be letting 95 percent of our container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.
And tonight we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes to the truth and their ears, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim our democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism, it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The Stars and Stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of those people who are here tonight and all across the country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. And it was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men that I served with and friends I grew up with. For us that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good.
That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any party. It belongs to all the American people.
My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values. In the end it's not just policies and programs that matter. The president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle.
For four years we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Values are not just words. Values are what we live by. They're about the causes that we champion and the people that we fight for. And it's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.
You don't value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off the streets so that Enron can get another tax break.
We believe in the family value of caring for our children and protecting the neighborhoods where they walk and they play.
And that is the choice in this election.
You don't value families by denying real prescription-drug coverage to seniors so big drug companies can get another windfall profit.
We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother." As president, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford life-saving medicine.
And that is the choice in this election.
You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service, if you deny veterans health care or if you tell middle-class families to wait for a tax cut so the wealthiest among us can get even more.
We believe in the value of doing what's right for everyone in the American family.
And that is the choice in this election.
We believe that what matters most is not narrow appeals masquerading as values, but the shared values that show the true face of America. Not narrow values that divide us, but the shared values that unite us - family, faith, hard work, opportunity and responsibility for all - so that every child, every adult, every parent, every worker in America has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential. That is the American dream and the American value.
What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker that I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory was literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job? What does it mean when workers I've met have had to train their foreign replacements? America can do better. And tonight we say: Help is on the way.
What does it mean when Mary Ann Knowles, a woman with breast cancer that I met in New Hampshire, had to keep working day after day through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family's health insurance. America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when Deborah Kromins from Philadelphia, Pa., works and she saves all her life and finds out that her pension has disappeared into thin air and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute? America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when 25 percent of our children in Harlem have asthma because of air pollution? We can do better. America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when people are huddled in blankets in the cold, sleeping in Lafayette Park on the doorstep of the White House itself, and the number of families living in poverty has risen by three million in the last four years? America can do better. And help is on the way.
And so we come here tonight to ask: Where is the conscience of our country? I'll tell you where it is. I'll tell you where it is. It's in rural and small-town America; it's in urban neighborhoods and the suburban main streets; it's alive in the people that I've met in every single part of this land. It's bursting in the hearts of Americans who are determined to give our values and our truth back to our country.
We value jobs that actually pay you more than the job that you lost. We value jobs where, when you put in a week's work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, lift up the quality of your life. We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better.
So here is our economic plan to build a stronger America:
First, new incentives to revitalize manufacturing.
Second, investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.
Third, close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas. Instead, we will reward companies that create and keep good paying jobs where they belong, in the good old U.S.A. We value an America that exports products, not jobs. And we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job.
Next, we will trade and we will compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field. Because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's no one in the world that the American worker can't compete against.
And we're going to return to fiscal responsibility because it is the foundation of our economic strength. Our plan will cut the deficit in half in four years by ending tax giveaways that are nothing more than corporate welfare. And will make government live by the rule that every family has to live by: Pay as you go.
And let me tell you what we won't do. We won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as president: I will cut middle-class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in health care, education and job creation.
Our education plan for a stronger America sets high standards and it demands accountability from parents, teachers and schools. It provides for smaller class sizes and it treats teachers like the professionals that they are. And it gives a tax credit to families for each and every year of college.
When I was a prosecutor, I met young kids who were in trouble, abandoned, all of them, by adults. And as president, I am determined that we stop being a nation content to spend $50,000 a year to send a young person to prison for the rest of their life when we could invest $10,000 a year in Head Start, Early Start, Smart Start, a real start to the lives of our children.
And we value health care that's affordable and accessible for all Americans. Since 2000, four million people have lost their health insurance. Millions more are struggling to afford it. You know what's happening. Your premiums, your co-payments, your deductibles have all gone through the roof.
Our health care plan for a stronger America cracks down on the waste and the greed and the abuse in our health care system. And it will save families $1,000 a year on premiums. You'll get to pick your own doctor. And patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats, will make medical decisions. Under our health care plan, Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada.
The story of people struggling for health care is the story of so many Americans. But you know what, it's not the story of senators and members of Congress. Because we give ourselves great health care and you get the bill. Well, I'm here to say tonight, your family's health care is just as important as any politician's in Washington, D.C.
And when I am president, we will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy and the connected and the elected - it is a right for all Americans. And we will make it so.
We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we have only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume?
I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.
And our energy plan for a stronger America, our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future, so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: Go to johnkerry.com.
I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush. In the weeks ahead let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity. Let's respect one another. And let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.
My friends, the high road may be harder but it leads to a better place. And that's why Republicans and Democrats must make this election a contest of big ideas, not small-minded attacks. This is our time to reject the kind of politics calculated to divide race from race, region from region, group from group. Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America - red, white and blue. And when I am president, the government I will lead will enlist people of talent, Republicans as well as Democrats, to find the common ground, so that no one who has something to contribute to our nation will be left on the sidelines.
And let me say it plainly: In that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my religion on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.
And whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.
These aren't Democratic values. These aren't Republican values. They're American values. We believe in them. They're who we are. And if we honor them, if we believe in ourselves, we can build an America that is stronger at home and respected in the world.
So much promise stretches before us. Americans have always reached for the impossible, looked to the next horizon and asked: What if?
Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked, what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever. A young president asked, what if we could go to the moon in 10 years? And now we're exploring the stars and the solar system themselves. A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a chip the size of a fingernail? We did that and that too changed the world.
And now it's our time to ask: What if?
What if we find a breakthrough to Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's and AIDS? What if we have a president who believes in science so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem-cell research and treat illness for millions of lives?
What if we do what adults should do and make sure that all of our children are safe in the afternoons after school? What if we have a leadership that's as good as the American dream, so that bigotry and hatred never again steal the hope or future of any American?
I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta with Americans, you saw them, who come from places as different as Iowa and Oregon, Arkansas, Florida, California. No one cared where we went to school. No one cared about our race or our backgrounds. We were literally all in the same boat. We looked out, one for the other. And we still do.
That is the kind of America that I will lead as president, an America where we are all in the same boat.
Never has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves. I will work my heart out. But my fellow citizens, the outcome is in your hands more than mine.
It is time to reach for the next dream. It is time to look to the next horizon. For America, the hope is there, the sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.
Thank you. Goodnight. God bless you and God bless the United States of America.
Following is Senator John Kerry's speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination last night in Boston, as recorded by The New York Times:
I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.
We are here tonight because we love our country. We're proud of what America is and what it can become.
My fellow Americans, we're here tonight united in one purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.
A great American novelist wrote that you can't go home again. He could not have imagined this evening. Tonight, I am home. Home where my public life began and those who made it possible live. Home where our nation's history was written in blood, idealism and hope. Home where my parents showed me the values of family, faith and country. Thank you. Thank you, all of you, for a welcome home I will never forget.
I wish my parents could share this moment. They went to their rest in the last few years. But their example, their inspiration, their gift of open eyes, and open mind, and endless heart, and world that doesn't have an end are bigger and more lasting than any words.
I was born, as some of you saw in the film, in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Colorado, when my dad was a pilot in World War II. Now, I'm not one to read into things, but guess which wing of the hospital the maternity ward was in? I'm not kidding. I was born in the West Wing.
My mother was the rock of our family as so many mothers are. She stayed up late to help me with my homework. She sat by my bed when I was sick. She answered the questions of a child who, like all children, found the world full of wonders and mysteries.
She was my den mother when I was a Cub Scout and she was so proud of her 50-year pin as a Girl Scout leader. She gave me her passion for the environment. She taught me to see trees as the cathedrals of nature. And by the power of her example, she showed me that we can and must complete the march towards full equality for all women in the United States of America.
My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt, my first bicycle. He also taught me that we are here for something bigger than ourselves. He lived out the responsibilities and sacrifices of the greatest generation to whom we owe so much.
And when I was a young man, he was in the State Department, stationed in Berlin when it and the world were divided between democracy and communism. I have unforgettable memories of being a kid mesmerized by the British, French and American troops, each of them guarding their own part of the city - and Russians standing guard on that stark line separating East from West. On one occasion, I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin. And when I proudly told my dad, he promptly grounded me.
But what I learned has stayed with me for a lifetime. I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people towards the United States for all that we had done. I felt goose bumps as I got off a military train and I heard the Army band strike up "Stars and Stripes Forever." I learned what it meant to be America at our best. I learned the pride of our freedom. And I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America.
Mine were "greatest generation" parents. And as I thank them, we all join together to thank a whole generation for making America strong, for winning World War II, winning the cold war, and for the great gift of service which brought America 50 years of peace and prosperity.
