EIW EXCLUSIVE: TRANSCRIPT OF EXCERPTS FROM BILL CLINTON'S APRIL 15 ADDRESS TO NEW YORK CONFERENCE BOARD
Clinton: Bush Admin Shouldn't Try to "Jail, Kill or Occupy" All Opponents of Iraq War
On April 15, in a speech before the Conference Board, a business roundtable group in New York, former President Bill Clinton came out with a broad-ranging criticism of the Bush Administration's unilateralism. Clinton's remarks were the Luncheon Keynote of an all-day meeting, whose invited guests included Attorney General of New York, Elliot Spitzer; former Clinton Administration advisor Leon Panneta; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. President Clinton was interviewed by veteran journalist Marvin Kalb for the talk.
The Toronto Globe and Mail and Agence France Presse ran some quotes of Clinton's criticism of the unilateralist strategy of the Bush Administration, but remarkably, his address received no print coverage in the United States, outside of a brief condemnation by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. Kurtz blasted the former President for trying to steal Bush's moment of glory.
The excerpts here one foreign policy constitute about half of Clinton address:
Kalb: Mr. President, when you left officeand I think there were a lot of people
President Clinton: Who were happy. [general laughter]
Kalb: There were some, probably.
There were a lot of people who thought that the '90s were a period of extraordinary peace and prosperity for this country. And then, suddenly, with a change in the Presidency, with 9/11, with the Enron scandal, with the United States having to fight in two wars in two yearsthat this whole country has simply turned around; that it's not only a new chapter, it's a new book. And that we have to begin to think, of our own personal responsibilities in a different way, and certainly leadership has to think about its responsibilities in a new way. Do you, generally speaking, share this large overview of where the U.S. is in the world today?
President Clinton: No.
Kalb: How do you see it?
President Clinton: I think thatfirst of all I think that we look at it differently, because one big, bad thing happened9/11and because, the economy got down, instead of got up; instead of continuing on its upward trajectory. But, the ultimate, the fundamental, larger realities of the world, areand werethe same. And we cover different things that politicians do and say, than we did.
I had one guyone onlyin your business, who had a very prominent role in one of the networks, call me in the week after Sept. 11, and he said, "Nobody else is going to call you, but I will," he said. "You warned us about this, for years and years and years. And we never covered it, because we felt secure and we preferred to cover all the stuff that beat you up, and diverted the American people from these. But, he said, I just went back and pulled the list of what you said, and what you did, and when you did it." And he said, "I just want you to knowno one else will say this to youbut I'm going to do it: I was shocked, and grateful."
But, that's not the point I want to make. The point I want to make is [audience laughter]No, no, no, listen! No, the point I want to make is: We want to believe that everything was good then, so we must have had rose-colored glasses on. And now things are terrible, and we have to, you know, gird ourselves up and gut through it. I think both of those things are artificial constructs. That's the point I want to make.
America's transition into the new millennium, is basically marked by the interdependence of the world. In an interdependent world, where there are lots of conflicting forces, you cannot have an unmixed passage. It can't be all sweetness and light. And basically, what happened is, in the '90s, we highlighted the benefits of interdependence to usof open borders, and easy travel, and more trade, and immigration, and shared scientific research, and all that. And we felt the benefits. Underneath that, there were instances of terrorist acts, and threats of weapons of mass destruction, and examples of all kinds of other bad things that happen. But, basically, the upside was uppermost.
Now, on Sept. 11, the al-Qaeda used the forces of interdependence: They used open borders, easy travel, easy access to information and technology; they used easy immigration, some of these people had been here a year and a halfand they killed 3,100 people from 70 countries, including over 200 other Muslims, here.
So, what I think it's important for our citizens to do, particularly those of you who have the luxury of occupying positions, where you can develop perspective and then communicate it, is neither to make the picture too rosy, nor to make it too dark. On balance, you should still feel very positive about the arc of history, and the trajectory on which we are moving.
