Thursday, September 23, 2004
Transcript: Allawi Addresses U.S. Congress
Thursday, September 23, 2004; 11:31 AM
Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi addressed a joint meeting of Congress Thursday morning. Here is a transcript of his speech.
ALLAWI: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, it’s my distinct honor and great privilege to speak to you today on behalf of Iraq’s interim government and its people.
It’s my honor to come to Congress and to thank this nation and its people for making our cause your cause, our struggle your struggle.
Before I turn to my government’s plan for Iraq, I have three important messages for you today.
First, we are succeeding in Iraq.
(APPLAUSE)
It’s a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding.
I have seen some of the images that are being shown here on television. They are disturbing. They focus on the tragedies, such as the brutal and barbaric murder of two American hostages this week.
ALLAWI: My thoughts and prayers go out to their families and to all those who lost loved ones.
Yet, as we mourn these losses, we must not forget either the progress we are making or what is at stake in Iraq.
We are fighting for freedom and democracy, ours and yours. Every day, we strengthen the institutions that will protect our new democracy, and every day, we grow in strength and determination to defeat the terrorists and their barbarism.
The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America.
(APPLAUSE)
We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq’s freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain.
The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful. They are grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein and the torture and brutality he forced upon us, grateful for the chance to build a better future for our families, our country and our region.
ALLAWI: We Iraqis are grateful to you, America, for your leadership and your sacrifice for our liberation and our opportunity to start anew.
Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed. Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing. We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves, which stands as monuments to the inhumanity of Saddam’s regime. Thousands of my Kurdish brothers and sisters were gassed to death by Saddam’s chemical weapons.
Millions more like me were driven into exile. Even in exile, as I myself can vouch, we were not safe from Saddam.
And as we lived under tyranny at home, so our neighbors lived in fear of Iraq’s aggression and brutality. Reckless wars, use of weapons of mass destruction, the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the financing and exporting of terrorism, these were Saddam’s legacy to the world.
My friends, today we are better off, you are better off and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
(APPLAUSE)
Your decision to go to war in Iraq was not an easy one but it was the right one.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: There are no words that can express the debt of gratitude that future generations of Iraqis will owe to Americans. It would have been easy to have turned your back on our plight, but this is not the tradition of this great country, nor for the first time in history you stood up with your allies for freedom and democracy.
Ladies and gentlemen, I particularly want to thank you in the United States Congress for your brave vote in 2002 to authorize American men and women to go to war to liberate my country, because you realized what was at stake. And I want to thank you for your continued commitment last year when you voted to grant Iraq a generous reconstruction and security funding package.
I have met many of you last year and I have in Iraq. It’s a tribute to your commitment to our country that you have come to see firsthand the challenges and the progress we have and we are making.
Ladies and gentlemen, the costs now have been high. As we have lost our loved ones in this struggle, so have you. As we have mourned, so have you.
ALLAWI: This is a bitter price of combating tyranny and terror.
Our hearts go to the families, every American who has given his or her life and every American who has been wounded to help us in our struggle.
Now we are determined to honor your confidence and sacrifice by putting into practice in Iraq the values of liberty and democracy, which are so dear to you and which have triumphed over tyranny across our world.
(APPLAUSE)
Creating a democratic, prosperous and stable nation, where differences are respected, human rights protected, and which lives in peace with itself and its neighbor, is our highest priority, our sternest challenge and our greatest goal. It is a vision, I assure you, shared by the vast majority of the Iraqi people. But there are the tiny minority who despise the very ideas of liberty, of peace, of tolerance, and who will kill anyone, destroy anything, to prevent Iraq and its people from achieving this goal.
Among them are those who nurse fantasies of the former regime returning to power. There are fanatics who seek to impose a perverted vision of Islam in which the face of Allah cannot be seen. And there are terrorists, including many from outside Iraq, who seek to make our country the main battleground against freedom, democracy and civilization.
ALLAWI: For the struggle in Iraq today is not about the future of Iraq only. It’s about the worldwide war between those who want to live in peace and freedom, and terrorists. Terrorists strike indiscriminately at soldiers, at civilians, as they did so tragically on 9/11 in America, and as they did in Spain and Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia in my country and many others.
So in Iraq we confront both, insurgency and the global war on terror with their destructive forces sometimes overlapping. These killers may be just a tiny fraction of our 27 million population, but with their guns and their suicide bombs to intimidate and to frighten all the people of Iraq, I can tell you today, they will not succeed.
(APPLAUSE)
For these murderers have no political program or cause other than push our country back into tyranny. Their agenda is no different than terrorist forces that have struck all over the world, including your own country on September 11th. There lies the fatal weakness: The insurgency in Iraq is destructive but small and it has not and will never resonate with the Iraqi people.
The Iraqi citizens know better than anyone the horrors of dictatorship. This is past we will never revisit.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our plan which we have developed to meet the real challenges which Iraq faces today, a plan that we are successfully implementing with your help. The plan has three basic parts: building democracy, defeating the insurgency and improving the quality of ordinary Iraqis.
ALLAWI: The political strategy in our plan is to isolate the terrorists from the communities in which they operate. We are working hard to involve as many people as we can in the political process to cut the ground from under the terrorists’ feet.
In troubled areas across the country, government representatives are meeting with local leaders. They are offering amnesty to those who realize the error of their ways. They are making clear that there can be no compromise with terror, that all Iraqis have the opportunity to join the side of order and democracy, and that they should use the political process to address their legitimate concerns and hopes.
I am a realist. I know that terrorism cannot be defeated with political tools only. But we can weaken it, ending local support, help us to tackle the enemy head-on, to identify, isolate and eradicate this cancer.
Let me provide you with a couple of examples of where this political plan already is working.
In Samarra, the Iraqi government has tackled the insurgents who once controlled the city.
ALLAWI: Following weeks of discussions between government officials and representatives, coalition forces and local community leaders, regular access to the city has been restored. A new provincial council and governor have been selected, and a new chief of police has been appointed. Hundreds of insurgents have been pushed out of the city by local citizens, eager to get with their lives.
Today in Samarra, Iraqi forces are patrolling the city, in close coordination with their coalition counterparts.
In Talafa (ph), a city northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi government has reversed an effort by insurgents to arrest, control (inaudible) the proper authorities. Iraqi forces put down the challenge and allowed local citizens to choose a new mayor and police chief. Thousands of civilians have returned to the city. And since their return, we have launched a large program of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our military strategy. We plan to build and maintain security forces across Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis are anxious to take over entirely this role and to shoulder all the security burdens of our country as quickly as possible.
(APPLAUSE)
For now, of course, we need the help of our American and coalition partners. But the training of Iraqi security forces is moving forward briskly and effectively.
The Iraqi government now commands almost 50,000 armed and combat- ready Iraqis.
ALLAWI: By January it will be some 145,000. And by the end of next year, some 250,000 Iraqis.
The government has accelerated the development of Iraqi special forces, and the establishment of a counter-terrorist strike force to tackle specific problems caused by insurgencies.
Our intelligence is getting better every day. You have seen that the successful resolution of the Najaf crisis, and then the targeted attacks against insurgents in Fallujah.
These new Iraqi forces are rising to the challenge. They are fighting on behalf of sovereign Iraqi government, and therefore their performance is improving every day. Working closely with the coalition allies, they are striking their enemies wherever they hide, disrupting operations, destroying safe houses and removing terrorist leaders.
But improving the everyday lives of Iraqis, tackling our economic problems is also essential to our plan. Across the country there is a daily progress, too. Oil pipelines are being repaired. Basic services are being improved. The homes are being rebuilt. Schools and hospitals are being rebuilt. The clinics are open and reopened. There are now over 6 million children at school, many of them attending one of the 2,500 schools that have been renovated since liberation.
(APPLAUSE)
Last week, we completed a national polio vaccination campaign, reaching over 90 percent of all Iraqi children.
ALLAWI: We’re starting work on 150 new health centers across the country. Millions of dollars in economic aid and humanitarian assistance from this country and others around the world are flowing into Iraq. For this, again, I want to thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
And so today, despite the setbacks and daily outrages, we can and should be hopeful for the future.
In Najaf and Kufa, this plan has already brought success. In those cities a firebrand cleric had taken over Shia Islam’s holiest sites in defiance of the government and the local population. Immediately, the Iraqi government ordered the Iraqi armed forces into action to use military force to create conditions for political success.
Together with the coalition partners, Iraqi forces cleaned out insurgents from everywhere in the city, capturing hundreds and killing many more.
At the same time, the government worked with political leaders and with Ayatollah Sistani to find a peaceful solution to the occupation of the shrine. We were successful. The shrine was preserved. Order was restored. And Najaf and Kufa were returned to their citizens.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Today the foreign media have lost interest and left, but millions of dollars in economic aid and humanitarian assistance are now flowing into the cities. Ordinary citizens are once again free to live and worship at these places.
As we move forward, the next major milestone will be holding of the free and fair national and local elections in January next.
(APPLAUSE)
I know that some have speculated, even doubted, whether this date can be met. So let me be absolutely clear: Elections will occur in Iraq on time in January because Iraqis want elections on time.
(APPLAUSE)
For the skeptics who do not understand the Iraqi people, they do not realize how decades of torture and repression feed our desire for freedom. At every step of the political process to date the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people has proved the doubters wrong.
(APPLAUSE)
They said we would miss January deadline to pass the interim constitution.
ALLAWI: We proved them wrong.
They warned that there could be no successful handover of sovereignty by the end of June. We proved them wrong. A sovereign Iraqi government took over control two days early.
They doubted whether a national conference could be staged this August. We proved them wrong.
Despite intimidation and violence, over 1,400 citizens, a quarter of them women, from all regions and from every ethnic, religious and political grouping in Iraq, elected a national council.
And I pledge to you today, we’ll prove them wrong again over the elections.
(APPLAUSE)
Our independent electoral commission is working with the United Nations, the multinational force and our own Iraqi security forces to make these elections a reality. In 15 out of our 18 Iraqi provinces we could hold elections tomorrow. Although this is not what we see in your media, it is a fact.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Your government, our government and the United Nations are all helping us mobilizing the necessary resources to fund voter registration and information programs. We will establish up to 30,000 polling sites, 130,000 election workers, and all other complex aspects mounting a general election in a nation of 27 million before the end of January next.
We already know that terrorists and former regime elements will do all they can to disrupt these elections. There would be no greater success for the terrorists if we delay and no greater blow when the elections take place, as they will, on schedule.
(APPLAUSE)
The Iraqi elections may not be perfect, may not be the best elections that Iraq will ever hold. They will no doubt be an excuse for violence from those that despise liberty, as were the first elections in Sierra Leone, South Africa or Indonesia.
But they will take place, and they will be free and fair. And though they won’t be the end of the journey toward democracy, they will be a giant step forward in Iraq’s political evolution.