My parents inspired me to serve. And when I was in high school, a junior, John Kennedy called my generation to service. It was the beginning of a great journey - a time to march for civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, for peace. We believed we could change the world. And you know what? We did.
But we're not finished. The journey isn't complete. The march isn't over. The promise isn't perfected. Tonight, we're setting out again. And together, we're going to write the next great chapter of America's story.
We have it in our power to change the world. But only if we're true to our ideals - and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. As president, that is my first pledge to you tonight. As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.
I ask you to judge me by my record. As a young prosecutor, I fought for victim's rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put 100,000 police officers on the streets of America.
And then I reached out across the aisle with John McCain to work to find the truth about our P.O.W.'s and missing in action and to finally make peace in Vietnam.
I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the advice of the military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.
My fellow Americans, this is the most important election of our lifetime. The stakes are high. We are a nation at war - a global war on terror against an enemy unlike we've ever known before. And here at home, wages are falling, health care costs are rising and our great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends, two jobs, three jobs - and they're still not getting ahead.
We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best that we can do. They say this is the best economy that we've ever had. And they say anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can't do better.
We can do better. We can do better and we will. We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We're the can-do people. And let's not forget what we did in the 1990's. We balanced the budget. We paid down the debt. We created 23 million new jobs. We lifted millions out of poverty and we lifted the standard of living for the middle class. We just need to believe in ourselves and we can do it again.
So tonight, in the city where America's freedom began - only a few blocks from where the sons and daughters of liberty gave birth to our nation - here tonight, on behalf of a new birth of freedom, on behalf of the middle class who deserve a champion and those struggling to join it who deserve a fair shot, for the brave men and women in uniform who risk their lives and for their families who pray for their return, for all those who believe that our best days are ahead of us, with great faith in the American people, I accept your nomination for president of the United States.
I am proud that at my side will be a running mate whose life is the story of the American dream and who's worked every day to make that dream real for all Americans, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and his wife Elizabeth and their family. Thank you. This son of a millworker is ready to lead and next January, Americans will be proud to have a fighter for the middle class to succeed Dick Cheney as vice president of the United States.
And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know. She's down to earth, nurturing, courageous, wise and smart. She speaks her mind and she speaks the truth, and I love her for that, too. And that's why America will embrace her as the next first lady of the United States.
For Teresa and me, no matter what the future holds or the past has given us, nothing will ever mean as much as our children, as you could sense listening to them. We love them not just for who they are and what they've become, but for being themselves, making us laugh, holding our feet to the fire and never letting me get away with anything. Thank you, Andre, Alex, Chris, Vanessa and John.
And in this journey, I am accompanied by an extraordinary band of brothers led by that American hero, a patriot called Max Cleland. Our band of brothers doesn't march because of who we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers. We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra. We may be a little older, we may be a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country.
And standing with us in that fight are those who shared with me the long season of the primary campaign: Carol Moseley Braun, Gen. Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Al Sharpton. To all of you, I say thank you for teaching me and testing me, but mostly, we say thank you for standing up for our country and for giving us the unity to move America forward.
My fellow Americans, the world tonight is very different from the world of four years ago. But I believe the American people are more than equal to the challenge. Remember the hours after Sept. 11, when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran up stairs and risked their lives, so that others might live. When rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon. When the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's capital. When flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
I am proud that after Sept. 11 all our people rallied to President Bush's call for unity to meet the danger. There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. There were only Americans. And how we wish it had stayed that way.
Now I know that there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities, and I do, because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so.
As president, I will ask the hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation.
I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're just not sure that that's true.
As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values against a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson number one, this is the only justification for going to war.
And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.
I know what we have to do in Iraq. I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
Here is the reality: That won't happen until we have a president who restores America's respect and leadership so we don't have to go it alone in the world.
And we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us.
I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response. I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops - not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct antiterrorist operations. And we will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of the National Guard and reservists.
To all who serve in our armed forces today I say help is on the way.
As president I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal - our economic as well as our military might; our principles as well as our firepower.
In these dangerous days, there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals.
We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to, not just feared.
We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation, to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.
We need a strong military. And we need to lead strong alliances. And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose and we will win. The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.
And the front lines of this battle are not just far away, they're right here on our shores. They're at our airports and potentially in any city or town. Today our national security begins with homeland security. The 9/11 Commission has given us a path to follow, endorsed by Democrats, Republicans and the 9/11 families. As president, I will not evade or equivocate, I will immediately implement all the recommendations of that commission. We shouldn't be letting 95 percent of our container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.
And tonight we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes to the truth and their ears, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim our democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism, it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
You see that flag up there. We call her Old Glory. The Stars and Stripes forever. I fought under that flag, as did so many of those people who are here tonight and all across the country. That flag flew from the gun turret right behind my head. And it was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men that I served with and friends I grew up with. For us that flag is the most powerful symbol of who we are and what we believe in. Our strength. Our diversity. Our love of country. All that makes America both great and good.
That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any party. It belongs to all the American people.
My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values. In the end it's not just policies and programs that matter. The president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle.
For four years we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Values are not just words. Values are what we live by. They're about the causes that we champion and the people that we fight for. And it's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.
You don't value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off the streets so that Enron can get another tax break.
We believe in the family value of caring for our children and protecting the neighborhoods where they walk and they play.
And that is the choice in this election.
You don't value families by denying real prescription-drug coverage to seniors so big drug companies can get another windfall profit.
We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother." As president, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford life-saving medicine.
And that is the choice in this election.
You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service, if you deny veterans health care or if you tell middle-class families to wait for a tax cut so the wealthiest among us can get even more.
We believe in the value of doing what's right for everyone in the American family.
And that is the choice in this election.
We believe that what matters most is not narrow appeals masquerading as values, but the shared values that show the true face of America. Not narrow values that divide us, but the shared values that unite us - family, faith, hard work, opportunity and responsibility for all - so that every child, every adult, every parent, every worker in America has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential. That is the American dream and the American value.
What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker that I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory was literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job? What does it mean when workers I've met have had to train their foreign replacements? America can do better. And tonight we say: Help is on the way.
What does it mean when Mary Ann Knowles, a woman with breast cancer that I met in New Hampshire, had to keep working day after day through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family's health insurance. America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when Deborah Kromins from Philadelphia, Pa., works and she saves all her life and finds out that her pension has disappeared into thin air and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute? America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when 25 percent of our children in Harlem have asthma because of air pollution? We can do better. America can do better. And help is on the way.
What does it mean when people are huddled in blankets in the cold, sleeping in Lafayette Park on the doorstep of the White House itself, and the number of families living in poverty has risen by three million in the last four years? America can do better. And help is on the way.
And so we come here tonight to ask: Where is the conscience of our country? I'll tell you where it is. I'll tell you where it is. It's in rural and small-town America; it's in urban neighborhoods and the suburban main streets; it's alive in the people that I've met in every single part of this land. It's bursting in the hearts of Americans who are determined to give our values and our truth back to our country.
We value jobs that actually pay you more than the job that you lost. We value jobs where, when you put in a week's work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, lift up the quality of your life. We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better.
So here is our economic plan to build a stronger America:
First, new incentives to revitalize manufacturing.
Second, investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.
Third, close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas. Instead, we will reward companies that create and keep good paying jobs where they belong, in the good old U.S.A. We value an America that exports products, not jobs. And we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job.
Next, we will trade and we will compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field. Because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's no one in the world that the American worker can't compete against.
And we're going to return to fiscal responsibility because it is the foundation of our economic strength. Our plan will cut the deficit in half in four years by ending tax giveaways that are nothing more than corporate welfare. And will make government live by the rule that every family has to live by: Pay as you go.
And let me tell you what we won't do. We won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as president: I will cut middle-class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in health care, education and job creation.
Our education plan for a stronger America sets high standards and it demands accountability from parents, teachers and schools. It provides for smaller class sizes and it treats teachers like the professionals that they are. And it gives a tax credit to families for each and every year of college.
When I was a prosecutor, I met young kids who were in trouble, abandoned, all of them, by adults. And as president, I am determined that we stop being a nation content to spend $50,000 a year to send a young person to prison for the rest of their life when we could invest $10,000 a year in Head Start, Early Start, Smart Start, a real start to the lives of our children.
And we value health care that's affordable and accessible for all Americans. Since 2000, four million people have lost their health insurance. Millions more are struggling to afford it. You know what's happening. Your premiums, your co-payments, your deductibles have all gone through the roof.