And while, yes, it is terrifying to think that something like this could happen again, when Leon [Panetta] and I were kids, we had to practice going into fallout shelters, because we were waiting for the next atomic bomb to fall, that would end the United States and civilization as we knew it.
So, I think, you know, we've got a little to get a grip, here. And, that's why I'm glad you're having this meeting: Because one of the things that really has bothered me since Sept. 11, that we sometimes act like we can't walk and chew gum at the same time. And so, if we've got to fight terrorism, God forbid that we should have to ask serious questions about whether America is where it ought to be, and we can make America better, and we can all hold each other accountable for making the kind of decisions we have to make.
Look, this is serious, what we're going through: But, it's not the end of the world. There has never been a problem-free era, and if you believe the teachings of any of the great monotheistic religions, there will never be a problem-free area, as long as people are alive on this planet, because none of us are perfect, and if we don't have any problems, we're going to make up some. But, on balance, the trajectory of the world is, I think, positive, since the end of the Cold War. And, while there were problems underneath the rosiness of the 1990s, there's a lot rosiness underneath the problems of this decade. And we shouldn't be blind to that. We should learn to deal with both the dis-integrative and the integrative elements of an interdependent world.
And, the thing I think, that's kind of disoriented all of us, is that, there isn't a governing theory. Like, we knew what the governing theory was in the Cold War: We had to beat the Communists and preserve freedom, and therefore it was perfectly consistent to have a strong military and a powerful economy. And, to have a military presence around the world, and also to help give money to other countriesstruggling, poor countriesbecause of that.
What I think we need, is a paradigm, here, that says: We live in an interdependent world, and we have to turn it into an integrated global community. Because, if we're basically all exposed to each other, we have to live in a world with shared benefits, shared responsibilities, and shared values. And so, every issue that comes up, whether it's what should we do in Iraq; what should we do on this securities issue; you name it, I see it through that paradigm. I ask myself, "Will this help to make America stronger, and will it help to move us from an interdependent world to an integrated community?"
And I'd like to see us have a framework here, that enables us to look at the '90s realisticallythe good and bad, the positive and the negativeand look at this decade. Now therefore, we must have had rose-colored glasses on then, let's be grim but do right, now: That's a very foolish way of looking at it, and it grossly distorts reality in both those decades.
Kalb: Mr. President, listening to your description of this paradigm, that you just outlined, I have to conclude that you are profoundly in disagreement, with those people in the administration right now, who feel very negatively toward the UN? Who sort of want to
President Clinton: Yeah, I am! I'm totally in disagreement! And, I'll tell you why: Keep in mind, I supported the resolution in the Congress, to give the President the authority to use force, if the UN inspection process broke down, and I did it, as soon as he said he would go to the UN first.
But, I think, again, we all. Sometimes, when people are under stress, they hate to think. And, it's the time when they most need to think. If you think about some personal period in your lifeforget about politics: Think about something in your life that happened to youmaybe you were a kid; maybe it happened last weekwhen you had great stress, and fear. That's the time when you most needed to think, but it's the time when it's most difficult to think. That's what we should be doing now.
So, look at the UN. We liked the UN a lot, after Sept. 11! When the whole world said, "We'll go to Afghanistan, and help you get Osama bin Laden." There're German and French soldiers in Afghanistan today. Does the President want 'em to come home? Secretary Rumsfeld want 'em to leave? We don't want 'em to help us find bin Laden any more, since they didn't agree with our timetable in Iraq? It's a complicated world out therethey don't work for us.
You know, Hans Blix was begging for more time, and they said, "We think he ought to have it." And our U.S. says, "No, we're going to liberate Iraq, and we've got a resolution which gives us the authority to it, and so, we've determined that we're going to do it now. And, if you don't like it, we'll get even with you, when it's over."
I mean, the outcome of this conflict was never in doubt, was it? We all knew, the military analysis showed, that Iraq had less than half the military capacity, at the beginning of this conflict, than they had at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991. And, I would like to say something nice: I think, the President, and Secretary Rumsfeld, and our military, really did the right thing in taking another week to ten days to conclude it, because they were able to save thousands and thousands of civilian lives; and, if we're going to, in effect, occupy Iraq, we wanted to do it with the least cost of life on both sides. And I think they deserve a lot of credit for not killing people that they could have killed, if they had wanted to get this over in a week, instead of 21 days. And I give that to them. I'm grateful to them for that.