(APPLAUSE)
They will pave the way for a government that reflects the world, and has the confidence of the Iraqi people.
ALLAWI: Ladies and gentlemen, this is our strategy for moving Iraq steadily toward the security and democracy and prosperity our people crave.
But Iraq cannot accomplish this alone. The resolve and will of the coalition in supporting a free Iraq is vital to our success.
(APPLAUSE)
The Iraqi government needs the help of the international community, the help of countries that not only believe in the Iraqi people but also believe in the fight for freedom and against tyranny and terrorism everywhere.
Already, Iraq has many partners. The transition in Iraq from brutal dictatorship to freedom and democracy is not only an Iraqi endeavor, it is an international one. More than 30 countries are represented in Iraq with troops on the ground in harm’s way. We Iraqis are grateful for each and every one of these courageous men and women.
(APPLAUSE)
United Nations Resolution 1546 passed in June 2004, endorsed the Iraqi interim government and pledged international support for Iraq upcoming elections. The G-8, the European Union and NATO have also issued formal statements of support.
NATO is now helping with one of Iraq’s most urgent needs, the training of Iraqi security forces. I am delighted by the new agreement to step up the pace and scope of this training.
ALLAWI: The United Nations has reestablished its mission in Iraq, a new United Nations special representative has been appointed and a team of United Nations personnel is now operating in Baghdad.
Many more nations have committed to Iraq’s future in the form of economic aid. We Iraqis are aware how international this effort truly is.
But our opponents, the terrorists, also understand all too well that this is an international effort. And that’s why they have targeted members of the coalition.
I know the pain this causes. I know it is difficult but the coalition must stand firm.
(APPLAUSE)
When governments negotiate with terrorists, everyone in the free world suffers. When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourage more violence.
(APPLAUSE)
Working together, we will defeat the killers, and we will do this by refusing to bargain about our most fundamental principles.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Ladies and gentlemen, good will aside, I know that many observers around the world honestly wonder if we in Iraq really can restore our economy, be good neighbors, guarantee the democratic rule of law and overcome the enemies who seek to tear us down. I understand why, faced with the daily headlines, there are these doubts. I know, too, that there will be many more setbacks and obstacles to overcome.
But these doubters risk underestimating our country and they risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists. Despite our problems, despite our recent history, no one should doubt that Iraq is a country of tremendous human resources and national resources.
Iraq is still a nation with an inspiring culture and the tradition and an educated and civilized people. And Iraq is still a land made strong by a faith which teaches us tolerance, love, respect and duty.
(APPLAUSE)
Above all, they risk underestimating the courage, determination of the Iraqi people to embrace democracy, peace and freedom, for the dreams of our families are the same as the dreams of the families here in America and around the world. There are those who want to divide our world. I appeal to you, who have done so much already to help us, to ensure they don’t succeed.
Do not allow them to say to Iraqis, to Arabs, to Muslims, that we have only two models of governments, brutal dictatorship and religious extremism. This is wrong.
Like Americans, we Iraqis want to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Half of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims already enjoy democratically elected governments.
ALLAWI: As Prime Minister Blair said to you last year when he stood here, anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom not tyranny, democracy not dictatorship, and the rule of law not the rule of the secret police.
(APPLAUSE)
Do not let them convince others that the values of freedom, of tolerance and democracy are for you in the West but not for us.
For the first time in our history, the Iraqi people can look forward to controlling our own destiny.
(APPLAUSE)
This would not have been possible without the help and sacrifices of this country and its coalition partners. I thank you again from the bottom of my heart.
And let me tell you that as we meet our greatest challenge by building a democratic future, we the people of the new Iraq will remember those who have stood by us.
ALLAWI: As generous as you have been, we will stand with you, too. As stalwart as you have been, we will stand with you, too.
Neither tyranny nor terrorism has a place in our region or our world. And that is why we Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations, the global battle to live in freedom.
God bless you and thank you.
Thursday, September 23, 2004; 11:31 AM
Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi addressed a joint meeting of Congress Thursday morning. Here is a transcript of his speech.
ALLAWI: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, it’s my distinct honor and great privilege to speak to you today on behalf of Iraq’s interim government and its people.
It’s my honor to come to Congress and to thank this nation and its people for making our cause your cause, our struggle your struggle.
Before I turn to my government’s plan for Iraq, I have three important messages for you today.
First, we are succeeding in Iraq.
(APPLAUSE)
It’s a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding.
I have seen some of the images that are being shown here on television. They are disturbing. They focus on the tragedies, such as the brutal and barbaric murder of two American hostages this week.
ALLAWI: My thoughts and prayers go out to their families and to all those who lost loved ones.
Yet, as we mourn these losses, we must not forget either the progress we are making or what is at stake in Iraq.
We are fighting for freedom and democracy, ours and yours. Every day, we strengthen the institutions that will protect our new democracy, and every day, we grow in strength and determination to defeat the terrorists and their barbarism.
The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America.
(APPLAUSE)
We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq’s freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain.
The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful. They are grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein and the torture and brutality he forced upon us, grateful for the chance to build a better future for our families, our country and our region.
ALLAWI: We Iraqis are grateful to you, America, for your leadership and your sacrifice for our liberation and our opportunity to start anew.
Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed. Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing. We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves, which stands as monuments to the inhumanity of Saddam’s regime. Thousands of my Kurdish brothers and sisters were gassed to death by Saddam’s chemical weapons.
Millions more like me were driven into exile. Even in exile, as I myself can vouch, we were not safe from Saddam.
And as we lived under tyranny at home, so our neighbors lived in fear of Iraq’s aggression and brutality. Reckless wars, use of weapons of mass destruction, the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the financing and exporting of terrorism, these were Saddam’s legacy to the world.
My friends, today we are better off, you are better off and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
(APPLAUSE)
Your decision to go to war in Iraq was not an easy one but it was the right one.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: There are no words that can express the debt of gratitude that future generations of Iraqis will owe to Americans. It would have been easy to have turned your back on our plight, but this is not the tradition of this great country, nor for the first time in history you stood up with your allies for freedom and democracy.
Ladies and gentlemen, I particularly want to thank you in the United States Congress for your brave vote in 2002 to authorize American men and women to go to war to liberate my country, because you realized what was at stake. And I want to thank you for your continued commitment last year when you voted to grant Iraq a generous reconstruction and security funding package.
I have met many of you last year and I have in Iraq. It’s a tribute to your commitment to our country that you have come to see firsthand the challenges and the progress we have and we are making.
Ladies and gentlemen, the costs now have been high. As we have lost our loved ones in this struggle, so have you. As we have mourned, so have you.
ALLAWI: This is a bitter price of combating tyranny and terror.
Our hearts go to the families, every American who has given his or her life and every American who has been wounded to help us in our struggle.
Now we are determined to honor your confidence and sacrifice by putting into practice in Iraq the values of liberty and democracy, which are so dear to you and which have triumphed over tyranny across our world.
(APPLAUSE)
Creating a democratic, prosperous and stable nation, where differences are respected, human rights protected, and which lives in peace with itself and its neighbor, is our highest priority, our sternest challenge and our greatest goal. It is a vision, I assure you, shared by the vast majority of the Iraqi people. But there are the tiny minority who despise the very ideas of liberty, of peace, of tolerance, and who will kill anyone, destroy anything, to prevent Iraq and its people from achieving this goal.
Among them are those who nurse fantasies of the former regime returning to power. There are fanatics who seek to impose a perverted vision of Islam in which the face of Allah cannot be seen. And there are terrorists, including many from outside Iraq, who seek to make our country the main battleground against freedom, democracy and civilization.
ALLAWI: For the struggle in Iraq today is not about the future of Iraq only. It’s about the worldwide war between those who want to live in peace and freedom, and terrorists. Terrorists strike indiscriminately at soldiers, at civilians, as they did so tragically on 9/11 in America, and as they did in Spain and Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia in my country and many others.
So in Iraq we confront both, insurgency and the global war on terror with their destructive forces sometimes overlapping. These killers may be just a tiny fraction of our 27 million population, but with their guns and their suicide bombs to intimidate and to frighten all the people of Iraq, I can tell you today, they will not succeed.
(APPLAUSE)
For these murderers have no political program or cause other than push our country back into tyranny. Their agenda is no different than terrorist forces that have struck all over the world, including your own country on September 11th. There lies the fatal weakness: The insurgency in Iraq is destructive but small and it has not and will never resonate with the Iraqi people.
The Iraqi citizens know better than anyone the horrors of dictatorship. This is past we will never revisit.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our plan which we have developed to meet the real challenges which Iraq faces today, a plan that we are successfully implementing with your help. The plan has three basic parts: building democracy, defeating the insurgency and improving the quality of ordinary Iraqis.
ALLAWI: The political strategy in our plan is to isolate the terrorists from the communities in which they operate. We are working hard to involve as many people as we can in the political process to cut the ground from under the terrorists’ feet.
In troubled areas across the country, government representatives are meeting with local leaders. They are offering amnesty to those who realize the error of their ways. They are making clear that there can be no compromise with terror, that all Iraqis have the opportunity to join the side of order and democracy, and that they should use the political process to address their legitimate concerns and hopes.
I am a realist. I know that terrorism cannot be defeated with political tools only. But we can weaken it, ending local support, help us to tackle the enemy head-on, to identify, isolate and eradicate this cancer.
Let me provide you with a couple of examples of where this political plan already is working.
In Samarra, the Iraqi government has tackled the insurgents who once controlled the city.
ALLAWI: Following weeks of discussions between government officials and representatives, coalition forces and local community leaders, regular access to the city has been restored. A new provincial council and governor have been selected, and a new chief of police has been appointed. Hundreds of insurgents have been pushed out of the city by local citizens, eager to get with their lives.
Today in Samarra, Iraqi forces are patrolling the city, in close coordination with their coalition counterparts.
In Talafa (ph), a city northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi government has reversed an effort by insurgents to arrest, control (inaudible) the proper authorities. Iraqi forces put down the challenge and allowed local citizens to choose a new mayor and police chief. Thousands of civilians have returned to the city. And since their return, we have launched a large program of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to our military strategy. We plan to build and maintain security forces across Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis are anxious to take over entirely this role and to shoulder all the security burdens of our country as quickly as possible.
(APPLAUSE)
For now, of course, we need the help of our American and coalition partners. But the training of Iraqi security forces is moving forward briskly and effectively.
The Iraqi government now commands almost 50,000 armed and combat- ready Iraqis.
ALLAWI: By January it will be some 145,000. And by the end of next year, some 250,000 Iraqis.
The government has accelerated the development of Iraqi special forces, and the establishment of a counter-terrorist strike force to tackle specific problems caused by insurgencies.
Our intelligence is getting better every day. You have seen that the successful resolution of the Najaf crisis, and then the targeted attacks against insurgents in Fallujah.