Our health care plan for a stronger America cracks down on the waste and the greed and the abuse in our health care system. And it will save families $1,000 a year on premiums. You'll get to pick your own doctor. And patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats, will make medical decisions. Under our health care plan, Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada.
The story of people struggling for health care is the story of so many Americans. But you know what, it's not the story of senators and members of Congress. Because we give ourselves great health care and you get the bill. Well, I'm here to say tonight, your family's health care is just as important as any politician's in Washington, D.C.
And when I am president, we will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy and the connected and the elected - it is a right for all Americans. And we will make it so.
We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we have only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume?
I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.
And our energy plan for a stronger America, our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future, so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: Go to johnkerry.com.
I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush. In the weeks ahead let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity. Let's respect one another. And let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.
My friends, the high road may be harder but it leads to a better place. And that's why Republicans and Democrats must make this election a contest of big ideas, not small-minded attacks. This is our time to reject the kind of politics calculated to divide race from race, region from region, group from group. Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America - red, white and blue. And when I am president, the government I will lead will enlist people of talent, Republicans as well as Democrats, to find the common ground, so that no one who has something to contribute to our nation will be left on the sidelines.
And let me say it plainly: In that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my religion on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.
And whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.
These aren't Democratic values. These aren't Republican values. They're American values. We believe in them. They're who we are. And if we honor them, if we believe in ourselves, we can build an America that is stronger at home and respected in the world.
So much promise stretches before us. Americans have always reached for the impossible, looked to the next horizon and asked: What if?
Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked, what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever. A young president asked, what if we could go to the moon in 10 years? And now we're exploring the stars and the solar system themselves. A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a chip the size of a fingernail? We did that and that too changed the world.
And now it's our time to ask: What if?
What if we find a breakthrough to Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's and AIDS? What if we have a president who believes in science so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem-cell research and treat illness for millions of lives?
What if we do what adults should do and make sure that all of our children are safe in the afternoons after school? What if we have a leadership that's as good as the American dream, so that bigotry and hatred never again steal the hope or future of any American?
I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta with Americans, you saw them, who come from places as different as Iowa and Oregon, Arkansas, Florida, California. No one cared where we went to school. No one cared about our race or our backgrounds. We were literally all in the same boat. We looked out, one for the other. And we still do.
That is the kind of America that I will lead as president, an America where we are all in the same boat.
Never has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves. I will work my heart out. But my fellow citizens, the outcome is in your hands more than mine.
It is time to reach for the next dream. It is time to look to the next horizon. For America, the hope is there, the sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.
Thank you. Goodnight. God bless you and God bless the United States of America.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Remarks of Senator John Edwards (As Prepared for Delivery)
2004 Democratic National ConventionWednesday, July 28, 2004
Thank you. Now, you know why Elizabeth is so amazing.
I am a lucky man: to have the love of my life at my side. We have been blessed with four beautiful children: Wade, Cate, Emma Claire, and Jack.
My mother and father, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards are here tonight. You taught me the values that I carry with me in my heart: faith, family, responsibility, and opportunity for everyone. You taught me that there’s dignity and honor in a hard days work. You taught me that you look out for your neighbors, you never look down on anybody, and you treat everyone with respect.
Those are the values John Kerry and I believe in, and nothing makes me prouder than standing with him in this campaign. I am so humbled to be your candidate for Vice President of the United States.
I want to talk about our next president. For those who want to know what kind of leader he’ll be, I want to take you back about thirty years. When John Kerry graduated college, he volunteered for military service. He volunteered to go to Vietnam and to captain a swift boat, one of the most dangerous duties you could have. And as a result he was wounded and honored for his valor.
If you have any question about what he’s made of, you need to spend three minutes with the men who served with him then and stand by him today.
They saw up close what he’s made of. They saw him reach down and pull one of his men from the river and save his life. And in the heat of battle, they saw him decide in an instant to turn his boat around, drive it straight through an enemy position, and chase down the enemy to save his crew.
Decisive. Strong. Aren’t these the traits you want in a Commander in Chief?
We hear a lot of talk about values. Where I come from, you don’t judge someone’s values based on how they use that word in a political ad. You judge their values based upon what they’ve spent their life doing.
So when a man volunteers to serve his country, and puts his life on the line for others—that’s a man who represents real American values.
This is a man who is prepared to keep the American people safe and to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.
John is a man who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong. He wants to serve you—your cause is his cause. And that is why we must and we will elect John Kerry as our next president.
For the last few months, John has been talking about his positive, optimistic vision for the country—talking about his plan to move this country in the right direction.
But we’ve seen relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what’s coming—don’t we—more negative attacks.
Aren’t you sick of it?
They are doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road.
This is whe you come in. Between now and November—you, the American people—you can reject the tired, old, hateful, negative, politics of the past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what’s possible because this is America, where everything is possible.
I am here tonight because I love my country. And I have every reason to love my country because I have grown up in the bright light of America.
I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina. My father worked in a mill all his life, and I will never forget the men and women who worked with him. They had lint in their hair and grease on their faces. They worked hard and tried to put a little something away every week so their kids and their grandkids could have a better life. They are just like the auto workers, office workers, teachers, and shop keepers on Main Streets all across America.
My mother had a number of jobs. Her last job was working at the post office so my parents could have health care. And she owned her own small business—refinishing furniture to help pay for me go to college.
I have had such incredible opportunities in my life, and I was blessed to be the first person in my family to go to college. I worked my way through, and I have had opportunities way beyond what I could have ever imagined.
And the heart of this campaign—your campaign—is to make sure that everyone has those same opportunities that I had growing up—no matter where you live, who your family is, or what the color of your skin is. This is the America we believe in.
I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with families and children against big HMOs and big insurance companies. And as a Senator, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients’ Bill of Rights.
I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John to make America strong again.
And we have so much work to do. Because the truth is, we still live in two different Americas: one for people who have lived the American Dream and don’t have to worry, and another for most Americans who work hard and still struggle to make ends meet.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We can build one America
We can build one America where we no longer have two healthcare systems. One for people who get the best healthcare money can buy and then one for everybody else, rationed out by insurance companies, drug companies, and HMOs—millions of Americans who don’t have any health insurance at all.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We have a plan that will offer everyone the same health care your Senator has. We can give tax breaks to help pay for your health care. And we will sign into law a real Patients’ Bill of Rights so you can make your own health care decisions.
We shouldn't have two public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else.
None of us believe that the quality of a child’s education should be controlled by where they live or the affluence of their community.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can build one public school system that works for all our children. Our plan will reform our schools and raise our standards. We can give our schools the resources they need. We can provide incentives to put quality teachers in the places and the subjects where we need them the most. And we can ensure that three million kids with a safe place to go after school. This is what we can do together.
We shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, their kids and grandkids will be just fine, and then one for most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck.
And you know what I’m saying. You don’t need me to explain it to you, you know—you can’t save any money, can you? Takes every dime you make just to pay your bills, and you know what happens if something goes wrong—a child gets sick, somebody gets laid off, or there’s a financial problem, you go right off the cliff.
And what’s the first thing to go. Your dreams.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can strengthen and lift up your families. Your agenda is our agenda—so let me give you some specifics.
First, we can create good paying jobs in America again. Our plan will stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource your jobs. Instead, we will give tax breaks to American companies that keep jobs here in America. And we will invest in the jobs of the future—in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition.
We will do this because for us a job is about more than a paycheck—it’s about dignity and self respect. Hard work should be valued in this country and we’re going to reward work, not just wealth.
We don’t want people to just get by; we want people to get ahead. So let me give you some specifics about how we’re going to do that.
To help you pay for health care, a tax break and health care reform to lower your premiums up to $1,000. To help you cover the rising costs of child care, a tax credit up to $1,000 to cover those costs so your kids have a safe place to go while you work. And to help your child have the same chance I had and be the first person in your family to go to college, a tax break on up to $4,000 in tuition.
So now you ask how are we going to pay for this? Well, here’s how we’re going to pay for it. Let me be very clear, for 98 percent of Americans, you will keep your tax cut—that’s 98 percent. But we’ll roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, close corporate loopholes, and cut government contractors and wasteful spending. We can move our country forward without passing the bill and the burden on to our children and grandchildren.
We can also do something about 35 million Americans who live in poverty every day. Here's the reason we should not just talk about it, but do something about millions of Americans who still live in poverty, because it is wrong. We have a moral responsibility to lift those families up.
I mean the very idea that in a country of our wealth and our prosperity, we have children going to bed hungry. We have children who don't have the clothes to keep them warm. We have millions of Americans who work full-time every day for minimum wage to support their family and still live in poverty—it’s wrong.