But, I think the idea that we should somehow scorn everyone who disagreed with us, because we decided that we would set the timetable for an invasion, instead of letting Mr. Blix do it; when all these countries came to our aid after 9/11, and many still have soldiers, at risk, in Afghanistan with us, is a gross overreaction.
Let me just give you one historical parallel: Some time in the early '60sI can't remember whenCharles de Gaulle kicked NATO out of Paris. Y'all remember that? Anybody remember what year that was?
Kalb: 1964, but I'm not positive.
President Clinton: Yeah. He kicked NATO, the central office of NATO out of Paris.
Kalb: Military.
President Clinton: The military. France withdrew from the NATO central planning. They stayed in NATO, but they refused... [inaudible]. And so, NATO had to move from Paris to Brussels. Well, did we just quit talking to France? I mean, that was a much bigger deal, than them saying, "Would you please wait three or four days, or three or four weeks, or something, before you do this. What's the hurry?"
So, I think, you know. Again, I say, you make misjudgments, if your paradigm is wrong. Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on Sept. 11. It gave us the right to interpret all future events, in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to Hell.
And, so, again, I say: We should be more upbeat. We should show a little more self-confidence here. I mean, this is not like World War II, where people were being bombed every day in London, and Churchill told everybody to go about their business. You know? He didn't say, be scared, and be mad at everybody that disagrees with us. Or, when the IRA blew up that hotel in Brighton, before the Tory Party conference, and Maggie Thatcher walked up the steps of the hotel the next day, and gave her speech! This is not a right-left thing; this is about psychology. She said, "We're just going on here! This is not the end of the world. I'm going back to that hotel!"
And so, I think we need a little more balance here. I just think it'sI can't get all that I think to bad-mouth the UN, becauseit wasn't just the French and the Germans, by the way. We didn't have a majority on the Security Council. And, it was a timing issue, so I'm glad our people did a good thing: Saddam's gone and good riddance. But, I think for us to look around, and try to get even with the rest of the world, because they didn't agree with us on the timingwhen they all stood with us in Afghanistan and they all voted for that Iraqi resolution [1441] would be an error.
Over the long run, we have to bring the world together. We can't run it. If you cannot. In an interdependent world, if you cannot kill, jail, or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later, you have to make a deal. Right? Sooner or later you have to make a deal. [applause] And, the deal you make, in this case, is an institutional one.
So, yeah, I'm still pretty much for the UN, and I still think Kofi Annan's a good guy, who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kalb: Were it not for the timing, would you have supported military action against Saddam Hussein?
President Clinton: What do you mean?
Kalb: If the timing had been more to your liking; in other words, if the United States had been prepared to wait another month, would you have supported military use? Because you spoke in terms of giving sanctions another try.
President Clinton: No, no. First of all, once any uswhether it was the United States Congress, or meendorsed the legislation in the Congresswhich I did do, when President Bush said he would go to the UNthen, in effect, we all supported it, because we said to him, "We trust you to make the decision." And, once he made the decision, our troops were in the field, and I did strongly support it.
Let me be explicit: I think that if we had given it a little more time, there is a chance, either that he would have disarmed; or, if we had gone in, then we would have had far more members of the Security Council with us. That's what Tony Blair was trying to do, with his last resolution; but he never passed it, because we couldn't get the Mexicans and the Chileans, and a few others to go with it, on the Security Council. I think for completely other reasons: I think the Mexicans are pretty mad at us, right now. Because, they think we've dumped on them and turned away from them, and abandoned them, and I don't think it had much to do with the merits of Iraq. But, for whatever happened, we didn't get Mexico, Chile, and some other members.