These new Iraqi forces are rising to the challenge. They are fighting on behalf of sovereign Iraqi government, and therefore their performance is improving every day. Working closely with the coalition allies, they are striking their enemies wherever they hide, disrupting operations, destroying safe houses and removing terrorist leaders.
But improving the everyday lives of Iraqis, tackling our economic problems is also essential to our plan. Across the country there is a daily progress, too. Oil pipelines are being repaired. Basic services are being improved. The homes are being rebuilt. Schools and hospitals are being rebuilt. The clinics are open and reopened. There are now over 6 million children at school, many of them attending one of the 2,500 schools that have been renovated since liberation.
(APPLAUSE)
Last week, we completed a national polio vaccination campaign, reaching over 90 percent of all Iraqi children.
ALLAWI: We’re starting work on 150 new health centers across the country. Millions of dollars in economic aid and humanitarian assistance from this country and others around the world are flowing into Iraq. For this, again, I want to thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
And so today, despite the setbacks and daily outrages, we can and should be hopeful for the future.
In Najaf and Kufa, this plan has already brought success. In those cities a firebrand cleric had taken over Shia Islam’s holiest sites in defiance of the government and the local population. Immediately, the Iraqi government ordered the Iraqi armed forces into action to use military force to create conditions for political success.
Together with the coalition partners, Iraqi forces cleaned out insurgents from everywhere in the city, capturing hundreds and killing many more.
At the same time, the government worked with political leaders and with Ayatollah Sistani to find a peaceful solution to the occupation of the shrine. We were successful. The shrine was preserved. Order was restored. And Najaf and Kufa were returned to their citizens.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Today the foreign media have lost interest and left, but millions of dollars in economic aid and humanitarian assistance are now flowing into the cities. Ordinary citizens are once again free to live and worship at these places.
As we move forward, the next major milestone will be holding of the free and fair national and local elections in January next.
(APPLAUSE)
I know that some have speculated, even doubted, whether this date can be met. So let me be absolutely clear: Elections will occur in Iraq on time in January because Iraqis want elections on time.
(APPLAUSE)
For the skeptics who do not understand the Iraqi people, they do not realize how decades of torture and repression feed our desire for freedom. At every step of the political process to date the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people has proved the doubters wrong.
(APPLAUSE)
They said we would miss January deadline to pass the interim constitution.
ALLAWI: We proved them wrong.
They warned that there could be no successful handover of sovereignty by the end of June. We proved them wrong. A sovereign Iraqi government took over control two days early.
They doubted whether a national conference could be staged this August. We proved them wrong.
Despite intimidation and violence, over 1,400 citizens, a quarter of them women, from all regions and from every ethnic, religious and political grouping in Iraq, elected a national council.
And I pledge to you today, we’ll prove them wrong again over the elections.
(APPLAUSE)
Our independent electoral commission is working with the United Nations, the multinational force and our own Iraqi security forces to make these elections a reality. In 15 out of our 18 Iraqi provinces we could hold elections tomorrow. Although this is not what we see in your media, it is a fact.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Your government, our government and the United Nations are all helping us mobilizing the necessary resources to fund voter registration and information programs. We will establish up to 30,000 polling sites, 130,000 election workers, and all other complex aspects mounting a general election in a nation of 27 million before the end of January next.
We already know that terrorists and former regime elements will do all they can to disrupt these elections. There would be no greater success for the terrorists if we delay and no greater blow when the elections take place, as they will, on schedule.
(APPLAUSE)
The Iraqi elections may not be perfect, may not be the best elections that Iraq will ever hold. They will no doubt be an excuse for violence from those that despise liberty, as were the first elections in Sierra Leone, South Africa or Indonesia.
But they will take place, and they will be free and fair. And though they won’t be the end of the journey toward democracy, they will be a giant step forward in Iraq’s political evolution.
(APPLAUSE)
They will pave the way for a government that reflects the world, and has the confidence of the Iraqi people.
ALLAWI: Ladies and gentlemen, this is our strategy for moving Iraq steadily toward the security and democracy and prosperity our people crave.
But Iraq cannot accomplish this alone. The resolve and will of the coalition in supporting a free Iraq is vital to our success.
(APPLAUSE)
The Iraqi government needs the help of the international community, the help of countries that not only believe in the Iraqi people but also believe in the fight for freedom and against tyranny and terrorism everywhere.
Already, Iraq has many partners. The transition in Iraq from brutal dictatorship to freedom and democracy is not only an Iraqi endeavor, it is an international one. More than 30 countries are represented in Iraq with troops on the ground in harm’s way. We Iraqis are grateful for each and every one of these courageous men and women.
(APPLAUSE)
United Nations Resolution 1546 passed in June 2004, endorsed the Iraqi interim government and pledged international support for Iraq upcoming elections. The G-8, the European Union and NATO have also issued formal statements of support.
NATO is now helping with one of Iraq’s most urgent needs, the training of Iraqi security forces. I am delighted by the new agreement to step up the pace and scope of this training.
ALLAWI: The United Nations has reestablished its mission in Iraq, a new United Nations special representative has been appointed and a team of United Nations personnel is now operating in Baghdad.
Many more nations have committed to Iraq’s future in the form of economic aid. We Iraqis are aware how international this effort truly is.
But our opponents, the terrorists, also understand all too well that this is an international effort. And that’s why they have targeted members of the coalition.
I know the pain this causes. I know it is difficult but the coalition must stand firm.
(APPLAUSE)
When governments negotiate with terrorists, everyone in the free world suffers. When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourage more violence.
(APPLAUSE)
Working together, we will defeat the killers, and we will do this by refusing to bargain about our most fundamental principles.
(APPLAUSE)
ALLAWI: Ladies and gentlemen, good will aside, I know that many observers around the world honestly wonder if we in Iraq really can restore our economy, be good neighbors, guarantee the democratic rule of law and overcome the enemies who seek to tear us down. I understand why, faced with the daily headlines, there are these doubts. I know, too, that there will be many more setbacks and obstacles to overcome.
But these doubters risk underestimating our country and they risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists. Despite our problems, despite our recent history, no one should doubt that Iraq is a country of tremendous human resources and national resources.
Iraq is still a nation with an inspiring culture and the tradition and an educated and civilized people. And Iraq is still a land made strong by a faith which teaches us tolerance, love, respect and duty.
(APPLAUSE)
Above all, they risk underestimating the courage, determination of the Iraqi people to embrace democracy, peace and freedom, for the dreams of our families are the same as the dreams of the families here in America and around the world. There are those who want to divide our world. I appeal to you, who have done so much already to help us, to ensure they don’t succeed.
Do not allow them to say to Iraqis, to Arabs, to Muslims, that we have only two models of governments, brutal dictatorship and religious extremism. This is wrong.
Like Americans, we Iraqis want to enjoy the fruits of liberty. Half of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims already enjoy democratically elected governments.
ALLAWI: As Prime Minister Blair said to you last year when he stood here, anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom not tyranny, democracy not dictatorship, and the rule of law not the rule of the secret police.
(APPLAUSE)
Do not let them convince others that the values of freedom, of tolerance and democracy are for you in the West but not for us.
For the first time in our history, the Iraqi people can look forward to controlling our own destiny.
(APPLAUSE)
This would not have been possible without the help and sacrifices of this country and its coalition partners. I thank you again from the bottom of my heart.
And let me tell you that as we meet our greatest challenge by building a democratic future, we the people of the new Iraq will remember those who have stood by us.
ALLAWI: As generous as you have been, we will stand with you, too. As stalwart as you have been, we will stand with you, too.
Neither tyranny nor terrorism has a place in our region or our world. And that is why we Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations, the global battle to live in freedom.
God bless you and thank you.
The Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder
Brendan Miniter has a very interesting piece on Iraqi reconstruction in yesterday's "Opinion Journal." Brendan writes:
"During Saddam Hussein's reign, not surprisingly, Baghdad and its No. 1 resident had priority when it came to basic services. Baghdad has no power generators to speak of, so generators in outlying cities had to feed the capital, often at the expense of their local residents.
"After Saddam fell, many power engineers and local politicians apparently decided they'd opt out of the national power grid. [Authorities think] that more than a few attacks on power lines have been deliberate attempts to isolate cities that generate their own power from the rest of the country; residents there no longer want to send power off to Baghdad while the lights in their own homes flicker and go out.
"Like the blackout that struck the American Northeast and Midwest last year, unplugging a city from the national grid results in systemwide power failures. It doesn't matter that the total amount of electric power in Iraq is now exceeding prewar levels, or that it is much more equitably distributed. Thus electricity is a metaphor for the larger problem of Iraqi reconstruction: If Iraqis don't come to believe that working together is in their own self interest, then the country may indeed plunge into chaos."
He then comments on the recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies titled "Progress or Peril? Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction":
"The study did not address the question of mutual cooperation directly, but an underlying theme is that Americans cannot simply 'rebuild' Iraq and instead must make it possible for Iraqis to come together to solve their own problems. Instead of thinking and defining success in terms of 'nation building,' the study recommends thinking in terms of 'nation jumpstarting'--getting Iraq to the point where enough people have the skills necessary to crank up functional economic, social and political institutions."
Cooperation is a crucial element in the Iraqi equation; one that doesn't receive sufficient attention from either the pro or the anti war crowd because as Brendan says, it "doesn't fit into a sound bite very well." And cooperation is just one aspect of the cultural dimension of the Iraq problem.
Nowadays, we hear about cultural issues and Iraq mainly in the context of debates as to whether liberal democracy can be created in an Arab country. Both the realists on the right and the cultural relativists on the left are sceptical about the prospects of the democratic project in Iraq, pointing to what they see as immutable aspects of the Middle Eastern cultural make up, such as tribalism, sectarianism, authoritarianism and obscurantism, which they see as incompatible with and inimical to the development of Western-style institutions. Neo-conservatives, idealists and universalists are more optimistic. Whatever the answer to the Arab democracy conundrum, there is little doubt that culture does matter. A society where the interests of your family, tribe, or coreligionists are generally put ahead of the "common interest" will have a tougher time building a successful, modern political and economic infrastructure. As Francis Fukuyama argues, trust matters - trust outside of your immediate circle, trust between strangers, trust between the governing and the governed. Trust is an invaluable mortar that binds a healthy society together.
But there is another aspect to the "culture matters" argument, one that does not get nearly enough attention. It has nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, or national character; it is the social and moral legacy of life under a dictatorship. Iraq, quite simply, like many other recently liberated societies around the world continues to suffer from a Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder.
For the Westerners, the PTSD is a difficult condition to understand. We take so many things for granted - from comedians being able to joke about the President, to the assumption that the next government employee we encounter will not be expecting a bribe from us - that we are quite ill equipped to fully comprehend what life under a totalitarian system must really be like, much less what mental and spiritual legacy its victims have to labor under long after the statues of the Leader are pulled down.