These are men and women who are living up to their part of the bargain: working hard and taking care of their families. Those families are doing their part; it’s time we did ours.
We will do that when John is in the White House. We will raise the minimum wage, finish the job on Welfare Reform, and bring good paying jobs to the places that need them. And we will say no forever to any American working full-time and living in poverty—not in our America, not in our America.
Let me talk about why we need to build one America. I saw up close what having two Americas does to our country.
From the time I was very young, I saw the ugly face of segregation and discrimination. I saw young African-American kids sent upstairs in movie theaters. I saw white only signs on restaurant doors and luncheon counters. I feel such an enormous responsibility when it comes to issues of race and equality and civil rights.
I have heard some discussions and debates about where, and in front of what audiences we should talk about race, equality, and civil rights. Well, I have an answer to that question. Everywhere.
This is not an African-American issue, not a Latino issue, not an Asian-American issue, this is an American issue. It’s about who we are, what our values are, what kind of country we want to live in.
What John and I want—what we all want—is for our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations to grow up in an America that's no longer divided by race.
We must build one America. We must be one America, strong and united for another very important reason—because we are at war.
None of us will ever forget where we were on September 11th. We share the same terrible images: the Towers falling, the Pentagon in flames, and the smoldering field in Pennsylvania. And we share the profound sadness for the nearly three thousand lives lost.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that we have to do more to fight terrorism and protect our country. And we can do that. We are approaching the third anniversary of September 11th, and I can tell you that when we’re in office, it won’t take us three years to get the reforms in our intelligence we need to protect our country. We will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make sure that never happens again, not to our America.
When John is president, we will listen to the wisdom of the September 11th Commission. We will build and lead strong alliances and safeguard and secure weapons of mass destruction. We will strengthen our homeland security and protect our ports, safeguard our chemical plants, and support our firefighters, police officers and EMT’s. We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe.
And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you.
John understands personally about fighting in a war. And he knows what our brave men and women are going through in another war—the war in Iraq.
The human cost and extraordinary heroism of this war, it surrounds us. It surrounds us in our cities and towns. And we will win this war because of the strength and courage of our own people.
Some of our friends and neighbors saw their last images in Baghdad. Some took their last steps outside of Fallujah. And some buttoned their uniform for the final time before they went out to save their unit.
Men and women who used to take care of themselves, they now count on others to see them through the day. They need their mother to tie their shoe. Their husband to brush their hair. And their wife’s arm to help them across the room.
The stars and stripes wave for them. The word hero was made for them. They are the best and the bravest. They will never be left behind. You understand that. And they deserve a president who understands that on the most personal level what they have gone through—what they have given and what they have given up for their country.
To us, the real test of patriotism is how we treat the men and women who put their lives on the line every day to defend our values. And let me tell you, the 26 million veterans in this country won’t have to wonder if they’ll have health care next week or next year—they will have it always because they took care of us and we will take care of them.
But today, our great United States military is stretched thin. More than 140,000 are in Iraq. Nearly 20,000 are serving in Afghanistan. And I visited the men and women there and we’re praying for them as they keep working to give that country hope.
Like all of those brave men and women, John put his life on the line for our country. He knows that when authority is given to the president, much is expected in return. That’s why we will strengthen and modernize our military.
We will double our Special Forces, and invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best trained in the world. This will make our military stronger so we’re able to defeat every enemy in this new world.
But we can’t do this alone. We have to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us. It’s how we won the World Wars and the Cold War and it is how we will build a stable Iraq.
With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq’s neighbors like Syria and Iran, don’t stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq’s economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction. We can do this for the Iraqi people and our soldiers. And we will get this done right.
A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it—a stable Iraq and a real chance for peace and freedom in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel. And John and I will bring the world together to face our most dangerous threat: the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon.
With our credibility restored, we can work with other nations to secure stockpiles of the worlds most dangerous weapons and safeguard this dangerous material. We can finish the job and secure all loose nukes in Russia. And we can close the loophole in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that allows rogue nations access to the tools they need to develop these weapons.
That’s how we can address the new threats we face. That’s how we can keep you safe. That’s how we can restore America’s respect around the world.
And together, we will ensure that the image of America—the image all of us love—America this great shining light, this beacon of freedom, democracy, and human rights that the world looks up to—that that beacon is always lit.
The truth is every child, every family in America will be safer and more secure if you grow up in a world where America is once again looked up to and respected. That's the world we can create together.
Tonight, as we celebrate in this hall, somewhere in America, a mother sits at the kitchen table. She can’t sleep. She’s worried because she can’t pay her bills. She’s working hard to pay the rent and feed her kids. She’s doing everything right, but she still can’t get ahead.
It didn’t use to be that way in her house. Her husband was called up in the Guard and he’s been serving in Iraq for more than a year. She thought he’d be home last month, but now he’s got to stay longer.
She thinks she’s alone. But tonight in this hall and in your homes—you know what? She’s got a lot of friends. We want her to know that we hear her. And it’s time to bring opportunity and an equal chance to her door.
We’re here to make America stronger at home so she can get ahead. And we’re here to make America respected in the world so that we can bring him home and American soldiers don’t have to fight the war in Iraq and the war on terror alone.
So when you return home, you might pass a mother on her way to work the late-shift—you tell her……hope is on the way.
When your brother calls and says that he’s working all the time at the office and still can’t get ahead—you tell him……hope is on the way.
When your parents call and tell you their medical bills are through the roof—you tell them…...hope is on the way.
When your neighbor calls you and says that her daughter has worked hard and wants to go to college—you tell her……hope is on the way.
When you talk to your son or daughter who is serving this country and protecting our freedoms in Iraq—you tell them……hope is on the way.
And when you wake up and sit with your kids at the kitchen table, talking to them about the great possibilities in America, you make sure that they know that John and I believe at our core that tomorrow can be better than today.
Like all of us, I have learned a lot of lessons in my life. Two of the most important are that first, there will always be heartache and struggle—you can’t make it go away. But the other is that people of good and strong will, can make a difference. One lesson is a sad lesson and the other’s inspiring. We are Americans and we choose to be inspired.
We choose hope over despair; possibilities over problems, optimism over cynicism. We choose to do what’s right even when those around us say “You can’t do that.” We choose to be inspired because we know that we can do better—because this is America where everything is still possible.
What we believe—what John Kerry and I believe—is that you should never look down on anybody, that we should lift people up. We don't believe in tearing people apart. We believe in bringing people together. What we believe—what I believe—is that the family you're born into and the color of your skin in our America should never control your destiny.
Join us in this cause. Let’s make America stronger at home and respected in the world. Let’s ensure that once again, in our one America—our one America—tomorrow will always be better than today.
Thank you and God bless you.
2004 Democratic National ConventionWednesday, July 28, 2004
Thank you. Now, you know why Elizabeth is so amazing.
I am a lucky man: to have the love of my life at my side. We have been blessed with four beautiful children: Wade, Cate, Emma Claire, and Jack.
My mother and father, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards are here tonight. You taught me the values that I carry with me in my heart: faith, family, responsibility, and opportunity for everyone. You taught me that there’s dignity and honor in a hard days work. You taught me that you look out for your neighbors, you never look down on anybody, and you treat everyone with respect.
Those are the values John Kerry and I believe in, and nothing makes me prouder than standing with him in this campaign. I am so humbled to be your candidate for Vice President of the United States.
I want to talk about our next president. For those who want to know what kind of leader he’ll be, I want to take you back about thirty years. When John Kerry graduated college, he volunteered for military service. He volunteered to go to Vietnam and to captain a swift boat, one of the most dangerous duties you could have. And as a result he was wounded and honored for his valor.
If you have any question about what he’s made of, you need to spend three minutes with the men who served with him then and stand by him today.
They saw up close what he’s made of. They saw him reach down and pull one of his men from the river and save his life. And in the heat of battle, they saw him decide in an instant to turn his boat around, drive it straight through an enemy position, and chase down the enemy to save his crew.
Decisive. Strong. Aren’t these the traits you want in a Commander in Chief?
We hear a lot of talk about values. Where I come from, you don’t judge someone’s values based on how they use that word in a political ad. You judge their values based upon what they’ve spent their life doing.
So when a man volunteers to serve his country, and puts his life on the line for others—that’s a man who represents real American values.
This is a man who is prepared to keep the American people safe and to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.
John is a man who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong. He wants to serve you—your cause is his cause. And that is why we must and we will elect John Kerry as our next president.
For the last few months, John has been talking about his positive, optimistic vision for the country—talking about his plan to move this country in the right direction.