I basically had Blair's position on this. I was I wanted, if we went into military action, I was hoping we'd have a majority of the Security Council, because my objective was to disarm Saddam; to do it in a way that strengthened, not weakened the international community; and hopefully, to do it in way that preserved, not weakened, the U.S.-European alliance.
It didn't work out that way. But, now that it's been done, President Bush has a whole new chance to do it again. That's another thing, I think. One of the things that happens, when you win a fight
Kalb: What do you mean by that?
President Clinton: Well, because, when you win a fight, you get to both basicallythe victors get to write all the history; and you also, everybody accepts the fait accompli, and so they start again.
Kalb: You think the President wants to fight?
President Clinton: No. I didn't say that at all!
Kalb: What do you mean?
President Clinton: I said, that we now have a new opportunity to use the rebuilding of Iraq, the resolution of the crisis in North Koreawhich I always thought would be resolved as soon as this thing was over, because I don't think the North Koreans want to drop bombs on anybody: We have a chance to use these things in a way that unites the world. And I think the President and his team, I think, ought to really be thinking about that. You know, they can use this, these two issuesthe rebuilding of Iraq and the defusing of the Korean crisisto strengthen the international community and gain greater support for American leadership, and let everybody feel better about where they are, when it's over. And also, we'll be, coincidentally, safer. And I hope they'll do that.
Kalb: So, the whole idea, for example, of thinking of putting all of this public pressure, in a way, on Syria, is what, in your view: right or wrong?
President Clinton: I don't have an opinion about it, because I don't know what the facts are. In order to have an intelligent opinion about whether this is the right thing to dowhat Syria has done has not been published, or whether they have stored Saddam's weapons of mass destructions, or whether they've done something elseI just don't know enough about what.
Kalb: But Secretary Rumsfeld has talked about this for a couple of weekends now.
President Clinton: Well, I think, you know, they obviously. Robert Kaplan, the journalist who wrote a wonderful book called Balkan Ghosts, has written a book called Warrior Politics. And, basically, he arguesit sounds to me like it's Rumsfeld playbook, in some ways. He basically argues in this book: "Look, people never cooperate, unless they're forced to cooperate. We're the world's only superpower; we have the only significant military; nobody can really fool with usso we should force them to cooperate." He basically says, "I like what Clinton did in Bosnia and Kosovo, but he should have done it sooner, and he should have done a lot more of it." In other words, we should just throw our weight around, because we can, and nobody can stop us. And we have no larger imperialist objectives, so we should do that. That's what Kaplan says.
So, you wonder whether or not, that is the operative theory here. I think, for Mr. Wolfowitz, it was much more Iraq-specific, at least, because he alwaysto be fairWolfowitz always believed the argument behind Tom Friedman's editorials in the New York Times, that if we depose Saddam Hussein, it would shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East; it would increase our leverage to make a just peace between the Israelis and Palestinians; and it'd give the Iraqis a new life. So, all I'm saying is, I think they ought to use this to make that happen.
On Syria, I cannot comment, 'cause I do not know what the facts are. If the facts were bad enough, I'd be for them throwing their weight around; if the facts are not bad enough, I'd be for us showing some more magnanimity and diplomacy in victory. But, I don't know what the facts are.
Kalb: Do you believe, Mr. President, that we're now, with the Iraq war behind us, still in a war against terrorism, that may require the use of military force again?
President Clinton: Lord yes! Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, Saddam Hussein didn't kill anybody here on Sept. 11, as far as we know. I mean, apparently, half the American people think he was somehow involved. Now, you're in the media: If they think that, you should ask yourself why, and whether the news media has any responsibility for that. If there is no evidence that he did.
This is a different kettle of fish. Let me say, why I supported the UN resolution, and I supported the members of my party, who voted for giving the President authority to use force. I guess I should back up, and say that.
After Sept. 11, all Americans, and any Americans who cared about this, would have done a searching reassessment of where we were in our attempts to deal with terrorist networks; and where we were in our attempts to deal with weapons of mass destruction, whichin the dry language of the Pentagonare "force multipliers." A jet airplane, full of jet fuel is a force multiplier. Better they were on the ground with an Uzi, right? So, that's what weapons of mass destruction are.