We all "know" about the secret police knocking on the door at night, adulatory TV programs exalting the president-for-life, the pervasive corruption, queues and shortages, or the silly propaganda. Nothing, however, in our generally safe and comfortable existence would helps us understand just how pervasively difficult, destructive and dispiriting the experience of life under a totalitarian regime is. For most of us, life in Saddam's Iraq would have been no more real than the Middle Earth of the colonial New England. And failing to understand the condition itself, by extension we find it equally difficult to understand how the mental attitudes and habits of the past cannot be shaken off overnight but instead linger on, making the reconstruction and transition to normalcy such a difficult and painful process.
I speak from some experience here. While the late communist Poland and the Baathist Iraq were in many ways very different societies, shaped and constrained by different set of geographic, historical and cultural factors, there is a common denominator between all totalitarian societies the world over. Here are some bad habits that people consciously or otherwise pick up to help them fit in better and survive under a dictatorship, but which prove quite troublesome and counter-productive once the shackles finally fall off:
Distrust of the state and the authorities - the state is the enemy and the oppressor; you collaborate to the extent it is necessary to survive, no more. You don't owe it any loyalty and are quite happy to try to sabotage it in every little way you can - by breaking minor laws, petty embezzlement, cheating, dishonesty, lies, passivity or indifference.
A prison mentality - you might hate the state, but you still have an expectation that the hand you cannot bite will provide for you; feed you, clothe you, give you shelter and a job. Since the state has crowded out most, if not all, of the private sphere, logically only the state is able to provide for one's needs - you're quite literally at the mercy of a monopoly.
Lack of initiative and abdication of personal responsibility - as the state is seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent and the area of your personal sovereignty heavily circumscribed, this state of affairs breeds resignation, fatalism and passivity. Why would you bother to try to do anything if you can't achieve much? How can you really take responsibility for your condition if you're just a powerless puppet at the mercy of the Leviathan? And so you wait for things happen to you, as they always do, instead of trying to make your own fate. The system simply doesn't provide any incentives to think and act otherwise - initiative is not rewarded and can even land you in trouble, working hard brings in no more benefits than working little; effort and imagination more often than not hit the wall of limited practical possibilities.
Distrust of others - it's not just the state; you don't trust your fellow citizens too - at worst they might be spying on you for the authorities, at best they are competing with you for scarce resources. Either way, they're out to screw you over. So you only look after your own.
Circumstances change; and when they do, they usually change much faster than our habits. Closed economy may become a free market, dictatorship a democracy, theocracy a liberal society, but our mental adjustment to new realities lags behind.
Recently we have witnessed this phenomenon in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Now we're seeing it in Iraq. Home Sovieticus - or Homo Baathicus - continues to roam the landscape long after a giant asteroid had wiped out their habitats.
This - the damage done to individual psyche - and not just to the physical infrastructure and institutions of the country, is what we have to always keep in mind when assessing the progress of reconstruction and democratisation in places like Iraq. If things aren't moving ahead as fast as expected, if cooperation is lacking and trust hard to find, and if the population seems apathetic and disengaged, it's just the fallen regime having its final chuckle from beyond the grave.
The task of reconstruction is not just about adding more megawatts to the power grid or renovating another school. Just as importantly - if not more so - it is about changing attitudes, habits and ways of thinking. In many ways liberating minds is a far more difficult task than rebuilding the physical infrastructure.
Is there a solution to this problem of cultural lag? How can we cure the Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder? As the old saying goes, time heals all wounds. In the longer term, the older generations - those most tainted by the old ways of thinking - move on and the young ones, brought up in the new environment, slowly take their place. In a shorter term, people still change; slowly and at paces that vary from individual to individual, but change they nevertheless do. In the meantime, people of Iraq need encouragement and good example. Every small step is to be applauded because it brings Iraq closer to a better future.
Some societies are luckier than others. Post-communist societies had time; Iraq might not possess as much of that luxury. Let's hope it has enough.
Brendan Miniter has a very interesting piece on Iraqi reconstruction in yesterday's "Opinion Journal." Brendan writes:
"During Saddam Hussein's reign, not surprisingly, Baghdad and its No. 1 resident had priority when it came to basic services. Baghdad has no power generators to speak of, so generators in outlying cities had to feed the capital, often at the expense of their local residents.
"After Saddam fell, many power engineers and local politicians apparently decided they'd opt out of the national power grid. [Authorities think] that more than a few attacks on power lines have been deliberate attempts to isolate cities that generate their own power from the rest of the country; residents there no longer want to send power off to Baghdad while the lights in their own homes flicker and go out.
"Like the blackout that struck the American Northeast and Midwest last year, unplugging a city from the national grid results in systemwide power failures. It doesn't matter that the total amount of electric power in Iraq is now exceeding prewar levels, or that it is much more equitably distributed. Thus electricity is a metaphor for the larger problem of Iraqi reconstruction: If Iraqis don't come to believe that working together is in their own self interest, then the country may indeed plunge into chaos."
He then comments on the recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies titled "Progress or Peril? Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction":
"The study did not address the question of mutual cooperation directly, but an underlying theme is that Americans cannot simply 'rebuild' Iraq and instead must make it possible for Iraqis to come together to solve their own problems. Instead of thinking and defining success in terms of 'nation building,' the study recommends thinking in terms of 'nation jumpstarting'--getting Iraq to the point where enough people have the skills necessary to crank up functional economic, social and political institutions."
Cooperation is a crucial element in the Iraqi equation; one that doesn't receive sufficient attention from either the pro or the anti war crowd because as Brendan says, it "doesn't fit into a sound bite very well." And cooperation is just one aspect of the cultural dimension of the Iraq problem.
Nowadays, we hear about cultural issues and Iraq mainly in the context of debates as to whether liberal democracy can be created in an Arab country. Both the realists on the right and the cultural relativists on the left are sceptical about the prospects of the democratic project in Iraq, pointing to what they see as immutable aspects of the Middle Eastern cultural make up, such as tribalism, sectarianism, authoritarianism and obscurantism, which they see as incompatible with and inimical to the development of Western-style institutions. Neo-conservatives, idealists and universalists are more optimistic. Whatever the answer to the Arab democracy conundrum, there is little doubt that culture does matter. A society where the interests of your family, tribe, or coreligionists are generally put ahead of the "common interest" will have a tougher time building a successful, modern political and economic infrastructure. As Francis Fukuyama argues, trust matters - trust outside of your immediate circle, trust between strangers, trust between the governing and the governed. Trust is an invaluable mortar that binds a healthy society together.
But there is another aspect to the "culture matters" argument, one that does not get nearly enough attention. It has nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, or national character; it is the social and moral legacy of life under a dictatorship. Iraq, quite simply, like many other recently liberated societies around the world continues to suffer from a Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder.
For the Westerners, the PTSD is a difficult condition to understand. We take so many things for granted - from comedians being able to joke about the President, to the assumption that the next government employee we encounter will not be expecting a bribe from us - that we are quite ill equipped to fully comprehend what life under a totalitarian system must really be like, much less what mental and spiritual legacy its victims have to labor under long after the statues of the Leader are pulled down.
We all "know" about the secret police knocking on the door at night, adulatory TV programs exalting the president-for-life, the pervasive corruption, queues and shortages, or the silly propaganda. Nothing, however, in our generally safe and comfortable existence would helps us understand just how pervasively difficult, destructive and dispiriting the experience of life under a totalitarian regime is. For most of us, life in Saddam's Iraq would have been no more real than the Middle Earth of the colonial New England. And failing to understand the condition itself, by extension we find it equally difficult to understand how the mental attitudes and habits of the past cannot be shaken off overnight but instead linger on, making the reconstruction and transition to normalcy such a difficult and painful process.
I speak from some experience here. While the late communist Poland and the Baathist Iraq were in many ways very different societies, shaped and constrained by different set of geographic, historical and cultural factors, there is a common denominator between all totalitarian societies the world over. Here are some bad habits that people consciously or otherwise pick up to help them fit in better and survive under a dictatorship, but which prove quite troublesome and counter-productive once the shackles finally fall off:
Distrust of the state and the authorities - the state is the enemy and the oppressor; you collaborate to the extent it is necessary to survive, no more. You don't owe it any loyalty and are quite happy to try to sabotage it in every little way you can - by breaking minor laws, petty embezzlement, cheating, dishonesty, lies, passivity or indifference.
A prison mentality - you might hate the state, but you still have an expectation that the hand you cannot bite will provide for you; feed you, clothe you, give you shelter and a job. Since the state has crowded out most, if not all, of the private sphere, logically only the state is able to provide for one's needs - you're quite literally at the mercy of a monopoly.
Lack of initiative and abdication of personal responsibility - as the state is seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent and the area of your personal sovereignty heavily circumscribed, this state of affairs breeds resignation, fatalism and passivity. Why would you bother to try to do anything if you can't achieve much? How can you really take responsibility for your condition if you're just a powerless puppet at the mercy of the Leviathan? And so you wait for things happen to you, as they always do, instead of trying to make your own fate. The system simply doesn't provide any incentives to think and act otherwise - initiative is not rewarded and can even land you in trouble, working hard brings in no more benefits than working little; effort and imagination more often than not hit the wall of limited practical possibilities.
Distrust of others - it's not just the state; you don't trust your fellow citizens too - at worst they might be spying on you for the authorities, at best they are competing with you for scarce resources. Either way, they're out to screw you over. So you only look after your own.
Circumstances change; and when they do, they usually change much faster than our habits. Closed economy may become a free market, dictatorship a democracy, theocracy a liberal society, but our mental adjustment to new realities lags behind.
Recently we have witnessed this phenomenon in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Now we're seeing it in Iraq. Home Sovieticus - or Homo Baathicus - continues to roam the landscape long after a giant asteroid had wiped out their habitats.
This - the damage done to individual psyche - and not just to the physical infrastructure and institutions of the country, is what we have to always keep in mind when assessing the progress of reconstruction and democratisation in places like Iraq. If things aren't moving ahead as fast as expected, if cooperation is lacking and trust hard to find, and if the population seems apathetic and disengaged, it's just the fallen regime having its final chuckle from beyond the grave.
The task of reconstruction is not just about adding more megawatts to the power grid or renovating another school. Just as importantly - if not more so - it is about changing attitudes, habits and ways of thinking. In many ways liberating minds is a far more difficult task than rebuilding the physical infrastructure.
Is there a solution to this problem of cultural lag? How can we cure the Post-Totalitarian Stress Disorder? As the old saying goes, time heals all wounds. In the longer term, the older generations - those most tainted by the old ways of thinking - move on and the young ones, brought up in the new environment, slowly take their place. In a shorter term, people still change; slowly and at paces that vary from individual to individual, but change they nevertheless do. In the meantime, people of Iraq need encouragement and good example. Every small step is to be applauded because it brings Iraq closer to a better future.