But we’ve seen relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what’s coming—don’t we—more negative attacks.
Aren’t you sick of it?
They are doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road.
This is whe you come in. Between now and November—you, the American people—you can reject the tired, old, hateful, negative, politics of the past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what’s possible because this is America, where everything is possible.
I am here tonight because I love my country. And I have every reason to love my country because I have grown up in the bright light of America.
I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina. My father worked in a mill all his life, and I will never forget the men and women who worked with him. They had lint in their hair and grease on their faces. They worked hard and tried to put a little something away every week so their kids and their grandkids could have a better life. They are just like the auto workers, office workers, teachers, and shop keepers on Main Streets all across America.
My mother had a number of jobs. Her last job was working at the post office so my parents could have health care. And she owned her own small business—refinishing furniture to help pay for me go to college.
I have had such incredible opportunities in my life, and I was blessed to be the first person in my family to go to college. I worked my way through, and I have had opportunities way beyond what I could have ever imagined.
And the heart of this campaign—your campaign—is to make sure that everyone has those same opportunities that I had growing up—no matter where you live, who your family is, or what the color of your skin is. This is the America we believe in.
I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with families and children against big HMOs and big insurance companies. And as a Senator, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients’ Bill of Rights.
I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John to make America strong again.
And we have so much work to do. Because the truth is, we still live in two different Americas: one for people who have lived the American Dream and don’t have to worry, and another for most Americans who work hard and still struggle to make ends meet.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We can build one America
We can build one America where we no longer have two healthcare systems. One for people who get the best healthcare money can buy and then one for everybody else, rationed out by insurance companies, drug companies, and HMOs—millions of Americans who don’t have any health insurance at all.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We have a plan that will offer everyone the same health care your Senator has. We can give tax breaks to help pay for your health care. And we will sign into law a real Patients’ Bill of Rights so you can make your own health care decisions.
We shouldn't have two public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else.
None of us believe that the quality of a child’s education should be controlled by where they live or the affluence of their community.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can build one public school system that works for all our children. Our plan will reform our schools and raise our standards. We can give our schools the resources they need. We can provide incentives to put quality teachers in the places and the subjects where we need them the most. And we can ensure that three million kids with a safe place to go after school. This is what we can do together.
We shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, their kids and grandkids will be just fine, and then one for most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck.
And you know what I’m saying. You don’t need me to explain it to you, you know—you can’t save any money, can you? Takes every dime you make just to pay your bills, and you know what happens if something goes wrong—a child gets sick, somebody gets laid off, or there’s a financial problem, you go right off the cliff.
And what’s the first thing to go. Your dreams.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can strengthen and lift up your families. Your agenda is our agenda—so let me give you some specifics.
First, we can create good paying jobs in America again. Our plan will stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource your jobs. Instead, we will give tax breaks to American companies that keep jobs here in America. And we will invest in the jobs of the future—in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition.
We will do this because for us a job is about more than a paycheck—it’s about dignity and self respect. Hard work should be valued in this country and we’re going to reward work, not just wealth.
We don’t want people to just get by; we want people to get ahead. So let me give you some specifics about how we’re going to do that.
To help you pay for health care, a tax break and health care reform to lower your premiums up to $1,000. To help you cover the rising costs of child care, a tax credit up to $1,000 to cover those costs so your kids have a safe place to go while you work. And to help your child have the same chance I had and be the first person in your family to go to college, a tax break on up to $4,000 in tuition.
So now you ask how are we going to pay for this? Well, here’s how we’re going to pay for it. Let me be very clear, for 98 percent of Americans, you will keep your tax cut—that’s 98 percent. But we’ll roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, close corporate loopholes, and cut government contractors and wasteful spending. We can move our country forward without passing the bill and the burden on to our children and grandchildren.
We can also do something about 35 million Americans who live in poverty every day. Here's the reason we should not just talk about it, but do something about millions of Americans who still live in poverty, because it is wrong. We have a moral responsibility to lift those families up.
I mean the very idea that in a country of our wealth and our prosperity, we have children going to bed hungry. We have children who don't have the clothes to keep them warm. We have millions of Americans who work full-time every day for minimum wage to support their family and still live in poverty—it’s wrong.
These are men and women who are living up to their part of the bargain: working hard and taking care of their families. Those families are doing their part; it’s time we did ours.
We will do that when John is in the White House. We will raise the minimum wage, finish the job on Welfare Reform, and bring good paying jobs to the places that need them. And we will say no forever to any American working full-time and living in poverty—not in our America, not in our America.
Let me talk about why we need to build one America. I saw up close what having two Americas does to our country.
From the time I was very young, I saw the ugly face of segregation and discrimination. I saw young African-American kids sent upstairs in movie theaters. I saw white only signs on restaurant doors and luncheon counters. I feel such an enormous responsibility when it comes to issues of race and equality and civil rights.
I have heard some discussions and debates about where, and in front of what audiences we should talk about race, equality, and civil rights. Well, I have an answer to that question. Everywhere.
This is not an African-American issue, not a Latino issue, not an Asian-American issue, this is an American issue. It’s about who we are, what our values are, what kind of country we want to live in.
What John and I want—what we all want—is for our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations to grow up in an America that's no longer divided by race.
We must build one America. We must be one America, strong and united for another very important reason—because we are at war.
None of us will ever forget where we were on September 11th. We share the same terrible images: the Towers falling, the Pentagon in flames, and the smoldering field in Pennsylvania. And we share the profound sadness for the nearly three thousand lives lost.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that we have to do more to fight terrorism and protect our country. And we can do that. We are approaching the third anniversary of September 11th, and I can tell you that when we’re in office, it won’t take us three years to get the reforms in our intelligence we need to protect our country. We will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make sure that never happens again, not to our America.
When John is president, we will listen to the wisdom of the September 11th Commission. We will build and lead strong alliances and safeguard and secure weapons of mass destruction. We will strengthen our homeland security and protect our ports, safeguard our chemical plants, and support our firefighters, police officers and EMT’s. We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe.
And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you.
John understands personally about fighting in a war. And he knows what our brave men and women are going through in another war—the war in Iraq.
The human cost and extraordinary heroism of this war, it surrounds us. It surrounds us in our cities and towns. And we will win this war because of the strength and courage of our own people.
Some of our friends and neighbors saw their last images in Baghdad. Some took their last steps outside of Fallujah. And some buttoned their uniform for the final time before they went out to save their unit.
Men and women who used to take care of themselves, they now count on others to see them through the day. They need their mother to tie their shoe. Their husband to brush their hair. And their wife’s arm to help them across the room.
The stars and stripes wave for them. The word hero was made for them. They are the best and the bravest. They will never be left behind. You understand that. And they deserve a president who understands that on the most personal level what they have gone through—what they have given and what they have given up for their country.
To us, the real test of patriotism is how we treat the men and women who put their lives on the line every day to defend our values. And let me tell you, the 26 million veterans in this country won’t have to wonder if they’ll have health care next week or next year—they will have it always because they took care of us and we will take care of them.
But today, our great United States military is stretched thin. More than 140,000 are in Iraq. Nearly 20,000 are serving in Afghanistan. And I visited the men and women there and we’re praying for them as they keep working to give that country hope.
Like all of those brave men and women, John put his life on the line for our country. He knows that when authority is given to the president, much is expected in return. That’s why we will strengthen and modernize our military.
We will double our Special Forces, and invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best trained in the world. This will make our military stronger so we’re able to defeat every enemy in this new world.
But we can’t do this alone. We have to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us. It’s how we won the World Wars and the Cold War and it is how we will build a stable Iraq.
With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq’s neighbors like Syria and Iran, don’t stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq’s economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction. We can do this for the Iraqi people and our soldiers. And we will get this done right.
A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it—a stable Iraq and a real chance for peace and freedom in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel. And John and I will bring the world together to face our most dangerous threat: the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon.
With our credibility restored, we can work with other nations to secure stockpiles of the worlds most dangerous weapons and safeguard this dangerous material. We can finish the job and secure all loose nukes in Russia. And we can close the loophole in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that allows rogue nations access to the tools they need to develop these weapons.
That’s how we can address the new threats we face. That’s how we can keep you safe. That’s how we can restore America’s respect around the world.
And together, we will ensure that the image of America—the image all of us love—America this great shining light, this beacon of freedom, democracy, and human rights that the world looks up to—that that beacon is always lit.
The truth is every child, every family in America will be safer and more secure if you grow up in a world where America is once again looked up to and respected. That's the world we can create together.
Tonight, as we celebrate in this hall, somewhere in America, a mother sits at the kitchen table. She can’t sleep. She’s worried because she can’t pay her bills. She’s working hard to pay the rent and feed her kids. She’s doing everything right, but she still can’t get ahead.
It didn’t use to be that way in her house. Her husband was called up in the Guard and he’s been serving in Iraq for more than a year. She thought he’d be home last month, but now he’s got to stay longer.
She thinks she’s alone. But tonight in this hall and in your homes—you know what? She’s got a lot of friends. We want her to know that we hear her. And it’s time to bring opportunity and an equal chance to her door.
We’re here to make America stronger at home so she can get ahead. And we’re here to make America respected in the world so that we can bring him home and American soldiers don’t have to fight the war in Iraq and the war on terror alone.
So when you return home, you might pass a mother on her way to work the late-shift—you tell her……hope is on the way.
When your brother calls and says that he’s working all the time at the office and still can’t get ahead—you tell him……hope is on the way.
When your parents call and tell you their medical bills are through the roof—you tell them…...hope is on the way.
When your neighbor calls you and says that her daughter has worked hard and wants to go to college—you tell her……hope is on the way.
When you talk to your son or daughter who is serving this country and protecting our freedoms in Iraq—you tell them……hope is on the way.
And when you wake up and sit with your kids at the kitchen table, talking to them about the great possibilities in America, you make sure that they know that John and I believe at our core that tomorrow can be better than today.
Like all of us, I have learned a lot of lessons in my life. Two of the most important are that first, there will always be heartache and struggle—you can’t make it go away. But the other is that people of good and strong will, can make a difference. One lesson is a sad lesson and the other’s inspiring. We are Americans and we choose to be inspired.
We choose hope over despair; possibilities over problems, optimism over cynicism. We choose to do what’s right even when those around us say “You can’t do that.” We choose to be inspired because we know that we can do better—because this is America where everything is still possible.
What we believe—what John Kerry and I believe—is that you should never look down on anybody, that we should lift people up. We don't believe in tearing people apart. We believe in bringing people together. What we believe—what I believe—is that the family you're born into and the color of your skin in our America should never control your destiny.
Join us in this cause. Let’s make America stronger at home and respected in the world. Let’s ensure that once again, in our one America—our one America—tomorrow will always be better than today.
Thank you and God bless you.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
What makes us so different:
Spain Govt Puts 'Social' Back in Socialism
By ED McCULLOUGHThe Associated PressTuesday, July 27, 2004; 5:37 AM
MADRID, Spain - Propelled to power by anger over the country's worst terror attack, Spain's new Socialist government first tackled foreign policy, fulfilling a pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq.
But 100 days later, the Socialists are living up to their name, turning their attention to liberal social change.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's agenda includes support for stem cell research, hiking wages and pensions, creating affordable housing and, perhaps most dramatically, legalizing same-sex marriage.
"What we expect from this government is ... the realization of a dream, the possibility of matrimony between people of the same sex," said Pedro Zerolo, a lawyer who is the first openly gay man elected to Madrid's city council. "We're counting the days."
The Socialists sailed to victory in elections three days after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people. Many Spaniards blamed former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for the attack, saying his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq had left his own country vulnerable to Islamic militants accused of carrying out the attack.
Not surprisingly Zapatero had wide support for his decision to recall 1,300 troops from Iraq and shift foreign policy toward the European Union and away from the United States.
The Socialists' social agenda, however, is not as popular.
Church officials in this predominantly Roman Catholic country of 40 million people are furious.
Members of Parliament "have the moral obligation to express clearly and publicly their disagreement and vote against the projected law" on same-sex marriages, the Spanish bishop's conference fumed last week.
Aznar's conservative Popular Party, still the second-biggest bloc in Parliament, has vowed to fight some Socialist initiatives such as restricting religious instruction in public schools.
Trouble - political gridlock, cultural clashes - dead ahead? Maybe not.
Spain has changed in many ways in not so many decades, from agricultural to industrial, rural to urban, poor to prosperous, religious to secular, parochial to cosmopolitan.
Zapatero, 43, wants his Cabinet, and its policies, to reflect those changes.
"It's not a 'new' Spain. The reality is ... Spain already has changed," said Beatriz Gimeno, head of the state Federation of Gays, Lesbians and Transsexuals. Gimeno plans to marry her partner as soon as the law recognizes their union.
Two-thirds of Spaniards polled recently approved of same-sex marriage, and nearly half thought gays should be allowed to adopt children. The poll released last week by the Center for Sociological Research - a state agency - was based on interviews with 2,479 people and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Zapatero's choices for his Cabinet reflect his progressive beliefs.
Half the Cabinet's 16 members are women, a record for Spain. The deputy prime minister is a woman, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who fills in for Zapatero when he's out of the country.
Maria Emilia Casas Baamonde last month was appointed president of the Constitutional Tribunal, the state's highest authority on constitutional matters - the first time a woman has held that post, and a highly visible demonstration of Zapatero's commitment to women's rights and equality.
The new government already has distinguished itself on domestic issues by following through on promises to raise the minimum wage by 6.6 percent, from about $600 a month from $565.
Labor and Social Affairs Minister Jesus Caldera also aims to increase retirement pensions by at least 26 percent before the next general elections in 2008.
There's ample political and public support for these and other measures, including protection for battered housewives, a significant social problem here.
Clear sailing for the Socialists, however, is by no means guaranteed.
The government is facing pressure for constitutional reform. The Basque country and Catalonia - Spain's industrial, banking and economic heartland, along with Madrid - want more autonomy.
Further terrorism by the Basque separatist group ETA or another strike by Islamic militants can't be ruled out.
There also seems to be a worrisome real estate bubble, and Big Business is leery about giving up short-term job contracts.
But so far, the Socialists seem to be making more friends than enemies.
"If for every problem we have to set up a ministry... well, it's one way of focusing on it," the president of a business association, Claudio Boada, quipped in an interview, referring to the new Housing Ministry.
Soledad Murillo, head of the Women's Institute, credits the 1996-2004 Popular Party government with balancing the budget, creating 5 million jobs and ushering in the euro in January 2002.
But "the former government didn't care much about social aspects," she said. "What's surprising about Zapatero is that he talks about concepts like peace, understanding. That gives me an enormous sense of security, tranquility as a citizen."
Spain Govt Puts 'Social' Back in Socialism
By ED McCULLOUGHThe Associated PressTuesday, July 27, 2004; 5:37 AM
MADRID, Spain - Propelled to power by anger over the country's worst terror attack, Spain's new Socialist government first tackled foreign policy, fulfilling a pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq.
But 100 days later, the Socialists are living up to their name, turning their attention to liberal social change.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's agenda includes support for stem cell research, hiking wages and pensions, creating affordable housing and, perhaps most dramatically, legalizing same-sex marriage.
"What we expect from this government is ... the realization of a dream, the possibility of matrimony between people of the same sex," said Pedro Zerolo, a lawyer who is the first openly gay man elected to Madrid's city council. "We're counting the days."
The Socialists sailed to victory in elections three days after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people. Many Spaniards blamed former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for the attack, saying his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq had left his own country vulnerable to Islamic militants accused of carrying out the attack.
Not surprisingly Zapatero had wide support for his decision to recall 1,300 troops from Iraq and shift foreign policy toward the European Union and away from the United States.
The Socialists' social agenda, however, is not as popular.
Church officials in this predominantly Roman Catholic country of 40 million people are furious.
Members of Parliament "have the moral obligation to express clearly and publicly their disagreement and vote against the projected law" on same-sex marriages, the Spanish bishop's conference fumed last week.
Aznar's conservative Popular Party, still the second-biggest bloc in Parliament, has vowed to fight some Socialist initiatives such as restricting religious instruction in public schools.
Trouble - political gridlock, cultural clashes - dead ahead? Maybe not.
Spain has changed in many ways in not so many decades, from agricultural to industrial, rural to urban, poor to prosperous, religious to secular, parochial to cosmopolitan.
Zapatero, 43, wants his Cabinet, and its policies, to reflect those changes.
"It's not a 'new' Spain. The reality is ... Spain already has changed," said Beatriz Gimeno, head of the state Federation of Gays, Lesbians and Transsexuals. Gimeno plans to marry her partner as soon as the law recognizes their union.
Two-thirds of Spaniards polled recently approved of same-sex marriage, and nearly half thought gays should be allowed to adopt children. The poll released last week by the Center for Sociological Research - a state agency - was based on interviews with 2,479 people and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Zapatero's choices for his Cabinet reflect his progressive beliefs.