Some societies are luckier than others. Post-communist societies had time; Iraq might not possess as much of that luxury. Let's hope it has enough.
The U.N.? Who Cares? Kofi Annan & Co. might as well move to Brussels or Geneva.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
These are surreal times. Americans in Iraq are beheaded on videotape. Russian children are machine-gunned in their schools. The elderly in Israel continue to be blown apart on buses. No one--whether in Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh, Bali, Tel Aviv or New York--is safe from the Islamic fascist, whose real enemy is modernism and Western-inspired freedom of the individual.
Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device and executioner's blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al-Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber's slaughter of Westerners.
In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. offered not blood and iron--other than an obligatory "the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail"--but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The president wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeleine Albright proud, without the Churchillian "victory at any cost" rhetoric. Good luck.
For years, gay-rights activists and relief workers in Africa have complained that the U.S. did not take the lead in combating the world-wide spread of AIDS. President Bush now offers to spearhead the rescue of the world's infected, with $15 billion in American help in hopes that the world's financial powers--perhaps Japan, China and the European Union--might match or trump that commitment.
Nongovernmental organizations clamor about the unfairness of world trade that left the former Third World with massive debts run up by crooked dictators and complicit Western profiteers. President Bush now talks not of extending further loans to service their spiraling interest payments, but rather of outright grants to clean the slate and thus offer the impoverished a new start.
International women's rights groups vie for the world's attention to stop the shameful international trafficking in women and children, whether as chattel or sexual slaves. The president now pledges to organize enforcement to stop both the smugglers and the predators on the innocent.
For a half century, liberals rightly deplored the old realpolitik in the Middle East, as America and Europe supported autocratic right-wing governments on the cynical premises that they at least promised to keep pumping oil and kept out communists. Now President Bush not only renounces such past opportunism, but also confesses that "for too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability." He promises not complacency that ensures continual oppression, but radical changes that lead to freedom.
The Taliban and Saddam Hussein were once the United Nations' twin embarrassments, rogue regimes that thumbed their noses at weak U.N. protestations, slaughtered their own, invaded their neighbors, and turned their outlands into terrorist sanctuaries. Now they are gone, despite either U.N. indifference or veritable opposition to their removal. The United States sought not dictators in their place, but consensual government where it had never existed.
What was the response to Mr. Bush's new multifaceted vision? He was met with stony silence, followed by about seven seconds of embarrassed applause, capped off by smug sneers in the global media. Why so?
First, the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes. Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience.
Second, urging democratic reforms in Palestine, as Mr. Bush also outlined, is antithetical to the very stuff of the U.N., an embarrassing reminder that nearly half of its resolutions in the past half-century have been aimed at punishing tiny democratic Israel at the behest of its larger,more populous--and dictatorial--Arab neighbors. The contemporary U.N., then, has become not only hypocritical, but also a bully that hectors Israel about the West Bank while it gives a pass to a nuclear, billion-person China after swallowing Tibet; wants nothing to do with the two present dangers to world peace, a nuclear North Korea and soon to follow theocratic Iran; and idles while thousands die in the Sudan.
Third, the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. A multibillion dollar oil-for-food fraud, replete with kickbacks (perhaps involving a company that his own son worked for), grew unchecked on his watch, as a sordid array of Baathist killers, international hustlers and even terrorists milked the national petroleum treasure of Iraq while its own people went hungry. In response, Mr. Annan stonewalls, counting on exemption from the New York press on grounds of his unimpeachable liberal credentials. Meanwhile, he prefers to denigrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," but neither advocates reinstitution of a "legal" Saddam nor offers any concrete help to Iraqis crafting consensual society. Like the U.N. membership itself, he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.
Our own problems with the U.N. should now be viewed in a context of ongoing radical change here in the United States, as all the previous liberal assumptions of the past decades undergo scrutiny in our post 9/11 world. There are no longer any sacred cows in the eyes of the American public. Ask Germany and South Korea as American troops depart, Saudi Arabia where bases are closed, and the once beaming Yasser Arafat, erstwhile denizen of the Lincoln Bedroom, as he now broods in his solitary rubble bunker.
Deeds, not rhetoric, are all that matter, as the once unthinkable is now the possible. There is no intrinsic reason why the U.N. should be based in New York rather than in its more logical utopian home in Brussels or Geneva. There is no law chiseled in stone that says any fascist or dictatorial state deserves authorized membership by virtue of its hijacking of a government. There is no logic to why a France is on the Security Council, but a Japan or India is not. And there is no reason why a group of democratic nations, unapologetic about their values and resolute to protect freedom, cannot act collectively for the common good, entirely indifferent to Syria's censure or a Chinese veto.
So Americans' once gushy support for the U.N. during its adolescence is gone. By the 1970s we accepted at best that it had devolved into a neutral organization in its approach to the West, and by the 1980s sighed that it was now unabashedly hostile to freedom. But in our odyssey from encouragement, to skepticism, and then to hostility, we have now reached the final stage--of indifference. Americans do not get riled easily, so the U.N. will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. Indeed, millions have already shrugged, tuned out, and turned the channel on it.
Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
These are surreal times. Americans in Iraq are beheaded on videotape. Russian children are machine-gunned in their schools. The elderly in Israel continue to be blown apart on buses. No one--whether in Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh, Bali, Tel Aviv or New York--is safe from the Islamic fascist, whose real enemy is modernism and Western-inspired freedom of the individual.
Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device and executioner's blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al-Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber's slaughter of Westerners.
In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. offered not blood and iron--other than an obligatory "the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail"--but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The president wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeleine Albright proud, without the Churchillian "victory at any cost" rhetoric. Good luck.
For years, gay-rights activists and relief workers in Africa have complained that the U.S. did not take the lead in combating the world-wide spread of AIDS. President Bush now offers to spearhead the rescue of the world's infected, with $15 billion in American help in hopes that the world's financial powers--perhaps Japan, China and the European Union--might match or trump that commitment.
Nongovernmental organizations clamor about the unfairness of world trade that left the former Third World with massive debts run up by crooked dictators and complicit Western profiteers. President Bush now talks not of extending further loans to service their spiraling interest payments, but rather of outright grants to clean the slate and thus offer the impoverished a new start.
International women's rights groups vie for the world's attention to stop the shameful international trafficking in women and children, whether as chattel or sexual slaves. The president now pledges to organize enforcement to stop both the smugglers and the predators on the innocent.
For a half century, liberals rightly deplored the old realpolitik in the Middle East, as America and Europe supported autocratic right-wing governments on the cynical premises that they at least promised to keep pumping oil and kept out communists. Now President Bush not only renounces such past opportunism, but also confesses that "for too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability." He promises not complacency that ensures continual oppression, but radical changes that lead to freedom.
The Taliban and Saddam Hussein were once the United Nations' twin embarrassments, rogue regimes that thumbed their noses at weak U.N. protestations, slaughtered their own, invaded their neighbors, and turned their outlands into terrorist sanctuaries. Now they are gone, despite either U.N. indifference or veritable opposition to their removal. The United States sought not dictators in their place, but consensual government where it had never existed.
What was the response to Mr. Bush's new multifaceted vision? He was met with stony silence, followed by about seven seconds of embarrassed applause, capped off by smug sneers in the global media. Why so?
First, the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes. Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience.
Second, urging democratic reforms in Palestine, as Mr. Bush also outlined, is antithetical to the very stuff of the U.N., an embarrassing reminder that nearly half of its resolutions in the past half-century have been aimed at punishing tiny democratic Israel at the behest of its larger,more populous--and dictatorial--Arab neighbors. The contemporary U.N., then, has become not only hypocritical, but also a bully that hectors Israel about the West Bank while it gives a pass to a nuclear, billion-person China after swallowing Tibet; wants nothing to do with the two present dangers to world peace, a nuclear North Korea and soon to follow theocratic Iran; and idles while thousands die in the Sudan.
Third, the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. A multibillion dollar oil-for-food fraud, replete with kickbacks (perhaps involving a company that his own son worked for), grew unchecked on his watch, as a sordid array of Baathist killers, international hustlers and even terrorists milked the national petroleum treasure of Iraq while its own people went hungry. In response, Mr. Annan stonewalls, counting on exemption from the New York press on grounds of his unimpeachable liberal credentials. Meanwhile, he prefers to denigrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," but neither advocates reinstitution of a "legal" Saddam nor offers any concrete help to Iraqis crafting consensual society. Like the U.N. membership itself, he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.
Our own problems with the U.N. should now be viewed in a context of ongoing radical change here in the United States, as all the previous liberal assumptions of the past decades undergo scrutiny in our post 9/11 world. There are no longer any sacred cows in the eyes of the American public. Ask Germany and South Korea as American troops depart, Saudi Arabia where bases are closed, and the once beaming Yasser Arafat, erstwhile denizen of the Lincoln Bedroom, as he now broods in his solitary rubble bunker.
Deeds, not rhetoric, are all that matter, as the once unthinkable is now the possible. There is no intrinsic reason why the U.N. should be based in New York rather than in its more logical utopian home in Brussels or Geneva. There is no law chiseled in stone that says any fascist or dictatorial state deserves authorized membership by virtue of its hijacking of a government. There is no logic to why a France is on the Security Council, but a Japan or India is not. And there is no reason why a group of democratic nations, unapologetic about their values and resolute to protect freedom, cannot act collectively for the common good, entirely indifferent to Syria's censure or a Chinese veto.
So Americans' once gushy support for the U.N. during its adolescence is gone. By the 1970s we accepted at best that it had devolved into a neutral organization in its approach to the West, and by the 1980s sighed that it was now unabashedly hostile to freedom. But in our odyssey from encouragement, to skepticism, and then to hostility, we have now reached the final stage--of indifference. Americans do not get riled easily, so the U.N. will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. Indeed, millions have already shrugged, tuned out, and turned the channel on it.
Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
By George! Does this guy ever have cojones! (or is totally oblivious, one or the other)
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Following is a transcript of President Bush's address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly:
Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen:
Thank you for the honor of addressing this General Assembly. The American people respect the idealism that gave life to this organization. And we respect the men and women of the U.N., who stand for peace and human rights in every part of the world.
Welcome to New York City. And welcome to the United States of America.
During the past three years, I've addressed this General Assembly in a time of tragedy for our country, and in times of decision for all of us. Now we gather at a time of tremendous opportunity for the U.N., and for all peaceful nations.
For decades the circle of liberty and security and development has been expanding in our world. This progress has brought unity to Europe, self-government to Latin America and Asia and new hope to Africa.
Now we have the historic chance to widen the circle even further, to fight radicalism and terror with justice and dignity, to achieve a true peace, founded on human freedom.
The United Nations and my country share the deepest commitments. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim the equal value and dignity of every human life.