Half the Cabinet's 16 members are women, a record for Spain. The deputy prime minister is a woman, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who fills in for Zapatero when he's out of the country.
Maria Emilia Casas Baamonde last month was appointed president of the Constitutional Tribunal, the state's highest authority on constitutional matters - the first time a woman has held that post, and a highly visible demonstration of Zapatero's commitment to women's rights and equality.
The new government already has distinguished itself on domestic issues by following through on promises to raise the minimum wage by 6.6 percent, from about $600 a month from $565.
Labor and Social Affairs Minister Jesus Caldera also aims to increase retirement pensions by at least 26 percent before the next general elections in 2008.
There's ample political and public support for these and other measures, including protection for battered housewives, a significant social problem here.
Clear sailing for the Socialists, however, is by no means guaranteed.
The government is facing pressure for constitutional reform. The Basque country and Catalonia - Spain's industrial, banking and economic heartland, along with Madrid - want more autonomy.
Further terrorism by the Basque separatist group ETA or another strike by Islamic militants can't be ruled out.
There also seems to be a worrisome real estate bubble, and Big Business is leery about giving up short-term job contracts.
But so far, the Socialists seem to be making more friends than enemies.
"If for every problem we have to set up a ministry... well, it's one way of focusing on it," the president of a business association, Claudio Boada, quipped in an interview, referring to the new Housing Ministry.
Soledad Murillo, head of the Women's Institute, credits the 1996-2004 Popular Party government with balancing the budget, creating 5 million jobs and ushering in the euro in January 2002.
But "the former government didn't care much about social aspects," she said. "What's surprising about Zapatero is that he talks about concepts like peace, understanding. That gives me an enormous sense of security, tranquility as a citizen."
Scrutinizing the Saudi ConnectionBy GERALD POSNER
n establishing how the government failed to prevent the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the 9/11 Commission Report is excellent. Its grasp of some details, however, is less than reassuring - particularly details about Saudi Arabia, which it calls, in a gross understatement, "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism."
Perhaps even more startling is the report's conclusion that the panel has "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually" helped to finance Al Qaeda. It does say that unnamed wealthy Saudi sympathizers, and leading Saudi charities, sent money to the terror group. But the report fails to mine any of the widely available reporting and research that establishes the degree to which many of the suspect charities cited by the United States are controlled directly by the Saudi government or some of its ministers.
The report makes no mention, for example, of an October 2002 study by the Council of Foreign Relations that draws opposite conclusions about the role of Saudi charities and how "Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem." The 9/11 panel also misses an opportunity to more fully explore an intelligence coup in 2002, when American agents in Bosnia retrieved computer files of the so-called Golden Chain, a group of Mr. bin Laden's early financial supporters.
Reported to be among the 20 names on this list were a former government minister in Saudi Arabia, three billionaire banking tycoons and several top industrialists. Yet the report neither confirms nor denies this. Nor does it address what, if anything, the Saudis did with the information, or whether the men were ever arrested by Saudi authorities.
These failures are ones of omission, but the questions are of vital significance. Less important, perhaps, but more well known is the story of how many prominent Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, were able to fly out of the United States within days of 9/11.
On Sept. 13, 2001, a private jet flew from Tampa, Fla., to Lexington, Ky., before leaving the country later that same day. On board were top Saudi businessmen and members of the royal family. The assertion is that they were afforded extraordinary treatment since they flew out after the most cursory F.B.I. checks and at a time when American airspace was still closed to private aviation.
For a long time, the White House, the Federal Aviation Administration and the F.B.I. denied that any such flights had taken place on the 13th, and the first day of travel was the 14th. Now the report of the 9/11 Commission finally admits the flight was on the 13th - but it fails to quell the controversy. Rather, the report says the flight only took off "after national airspace was open" and quotes the pilot saying there was "nothing unusual whatsoever" about that flight.
The report fails, however, to note that when the flights occurred, airspace was open only to a limited number of commercial - not private - planes. And it attributes incorrect positions maintained for months by the federal government, particularly the F.B.I., to a "misunderstanding" between federal and local law enforcement.
Moreover, the report makes no effort to determine whether the question of the special repatriation of high-ranking Saudis from the United States was discussed on the same day as the first flight in a private meeting - no aides permitted - between President Bush and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The ambassador has denied that the subject was discussed in his conversation with the president. But did the commission ask the president about it when it had the opportunity to question him? If so, there is no indication in the report.
The report makes no mention that one of the Saudis on the flight that left Kentucky for Saudi Arabia was Prince Ahmed bin Salman. Nephew to King Fahd, Prince Ahmed was later mentioned to American interrogators in March 2002 by none other than Abu Zubaydah, a top Qaeda official captured that same month. The connection, if any, between a top operative of Al Qaeda and a leading member of the royal family has remained unresolved despite Saudi denials. Prince Ahmed cannot be asked: he died in 2002, at the age of 43, from complications from stomach surgery in a Riyadh hospital.
Not only does the 9/11 report fail to resolve the matter of whether Mr. Zubaydah - who featured prominently in the now infamous Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001 - was telling the truth when he named Prince Ahmed and several other princes as his contacts, but they do not even mention the prince in the entire report. The report does have seven references to Mr. Zubaydah's interrogations, yet not a single one is from March, the month of his capture, and the time he made his startling and still unproven accusations about high-ranking Saudi royals.
Of course, none of these matters undermine the report's central conclusions about what went wrong inside the United States leading up to 9/11. And satisfying answers to questions about the relationship between the Saudis and Al Qaeda might not be available yet. But the commission could have at least asked them. By failing to address adequately how Saudi leaders helped Al Qaeda flourish, the commission has risked damaging its otherwise good work.
n establishing how the government failed to prevent the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the 9/11 Commission Report is excellent. Its grasp of some details, however, is less than reassuring - particularly details about Saudi Arabia, which it calls, in a gross understatement, "a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism."
Perhaps even more startling is the report's conclusion that the panel has "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually" helped to finance Al Qaeda. It does say that unnamed wealthy Saudi sympathizers, and leading Saudi charities, sent money to the terror group. But the report fails to mine any of the widely available reporting and research that establishes the degree to which many of the suspect charities cited by the United States are controlled directly by the Saudi government or some of its ministers.
The report makes no mention, for example, of an October 2002 study by the Council of Foreign Relations that draws opposite conclusions about the role of Saudi charities and how "Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem." The 9/11 panel also misses an opportunity to more fully explore an intelligence coup in 2002, when American agents in Bosnia retrieved computer files of the so-called Golden Chain, a group of Mr. bin Laden's early financial supporters.
Reported to be among the 20 names on this list were a former government minister in Saudi Arabia, three billionaire banking tycoons and several top industrialists. Yet the report neither confirms nor denies this. Nor does it address what, if anything, the Saudis did with the information, or whether the men were ever arrested by Saudi authorities.
These failures are ones of omission, but the questions are of vital significance. Less important, perhaps, but more well known is the story of how many prominent Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, were able to fly out of the United States within days of 9/11.
On Sept. 13, 2001, a private jet flew from Tampa, Fla., to Lexington, Ky., before leaving the country later that same day. On board were top Saudi businessmen and members of the royal family. The assertion is that they were afforded extraordinary treatment since they flew out after the most cursory F.B.I. checks and at a time when American airspace was still closed to private aviation.
For a long time, the White House, the Federal Aviation Administration and the F.B.I. denied that any such flights had taken place on the 13th, and the first day of travel was the 14th. Now the report of the 9/11 Commission finally admits the flight was on the 13th - but it fails to quell the controversy. Rather, the report says the flight only took off "after national airspace was open" and quotes the pilot saying there was "nothing unusual whatsoever" about that flight.
The report fails, however, to note that when the flights occurred, airspace was open only to a limited number of commercial - not private - planes. And it attributes incorrect positions maintained for months by the federal government, particularly the F.B.I., to a "misunderstanding" between federal and local law enforcement.
Moreover, the report makes no effort to determine whether the question of the special repatriation of high-ranking Saudis from the United States was discussed on the same day as the first flight in a private meeting - no aides permitted - between President Bush and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The ambassador has denied that the subject was discussed in his conversation with the president. But did the commission ask the president about it when it had the opportunity to question him? If so, there is no indication in the report.
The report makes no mention that one of the Saudis on the flight that left Kentucky for Saudi Arabia was Prince Ahmed bin Salman. Nephew to King Fahd, Prince Ahmed was later mentioned to American interrogators in March 2002 by none other than Abu Zubaydah, a top Qaeda official captured that same month. The connection, if any, between a top operative of Al Qaeda and a leading member of the royal family has remained unresolved despite Saudi denials. Prince Ahmed cannot be asked: he died in 2002, at the age of 43, from complications from stomach surgery in a Riyadh hospital.
Not only does the 9/11 report fail to resolve the matter of whether Mr. Zubaydah - who featured prominently in the now infamous Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001 - was telling the truth when he named Prince Ahmed and several other princes as his contacts, but they do not even mention the prince in the entire report. The report does have seven references to Mr. Zubaydah's interrogations, yet not a single one is from March, the month of his capture, and the time he made his startling and still unproven accusations about high-ranking Saudi royals.
Of course, none of these matters undermine the report's central conclusions about what went wrong inside the United States leading up to 9/11. And satisfying answers to questions about the relationship between the Saudis and Al Qaeda might not be available yet. But the commission could have at least asked them. By failing to address adequately how Saudi leaders helped Al Qaeda flourish, the commission has risked damaging its otherwise good work.
Monday, July 26, 2004
L’AMERICA DI JOHN KERRY di GIANNI RIOTTA
La Convenzione del Partito democratico americano, riunita da oggi a Boston per nominare il senatore John Kerry a sfidante del presidente George W. Bush, non si estenuerà in 104 scrutini ad oltranza, come i delegati del 1924, né conoscerà riunioni di mezzanotte affollate da ubriachi, come i repubblicani che nel 1860 selezionarono il futuro padre della patria Lincoln. Le convenzioni moderne sono reality show per una distratta tv, con l'obiettivo di presentare il candidato al Paese. Il John Kerry che conosceremo sa che gli Stati Uniti sono divisi a metà dall'astio politico: 45 per cento con lui, 47 con Bush, incerta una pattuglia del 5%. Sa di arrivare alle presidenziali da progressista, nessun senatore, neppure il vecchio leone liberal Ted Kennedy, ha per anni votato a sinistra con la sua costanza. La base militante democratica, che detesta Bush con animosità, si raccoglierà compatta attorno a Kerry, stanca della vischiosa situazione economica. Per vincere, però, John Kerry deve risultare credibile anche sulla guerra al terrorismo e la difficile campagna in Iraq. Il prestigio da comandante in capo di Bush è scosso, e Kerry deve dimostrare di poterne ereditare il bastone. La Commissione sulle stragi dell'11 settembre 2001 chiude i lavori prevedendo: un attacco catastrofico contro l'America è «possibile, se non probabile», «la guerra al terrorismo si vince solo combattendo la battaglia delle idee» e isolando i fondamentalisti grazie a nuove opportunità aperte nei Paesi poveri. Kerry, figlio di un diplomatico, liceale in Europa, veterano del Vietnam, conosce il mondo. Il suo approccio alla politica internazionale è cauto, i critici lo accusano di mutare troppo spesso opinioni, lui preferisce definirsi «pragmatico». In Europa niente unisce l'opinione pubblica come la speranza, palese o malcelata, che Kerry vinca, non solo per rimandare Bush al torrido ranch texano, ma nella persuasione che, con i democratici alla Casa Bianca, la tempesta che dal 2002 squassa l'Atlantico si quieterà in bonaccia. È un'analisi sbagliata. Certo, Kerry azzittirebbe i toni unilaterali più sguaiati e la propaganda dei neoconservatori, ma l'intesa Usa-Unione Europea, dall'Iraq, all'Afghanistan, ai commerci, alla Nato e ai rapporti con Russia e Cina, ha bisogno comunque di una paziente sutura, punto per punto. Se eletto, Kerry offrirà un clima di collaborazione ma chiederà impegno diplomatico e militare. Gli avversari di Bush, Chirac, Schröder e Zapatero, non potranno più limitarsi a dire di no. Per far fruttare il dialogo, dovranno confrontarsi sulle proposte, negoziare, cooperare. In tutta la sua vita, dai cortei pacifisti al Senato, Kerry ha costruito una personalità più capace di maturare con gli eventi che non di imporsi a forza alla realtà. In coppia con il vicepresidente John Edwards, può riaprire il dibattito, ma per far progressi nella difficile agenda del presente, avrà bisogno di un'Europa nuova, unita, capace di manovrare, dall'accordo sui dazi al peacekeeping in Sudan. Questo chiederà il presidente John Kerry, già lo scrive la ponderosa piattaforma del partito che sarà votata a Boston. Vedremo quanti dei suoi tifosi di oggi gli daranno in concreto una mano. «La battaglia delle idee» per radicare la democrazia e i diritti, e sconfiggere il terrorismo, non può essere combattuta, e vinta, solo dagli Stati Uniti. Kerry saprà probabilmente ascoltare più di Bush, ma gli europei dovranno fare la loro parte. Se daranno a Kerry chiacchiere eleganti, non ci intenderemo più su nulla, né guerra né pace, e la tempesta sull'Atlantico annuncerà rovesci sul pianeta intero.
La Convenzione del Partito democratico americano, riunita da oggi a Boston per nominare il senatore John Kerry a sfidante del presidente George W. Bush, non si estenuerà in 104 scrutini ad oltranza, come i delegati del 1924, né conoscerà riunioni di mezzanotte affollate da ubriachi, come i repubblicani che nel 1860 selezionarono il futuro padre della patria Lincoln. Le convenzioni moderne sono reality show per una distratta tv, con l'obiettivo di presentare il candidato al Paese. Il John Kerry che conosceremo sa che gli Stati Uniti sono divisi a metà dall'astio politico: 45 per cento con lui, 47 con Bush, incerta una pattuglia del 5%. Sa di arrivare alle presidenziali da progressista, nessun senatore, neppure il vecchio leone liberal Ted Kennedy, ha per anni votato a sinistra con la sua costanza. La base militante democratica, che detesta Bush con animosità, si raccoglierà compatta attorno a Kerry, stanca della vischiosa situazione economica. Per vincere, però, John Kerry deve risultare credibile anche sulla guerra al terrorismo e la difficile campagna in Iraq. Il prestigio da comandante in capo di Bush è scosso, e Kerry deve dimostrare di poterne ereditare il bastone. La Commissione sulle stragi dell'11 settembre 2001 chiude i lavori prevedendo: un attacco catastrofico contro l'America è «possibile, se non probabile», «la guerra al terrorismo si vince solo combattendo la battaglia delle idee» e isolando i fondamentalisti grazie a nuove opportunità aperte nei Paesi poveri. Kerry, figlio di un diplomatico, liceale in Europa, veterano del Vietnam, conosce il mondo. Il suo approccio alla politica internazionale è cauto, i critici lo accusano di mutare troppo spesso opinioni, lui preferisce definirsi «pragmatico». In Europa niente unisce l'opinione pubblica come la speranza, palese o malcelata, che Kerry vinca, non solo per rimandare Bush al torrido ranch texano, ma nella persuasione che, con i democratici alla Casa Bianca, la tempesta che dal 2002 squassa l'Atlantico si quieterà in bonaccia. È un'analisi sbagliata. Certo, Kerry azzittirebbe i toni unilaterali più sguaiati e la propaganda dei neoconservatori, ma l'intesa Usa-Unione Europea, dall'Iraq, all'Afghanistan, ai commerci, alla Nato e ai rapporti con Russia e Cina, ha bisogno comunque di una paziente sutura, punto per punto. Se eletto, Kerry offrirà un clima di collaborazione ma chiederà impegno diplomatico e militare. Gli avversari di Bush, Chirac, Schröder e Zapatero, non potranno più limitarsi a dire di no. Per far fruttare il dialogo, dovranno confrontarsi sulle proposte, negoziare, cooperare. In tutta la sua vita, dai cortei pacifisti al Senato, Kerry ha costruito una personalità più capace di maturare con gli eventi che non di imporsi a forza alla realtà. In coppia con il vicepresidente John Edwards, può riaprire il dibattito, ma per far progressi nella difficile agenda del presente, avrà bisogno di un'Europa nuova, unita, capace di manovrare, dall'accordo sui dazi al peacekeeping in Sudan. Questo chiederà il presidente John Kerry, già lo scrive la ponderosa piattaforma del partito che sarà votata a Boston. Vedremo quanti dei suoi tifosi di oggi gli daranno in concreto una mano. «La battaglia delle idee» per radicare la democrazia e i diritti, e sconfiggere il terrorismo, non può essere combattuta, e vinta, solo dagli Stati Uniti. Kerry saprà probabilmente ascoltare più di Bush, ma gli europei dovranno fare la loro parte. Se daranno a Kerry chiacchiere eleganti, non ci intenderemo più su nulla, né guerra né pace, e la tempesta sull'Atlantico annuncerà rovesci sul pianeta intero.