That dignity is honored by the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, protection of private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance.
That dignity is dishonored by oppression, corruption, tyranny, bigotry, terrorism and all violence against the innocent.
And both of our founding documents affirm that this bright line between justice and injustice, between right and wrong, is the same in every age and every culture and every nation.
Wise governments also stand for these principles for very practical and realistic reasons.
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
We know that oppressive governments support terror, while free governments fight the terrorists in their midst.
We know that free peoples embrace progress and life instead of becoming the recruits for murderous ideologies.
Every nation that wants peace will share the benefits of a freer world. And every nation that seeks peace has an obligation to help build that world.
Eventually there is no safe isolation from terror networks or failed states that shelter them or outlaw regimes or weapons of mass destruction.
Eventually there is no safety in looking away, seeking the quiet life by ignoring the struggles and oppression of others.
In this young century, our world needs a new definition of security. Our security is not merely found in spheres of influence or some balance of power, the security of our world is found in the advancing rights of mankind.
These rights are advancing across the world. And across the world, the enemies of human rights are responding with violence.
Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.
They believe the dictators should control every mind and tongue in the Middle East and beyond.
They believe that suicide and torture and murder are fully justified to serve any goal they declare. And they act on their beliefs.
In the last year alone, terrorists have attacked police stations and banks and commuter trains and synagogues and a school filled with children.
This month in Beslan, we saw once again how the terrorists measure their success: in the death of the innocent and in the pain of grieving families.
Svetlana Deibesov (ph) was held hostage, along with her son and her nephew. Her nephew did not survive. She recently visited the cemetery and saw what she called the little graves. She said, "I understand that there is evil in the world, but what have these little creatures done?"
Members of the United Nations, the Russian children did nothing to deserve such awful suffering and fright and death. The people of Madrid and Jerusalem and Istanbul and Baghdad have done nothing to deserve sudden and random murder.
These acts violate the standards of justice in all cultures and the principles of all religions. All civilized nations are in this struggle together, and all must fight the murderers.
We're determined to destroy terror networks wherever they operate, and the United States is grateful to every nation that is helping to seize terrorist assets, track down their operatives and disrupt their plans.
We're determined to end the state sponsorship of terror, and my nation is grateful to all that participated in the liberation of Afghanistan.
We're determined to prevent proliferation and to enforce the demands of the world, and my nation is grateful to the soldiers of many nations who have helped to deliver the Iraqi people from an outlaw dictator.
The dictator agreed in 1991 as a condition of a cease-fire to fully comply with all Security Council resolutions, then ignored more than a decade of those resolutions.
Finally, the Security Council promised serious consequences for his defiance. And the commitments we make must have meaning. When we say serious consequences, for the sake of peace there must be serious consequences. And so a coalition of nations enforced the just demands of the world.
Defending our ideals is vital, but it is not enough. Our broader mission as U.N. members is to apply these ideals to the great issues of our time.
Our wider goal is to promote hope and progress as the alternatives to hatred and violence. Our great purpose is to build a better world beyond the war on terror.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have established a global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
In three years, the contributing countries have funded projects in more than 90 countries and pledged a total of $5.6 billion to these efforts. America has undertaken a $15 billion effort to provide prevention and treatment and humane care in nations afflicted by AIDS, placing a special focus on 15 countries where the need is most urgent.
AIDS is the greatest health crisis of our time and our unprecedented commitment will bring new hope to those who have walked too long in the shadow of death.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have joined together to confront the evil of trafficking in human beings. We're supporting organizations that rescue the victims, passing stronger anti-trafficking laws and warning travelers that they will be held to account for supporting this modern form of slavery. Women and children should never be exploited for pleasure or greed anywhere on Earth.
Because we believe in human dignity, we should take seriously the protection life from exploitation under any pretext.
In this session, the U.N. will consider a resolution sponsored by Costa Rica calling for a comprehensive ban on human cloning.
I support that resolution, and urge all governments to affirm a basic ethical principle: No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have changed the way we fight poverty, curb corruption and provide aid.
In 2002, we created the Monterrey Consensus, a bold approach that links new aid from developed nations to real reform in developing ones.
And through the Millennium Challenge Account, my nation is increasing our aid to developing nations that expand economic freedom and invest in the education and health of their own people.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have acted to lift the crushing burden of debt that limits the growth of developing economies and holds millions of people in poverty.
Since these efforts began in 1996, poor countries with the heaviest debt burdens have received more than $30 billion of relief. And to prevent the build-up of future debt, my country and other nations have agreed that international financial institutions should increasingly provide new aid in the forms of grants rather than loans.
Because we believe in human dignity, the world must have more effective means to stabilize regions in turmoil and to halt religious violence and ethnic cleansing.
We must create permanent capabilities to respond to future crises.
The United States and Italy have proposed a global peace operations initiative. G-8 countries will train 75,000 peacekeepers, initially from Africa, so they can conduct operations on that continent and elsewhere. The countries of the G-8 will help this peacekeeping force with deployment and logistical needs.
At this hour, the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide.
The United States played a key role in efforts to broker a cease- fire, and we're providing humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese people. Rwanda and Nigeria have deployed forces in Sudan to help improve security so aid can be delivered. The Security Council adopted a resolution that supports an expanded African Union force to help prevent further bloodshed and urges the government of Sudan to stop flights by military aircraft in Darfur.
We congratulate the members of the council on this timely and necessary action. I call on the government of Sudan to honor the cease-fire it signed and to stop the killing in Darfur.
Because we believe in human dignity, peaceful nations must stand for the advance of democracy. No other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace.
We've witnessed the rise of democratic governments in predominantly Hindu and Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian cultures.
Democratic institutions have taken root in modern societies and in traditional societies.
When it comes to the desire for liberty and justice, there is no clash of civilizations. People everywhere are capable of freedom and worthy of freedom.
Finding the full promise of representative government takes time, as America has found in two centuries of debate and struggle. Nor is there only one form of representative government because democracies, by definition, take on the unique character of the peoples that create them.
Yet this much we know with certainty: The desire for freedom resides in every human heart. And that desire cannot be contained forever by prison walls or martial laws or secret police; over time and across the Earth, freedom will find a way.
Freedom is finding a way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we must continue show our commitment to democracies in those nations. The liberty that many have won at a cost must be secured.
As members of the United Nations, we all have a stake in the success of the world's newest democracies. Not long ago, outlaw regimes in Baghdad and Kabul threatened the peace and sponsored terrorists. These regimes destabilized one of the world's most vital and most volatile regions. They brutalized their peoples in defiance of all civilized norms.
Today the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of all of us.
The Afghan people are showing extraordinary courage under difficult conditions. They're fighting to defend their nation from Taliban holdouts and helping to strike against the terrorist killers. They're reviving they're economy. They've adopted a constitution that protects the rights of all, while honoring their nation's most cherished traditions.
More than 10 million Afghan citizens, over 4 million of them women, are now registered to vote in next month's presidential election. To any who still would question whether Muslim societies can be democratic societies, the Afghan people are giving their answer.
Since the last meeting of this General Assembly, the people of Iraq have regained sovereignty. Today in this hall, the prime minister of Iraq and his delegation represent a country that has rejoined the community of nations.
The government of Prime Minister Allawi has earned the support of every nation that believes in self-determination and desires peace. And under Security Council Resolutions 1511 and 1546, the world is providing that support.
The U.N. and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister Allawi's request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free.
A democratic Iraq has ruthless enemies because terrorists know the stakes in that country. They know that a free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will be a decisive blow against their ambitions for that region.
So a terrorist group associated with Al Qaida is now one of the main groups killing the innocent in Iraq today, conducting a campaign of bombings against civilians and the beheadings of bound men.
Coalition forces now serving in Iraq are confronting the terrorists and foreign fighters so peaceful nations around the world will never have to face them within our own borders.
Our coalition is standing beside a growing Iraqi security force. The NATO alliance is providing vital training to that force. More than 35 nations have contributed money and expertise to help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.
And as the Iraqi interim government moves toward national elections, officials from the United Nations are helping Iraqis build the infrastructure of democracy. These selfless people are doing heroic work and are carrying on the great legacy of Sergio de Mello.
As we've seen in other countries, one of the main terrorist goals is to undermine, disrupt and influence election outcomes. We can expect terrorist attacks to escalate as Afghanistan and Iraq approach national elections.
The work ahead is demanding, but these difficulties will not shake our conviction that the future of Afghanistan and Iraq is a future of liberty. The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat; it is to prevail.
The advance of freedom always carries a cost paid by the bravest among us. America mourns the losses to our nation and to many others. And today I assure every friend of Afghanistan and Iraq and every enemy of liberty, we will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled.
These two nations will be a model for the broader Middle East, a region where millions have been denied basic human rights and simple justice. For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived.
We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.
This commitment to democratic reform is essential to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate corruption and maintain ties to terrorist groups.
The long-suffering Palestinian people deserve better. They deserve true leaders capable of creating and governing a free and peaceful Palestinian state.
Goodwill and hard effort can achieve the promise of the road map to peace. Those who would lead a new Palestinian state should adopt peaceful means to achieve the rights of their people and create the reformed institutions of a stable democracy.
Arab states should end incitement in their own media, cut off public and private funding for terrorism, and establish normal relations with Israel.
Israel should impose a settlement freeze, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations.
And world leaders should withdraw all favor and support from any Palestinian ruler who fails his people and betrays their cause.
The democratic hopes we see growing in the Middle East are growing everywhere. In the words of the Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, "We do not accept the notion that democracy is a Western value. To the contrary, democracy simply means good government rooted in responsibility, transparency and accountability."
Here at the United Nations, you know this to be true.
In recent years, this organization has helped to create a new democracy in East Timor and the U.N. has aided other nations in making the transition to self-rule.
Because I believe the advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world, today I propose establishing a democracy fund within the United Nations. This is a great calling for this great organization.
The fund would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by instituting the rule of law and independent courts, a free press, political parties and trade unions.
Money from the fund would also help set up voter precincts in polling places and support the work of election monitors.
To show our commitment to the new democracy fund, the United States will make an initial contribution. I urge all other nations to contribute as well.
I have outlined a broad agenda to advance human dignity and enhance the security of all of us. The defeat of terror, the protection of human rights, the spread of prosperity, the advance of democracy: These causes, these ideals call us to great work in the world. Each of us alone can only do so much. Together we can accomplish so much more.
History will honor the high ideals of this organization. The Charter states them with clarity: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
Let history also record that our generation of leaders followed through on these ideals, even in adversity. Let history show that in a decisive decade, members of the United Nations did not grow weary in our duties or waver in meeting them.
I'm confident that this young century will be liberty's century. I believe we will rise to this moment because I know the character of so many nations and leaders represented here today, and I have faith in the transforming power of freedom.
May God bless you.
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Following is a transcript of President Bush's address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly:
Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen:
Thank you for the honor of addressing this General Assembly. The American people respect the idealism that gave life to this organization. And we respect the men and women of the U.N., who stand for peace and human rights in every part of the world.
Welcome to New York City. And welcome to the United States of America.
During the past three years, I've addressed this General Assembly in a time of tragedy for our country, and in times of decision for all of us. Now we gather at a time of tremendous opportunity for the U.N., and for all peaceful nations.
For decades the circle of liberty and security and development has been expanding in our world. This progress has brought unity to Europe, self-government to Latin America and Asia and new hope to Africa.
Now we have the historic chance to widen the circle even further, to fight radicalism and terror with justice and dignity, to achieve a true peace, founded on human freedom.
The United Nations and my country share the deepest commitments. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim the equal value and dignity of every human life.
That dignity is honored by the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, protection of private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance.
That dignity is dishonored by oppression, corruption, tyranny, bigotry, terrorism and all violence against the innocent.
And both of our founding documents affirm that this bright line between justice and injustice, between right and wrong, is the same in every age and every culture and every nation.
Wise governments also stand for these principles for very practical and realistic reasons.
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
We know that oppressive governments support terror, while free governments fight the terrorists in their midst.
We know that free peoples embrace progress and life instead of becoming the recruits for murderous ideologies.
Every nation that wants peace will share the benefits of a freer world. And every nation that seeks peace has an obligation to help build that world.
Eventually there is no safe isolation from terror networks or failed states that shelter them or outlaw regimes or weapons of mass destruction.
Eventually there is no safety in looking away, seeking the quiet life by ignoring the struggles and oppression of others.
In this young century, our world needs a new definition of security. Our security is not merely found in spheres of influence or some balance of power, the security of our world is found in the advancing rights of mankind.
These rights are advancing across the world. And across the world, the enemies of human rights are responding with violence.
Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.
They believe the dictators should control every mind and tongue in the Middle East and beyond.
They believe that suicide and torture and murder are fully justified to serve any goal they declare. And they act on their beliefs.
In the last year alone, terrorists have attacked police stations and banks and commuter trains and synagogues and a school filled with children.
This month in Beslan, we saw once again how the terrorists measure their success: in the death of the innocent and in the pain of grieving families.
Svetlana Deibesov (ph) was held hostage, along with her son and her nephew. Her nephew did not survive. She recently visited the cemetery and saw what she called the little graves. She said, "I understand that there is evil in the world, but what have these little creatures done?"
Members of the United Nations, the Russian children did nothing to deserve such awful suffering and fright and death. The people of Madrid and Jerusalem and Istanbul and Baghdad have done nothing to deserve sudden and random murder.
These acts violate the standards of justice in all cultures and the principles of all religions. All civilized nations are in this struggle together, and all must fight the murderers.
We're determined to destroy terror networks wherever they operate, and the United States is grateful to every nation that is helping to seize terrorist assets, track down their operatives and disrupt their plans.
We're determined to end the state sponsorship of terror, and my nation is grateful to all that participated in the liberation of Afghanistan.
We're determined to prevent proliferation and to enforce the demands of the world, and my nation is grateful to the soldiers of many nations who have helped to deliver the Iraqi people from an outlaw dictator.
The dictator agreed in 1991 as a condition of a cease-fire to fully comply with all Security Council resolutions, then ignored more than a decade of those resolutions.
Finally, the Security Council promised serious consequences for his defiance. And the commitments we make must have meaning. When we say serious consequences, for the sake of peace there must be serious consequences. And so a coalition of nations enforced the just demands of the world.
Defending our ideals is vital, but it is not enough. Our broader mission as U.N. members is to apply these ideals to the great issues of our time.
Our wider goal is to promote hope and progress as the alternatives to hatred and violence. Our great purpose is to build a better world beyond the war on terror.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have established a global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
In three years, the contributing countries have funded projects in more than 90 countries and pledged a total of $5.6 billion to these efforts. America has undertaken a $15 billion effort to provide prevention and treatment and humane care in nations afflicted by AIDS, placing a special focus on 15 countries where the need is most urgent.
AIDS is the greatest health crisis of our time and our unprecedented commitment will bring new hope to those who have walked too long in the shadow of death.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have joined together to confront the evil of trafficking in human beings. We're supporting organizations that rescue the victims, passing stronger anti-trafficking laws and warning travelers that they will be held to account for supporting this modern form of slavery. Women and children should never be exploited for pleasure or greed anywhere on Earth.
Because we believe in human dignity, we should take seriously the protection life from exploitation under any pretext.
In this session, the U.N. will consider a resolution sponsored by Costa Rica calling for a comprehensive ban on human cloning.
I support that resolution, and urge all governments to affirm a basic ethical principle: No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have changed the way we fight poverty, curb corruption and provide aid.
In 2002, we created the Monterrey Consensus, a bold approach that links new aid from developed nations to real reform in developing ones.
And through the Millennium Challenge Account, my nation is increasing our aid to developing nations that expand economic freedom and invest in the education and health of their own people.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have acted to lift the crushing burden of debt that limits the growth of developing economies and holds millions of people in poverty.
Since these efforts began in 1996, poor countries with the heaviest debt burdens have received more than $30 billion of relief. And to prevent the build-up of future debt, my country and other nations have agreed that international financial institutions should increasingly provide new aid in the forms of grants rather than loans.
Because we believe in human dignity, the world must have more effective means to stabilize regions in turmoil and to halt religious violence and ethnic cleansing.
We must create permanent capabilities to respond to future crises.
The United States and Italy have proposed a global peace operations initiative. G-8 countries will train 75,000 peacekeepers, initially from Africa, so they can conduct operations on that continent and elsewhere. The countries of the G-8 will help this peacekeeping force with deployment and logistical needs.
At this hour, the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide.
The United States played a key role in efforts to broker a cease- fire, and we're providing humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese people. Rwanda and Nigeria have deployed forces in Sudan to help improve security so aid can be delivered. The Security Council adopted a resolution that supports an expanded African Union force to help prevent further bloodshed and urges the government of Sudan to stop flights by military aircraft in Darfur.
We congratulate the members of the council on this timely and necessary action. I call on the government of Sudan to honor the cease-fire it signed and to stop the killing in Darfur.
Because we believe in human dignity, peaceful nations must stand for the advance of democracy. No other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace.
We've witnessed the rise of democratic governments in predominantly Hindu and Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Christian cultures.
Democratic institutions have taken root in modern societies and in traditional societies.
When it comes to the desire for liberty and justice, there is no clash of civilizations. People everywhere are capable of freedom and worthy of freedom.
Finding the full promise of representative government takes time, as America has found in two centuries of debate and struggle. Nor is there only one form of representative government because democracies, by definition, take on the unique character of the peoples that create them.
Yet this much we know with certainty: The desire for freedom resides in every human heart. And that desire cannot be contained forever by prison walls or martial laws or secret police; over time and across the Earth, freedom will find a way.
Freedom is finding a way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we must continue show our commitment to democracies in those nations. The liberty that many have won at a cost must be secured.
As members of the United Nations, we all have a stake in the success of the world's newest democracies. Not long ago, outlaw regimes in Baghdad and Kabul threatened the peace and sponsored terrorists. These regimes destabilized one of the world's most vital and most volatile regions. They brutalized their peoples in defiance of all civilized norms.
Today the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of all of us.
The Afghan people are showing extraordinary courage under difficult conditions. They're fighting to defend their nation from Taliban holdouts and helping to strike against the terrorist killers. They're reviving they're economy. They've adopted a constitution that protects the rights of all, while honoring their nation's most cherished traditions.
More than 10 million Afghan citizens, over 4 million of them women, are now registered to vote in next month's presidential election. To any who still would question whether Muslim societies can be democratic societies, the Afghan people are giving their answer.
Since the last meeting of this General Assembly, the people of Iraq have regained sovereignty. Today in this hall, the prime minister of Iraq and his delegation represent a country that has rejoined the community of nations.
The government of Prime Minister Allawi has earned the support of every nation that believes in self-determination and desires peace. And under Security Council Resolutions 1511 and 1546, the world is providing that support.
The U.N. and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister Allawi's request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free.
A democratic Iraq has ruthless enemies because terrorists know the stakes in that country. They know that a free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will be a decisive blow against their ambitions for that region.
So a terrorist group associated with Al Qaida is now one of the main groups killing the innocent in Iraq today, conducting a campaign of bombings against civilians and the beheadings of bound men.
Coalition forces now serving in Iraq are confronting the terrorists and foreign fighters so peaceful nations around the world will never have to face them within our own borders.
Our coalition is standing beside a growing Iraqi security force. The NATO alliance is providing vital training to that force. More than 35 nations have contributed money and expertise to help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.
And as the Iraqi interim government moves toward national elections, officials from the United Nations are helping Iraqis build the infrastructure of democracy. These selfless people are doing heroic work and are carrying on the great legacy of Sergio de Mello.
As we've seen in other countries, one of the main terrorist goals is to undermine, disrupt and influence election outcomes. We can expect terrorist attacks to escalate as Afghanistan and Iraq approach national elections.
The work ahead is demanding, but these difficulties will not shake our conviction that the future of Afghanistan and Iraq is a future of liberty. The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat; it is to prevail.
The advance of freedom always carries a cost paid by the bravest among us. America mourns the losses to our nation and to many others. And today I assure every friend of Afghanistan and Iraq and every enemy of liberty, we will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled.
These two nations will be a model for the broader Middle East, a region where millions have been denied basic human rights and simple justice. For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived.
We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.
This commitment to democratic reform is essential to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate corruption and maintain ties to terrorist groups.
The long-suffering Palestinian people deserve better. They deserve true leaders capable of creating and governing a free and peaceful Palestinian state.
Goodwill and hard effort can achieve the promise of the road map to peace. Those who would lead a new Palestinian state should adopt peaceful means to achieve the rights of their people and create the reformed institutions of a stable democracy.
Arab states should end incitement in their own media, cut off public and private funding for terrorism, and establish normal relations with Israel.
Israel should impose a settlement freeze, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations.
And world leaders should withdraw all favor and support from any Palestinian ruler who fails his people and betrays their cause.
The democratic hopes we see growing in the Middle East are growing everywhere. In the words of the Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, "We do not accept the notion that democracy is a Western value. To the contrary, democracy simply means good government rooted in responsibility, transparency and accountability."
Here at the United Nations, you know this to be true.
In recent years, this organization has helped to create a new democracy in East Timor and the U.N. has aided other nations in making the transition to self-rule.
Because I believe the advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world, today I propose establishing a democracy fund within the United Nations. This is a great calling for this great organization.
The fund would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by instituting the rule of law and independent courts, a free press, political parties and trade unions.
Money from the fund would also help set up voter precincts in polling places and support the work of election monitors.
To show our commitment to the new democracy fund, the United States will make an initial contribution. I urge all other nations to contribute as well.
I have outlined a broad agenda to advance human dignity and enhance the security of all of us. The defeat of terror, the protection of human rights, the spread of prosperity, the advance of democracy: These causes, these ideals call us to great work in the world. Each of us alone can only do so much. Together we can accomplish so much more.
History will honor the high ideals of this organization. The Charter states them with clarity: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
Let history also record that our generation of leaders followed through on these ideals, even in adversity. Let history show that in a decisive decade, members of the United Nations did not grow weary in our duties or waver in meeting them.
I'm confident that this young century will be liberty's century. I believe we will rise to this moment because I know the character of so many nations and leaders represented here today, and I have faith in the transforming power of freedom.
May God bless you.
May their dream come true.
The Iraqi adventure.
What does Mr. Novak know about Iraq and the decision makers in the USA? If his information about how decision makers in America are thinking, is similar to his information about Iraq, then I guess we are safe and there’s no need to worry.
I couldn’t help wondering after reading this article that he wrote recently, could it be true? Can the American administration be this stupid?! Or is it that some people in the white house are worried about their political future and do not want to invest too much in the Iraqi issue? Are the terrorist really winning? they don’t seem to be the majority to us, Iraqis! Should we forget everything about freedom and democracy? Was Iraq just an adventure?? Or is this man just blinded by wishful thinking?
It’s not just that I do not want to believe Mr. Novak, but I seriously question if he understands how serious the war against terrorists and extremists in Iraq is. He seems to think that it was a nice dream and an adventure that America can walk out on just like that to avoid more losses. He, as well as many "anti-war" people, do not understand how the war to topple Saddam and establish democracy in Iraq can be a part of the war on terror. I do believe, however, that the American official are not that stupid to deal so lightly with such a critical issue.
Iraq is not an adventure. Toppling Saddam was never the main reason for the war and should never be thought of as this. Removing Saddam could’ve been done 13 years ago by just preventing him from using his helicopters in the uprising. It could’ve been done also by deploying the Iraqi opposition groups into the north, which together with the Peshmerga and with air support from the coalition could’ve done the job. It could’ve been done through a military coup planned by the CIA or the M.I.6. After all, Saddam regime proved to be much weaker than it looked. It certainly didn’t need hundreds of thousands of coalition soldiers and all this massive power. Besides, if it was the main reason, then why didn’t the American troops pull out of Iraq soon after doing it?
The task of liberating Iraq and establishing democracy in it is nothing like any limited war America had fought before. It’s as serious as WW1 and WW2, and even more serious than the cold war. Anyone who thinks that America can pull out and be settled with toppling Saddam and stopping his WMDs project proves to be shortsighted, the least to say.
But I’m not going to discus the shallowness of such pattern of thinking here. I’ll just try to explore the psychology behind it. It seems that Mr. Novak says what most of the MSM and the people who oppose the American presence in Iraq are saying lately as a new approach to the Iraqi issue by stating that it was not all wrong but the expectations were higher than what they should’ve been, and therefore we should pull out now. It seems that they see it this way:
We have a country ruled by a mad dictator who keep trying to produce WMDs, so our government should move and remove him. We can try while we are there to establish a democracy, as it seems like a nice idea and worth trying. First because fanatic Muslims may try to fill the power gap, and second to make the war on terror more easy to win by depriving the terrorists of what used to be a safe heaven for them once and a source of funds, and to form a model for democracy in Iraq that attracts the people of other Muslim and Arab nations and encourage them to topple dictatorships in their countries or at least change their ways of thinking in a way that makes them reject terrorism and dictatorship, and prefer the western model for a state.
Alas, it was a beautiful dream but it remains just a dream. The possibility of success in establishing democracy in Iraq or anywhere in the ME is almost negligible.
This is of course not the administration fault directly (although they are mistaken in their previous judgment) otherwise it could be corrected. It’s the fault of the Iraqi people, or let’s say it’s just their nature. These people do not believe in democracy and freedom. They want a dictator like Saddam and they already miss him. That’s what many of them have said on TV. They are also mainly extremist religious people who prefer a theocracy to a democracy. We should be reasonable and respect their wishes. They are stupid ignorant fanatics and we should respect that! Anyone who tries to argue this and help these people to change their lives prove that he doesn’t respect their stupid sick culture. Who are we to decide what the others want, as obviously Muslims and Arabs are different from the rest of human beings? How stupid it is to believe that they are like us; peaceful and reasonable people! They are Arabs and Muslims for God’s sake! When were Arab or Muslims ever civilized people?
We should pull out now. As for how to combat terrorism, how to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or any future government in Iraq from doing exactly what Saddam was doing, for how to face the terrorist-funding organizations in Saudi Arabia and the ME . . . well, it seems very difficult after pulling out from Iraq, but let’s not worry about that now!
I look at such theory and then I watch TV and it seems convincing. Only I want freedom and democracy and so do most of my friends and relatives, and the vast majority of Iraqis I’ve known all my life. So do hundreds of thousands of IP, ING members, hundreds of political organizations and millions of Iraqis who are defending the American administration’s dream (you know, because we can’t have a dream!), and who wait anxiously for the upcoming elections. Are we not Arabs and Muslims? Or were we brainwashed by the American propaganda to believe that their dream was ours?
NO Mr. Novak, you are WRONG and I’m being very nice here. This is not an adventure and this is not a neo-conservative dream. This is OUR dream. The dream of millions of oppressed Iraqis who saw what dictatorship can do and who were dying to witness a moment of freedom, to live a peaceful life, a life that carries hope and make dreams not that impossible, a life similar to yours, or is it too much to hope for? We had this dream before anyone heard about neo -conservatives.
I don’t believe what you say about the American administration Mr. Novak, but even if you were right, you can give up on your dream. We won’t give up on ours, and may God help us.
-By Ali.
The Iraqi adventure.
What does Mr. Novak know about Iraq and the decision makers in the USA? If his information about how decision makers in America are thinking, is similar to his information about Iraq, then I guess we are safe and there’s no need to worry.
I couldn’t help wondering after reading this article that he wrote recently, could it be true? Can the American administration be this stupid?! Or is it that some people in the white house are worried about their political future and do not want to invest too much in the Iraqi issue? Are the terrorist really winning? they don’t seem to be the majority to us, Iraqis! Should we forget everything about freedom and democracy? Was Iraq just an adventure?? Or is this man just blinded by wishful thinking?
It’s not just that I do not want to believe Mr. Novak, but I seriously question if he understands how serious the war against terrorists and extremists in Iraq is. He seems to think that it was a nice dream and an adventure that America can walk out on just like that to avoid more losses. He, as well as many "anti-war" people, do not understand how the war to topple Saddam and establish democracy in Iraq can be a part of the war on terror. I do believe, however, that the American official are not that stupid to deal so lightly with such a critical issue.
Iraq is not an adventure. Toppling Saddam was never the main reason for the war and should never be thought of as this. Removing Saddam could’ve been done 13 years ago by just preventing him from using his helicopters in the uprising. It could’ve been done also by deploying the Iraqi opposition groups into the north, which together with the Peshmerga and with air support from the coalition could’ve done the job. It could’ve been done through a military coup planned by the CIA or the M.I.6. After all, Saddam regime proved to be much weaker than it looked. It certainly didn’t need hundreds of thousands of coalition soldiers and all this massive power. Besides, if it was the main reason, then why didn’t the American troops pull out of Iraq soon after doing it?
The task of liberating Iraq and establishing democracy in it is nothing like any limited war America had fought before. It’s as serious as WW1 and WW2, and even more serious than the cold war. Anyone who thinks that America can pull out and be settled with toppling Saddam and stopping his WMDs project proves to be shortsighted, the least to say.
But I’m not going to discus the shallowness of such pattern of thinking here. I’ll just try to explore the psychology behind it. It seems that Mr. Novak says what most of the MSM and the people who oppose the American presence in Iraq are saying lately as a new approach to the Iraqi issue by stating that it was not all wrong but the expectations were higher than what they should’ve been, and therefore we should pull out now. It seems that they see it this way:
We have a country ruled by a mad dictator who keep trying to produce WMDs, so our government should move and remove him. We can try while we are there to establish a democracy, as it seems like a nice idea and worth trying. First because fanatic Muslims may try to fill the power gap, and second to make the war on terror more easy to win by depriving the terrorists of what used to be a safe heaven for them once and a source of funds, and to form a model for democracy in Iraq that attracts the people of other Muslim and Arab nations and encourage them to topple dictatorships in their countries or at least change their ways of thinking in a way that makes them reject terrorism and dictatorship, and prefer the western model for a state.
Alas, it was a beautiful dream but it remains just a dream. The possibility of success in establishing democracy in Iraq or anywhere in the ME is almost negligible.
This is of course not the administration fault directly (although they are mistaken in their previous judgment) otherwise it could be corrected. It’s the fault of the Iraqi people, or let’s say it’s just their nature. These people do not believe in democracy and freedom. They want a dictator like Saddam and they already miss him. That’s what many of them have said on TV. They are also mainly extremist religious people who prefer a theocracy to a democracy. We should be reasonable and respect their wishes. They are stupid ignorant fanatics and we should respect that! Anyone who tries to argue this and help these people to change their lives prove that he doesn’t respect their stupid sick culture. Who are we to decide what the others want, as obviously Muslims and Arabs are different from the rest of human beings? How stupid it is to believe that they are like us; peaceful and reasonable people! They are Arabs and Muslims for God’s sake! When were Arab or Muslims ever civilized people?
We should pull out now. As for how to combat terrorism, how to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or any future government in Iraq from doing exactly what Saddam was doing, for how to face the terrorist-funding organizations in Saudi Arabia and the ME . . . well, it seems very difficult after pulling out from Iraq, but let’s not worry about that now!
I look at such theory and then I watch TV and it seems convincing. Only I want freedom and democracy and so do most of my friends and relatives, and the vast majority of Iraqis I’ve known all my life. So do hundreds of thousands of IP, ING members, hundreds of political organizations and millions of Iraqis who are defending the American administration’s dream (you know, because we can’t have a dream!), and who wait anxiously for the upcoming elections. Are we not Arabs and Muslims? Or were we brainwashed by the American propaganda to believe that their dream was ours?
NO Mr. Novak, you are WRONG and I’m being very nice here. This is not an adventure and this is not a neo-conservative dream. This is OUR dream. The dream of millions of oppressed Iraqis who saw what dictatorship can do and who were dying to witness a moment of freedom, to live a peaceful life, a life that carries hope and make dreams not that impossible, a life similar to yours, or is it too much to hope for? We had this dream before anyone heard about neo -conservatives.
I don’t believe what you say about the American administration Mr. Novak, but even if you were right, you can give up on your dream. We won’t give up on ours, and may God help us.
-By Ali.