So, the argument in the UN against Saddam Hussein, was not that the people of Iraq should be liberated, it is, that as far as we knew, going all the way back to 1991, he still had substantial, undocumented stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
Kalb: You accept that, don't you?
President Clinton: Well, let me say this: That's what the intelligence told me, too. So, I do want to say this in defenseyou can tell where I disagree with the current administration, in defense of themif no substantial chemical and biological stocks are found, I can tell youand Leon will tell you the same thingwe were all told the same thing: We were all told, that based on the accounting of '91, and what we found when I was President, and destroyed, in the inspections process; and what we estimated we destroyed, when we bombed for four days in '98, when he kept inspectors out, that there was, in all probability, still a substantial stock of chemical and biological agents. It was not clear whether they were weaponized, and whether they could be. Because a lot of you were saying to yourself, "Well, if they had it, why didn't use it, when he was about to go bye-bye?"
Kalb: Uh huh. You thought he would use it? I mean, didn't you?
President Clinton: No, I thought. I said the biggest dangerI didn't know whether he would or not. I thought that once he knew he was history, there was a strong incentive, either to use it, or give it away. Just like, once we got the inspectors in there, and he knew there was some chance to avoid being deposed, he had every incentive not to use it, or give it away. So, when we invaded, we switched the incentives.
Now, none of this was done.
The following options, or explanations, are available: Number one, he never had it in the first place; number two, he had it, and willfully decided not to use it on us, in which case, he's not as bad as we thought; number three, he had the stocks, which he had to disclose, but inadequate delivery capacitywhich is quite possible. It's still quite possible, they'll find the stuff. They haven't been there that long. It's a big country. Number four, President Bush's strategy worked: That is, they convinced the people who were in charge of this stuff, not to use it, by telling them that if they didn't, they'd take care of them, and if they did, they'd put them on trial as war criminals. Or they could have, the military action itself, could have interrupted the capacity to operationalize it.
I don't know. But, I'm just saying, I don't think you can criticize the President for trying to act on the belief that they have a substantial amount of chemical and biological stocks, because that's what the British military intelligence says, that's what a lot other intelligence says, that's what I was always told. And I can just tell you, if you're sitting there in the Oval Office, it is just irresponsible not to pretend, "I just got a feeling that you're all wrong!" [laughter]
Think how embarrassing it'll be for me, on television, if we go in there, and none of it turns out to be there. A President can't do that.
So, President Bush would have had to act, on what seemed to be the weight of years of evidence about the chemical and biological stuff.
But, here's what I'd like to say about it: What did we think he had? We thought he had botulinum, several thousand gallons, that would be used to support botulism; aflatoxin; maybe a little anthrax, maybe not, I think; VX nerve gas; ricin; and, of course the mustard gas that he used on the Iranians and the Kurds, in the '80s. And, some significant delivery capacity. Now, that's what years of intelligence seemed to indicate that he had.
We had no way of knowing for surefor surewhat was destroyed in the four days of bombing raids in '98. And, I thought Blix was doing quite a nice job, just by what he did. He went after the missiles, and trying to deal with the question of whether Saddam had the drone, that was capable of squirting the chemical weapons. And Blix had a very good sense of what the volumes of chemical and biological stocks were. So, I thought it was the right thing to do, to go after those in Iraq.
And, I thought it was the right thing to do, when we were in: We began to use more and more of the Nunn-Lugar money, which was originally used to bring the nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union back into Russia, take them down, destroy them, contain them. We used, some years, we used the money that you paid for that, you taxpayers, to employ half of the 40,000 Russian scientists and technologists involved in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, because the Russian economy was down, and they were going to go to work for other people, if we didn't do it.
And last year, one of the most important things that came up, last year, by the way, was that Chet Edwards of Texas, after 2001, introduced the legislation to try to increase the Nunn-Lugar expenditures and to cover all countries that would willingly work with us, whether they had nuclear, biological, or chemical stocks, so that we could go in, and destroy what could be destroyed, protect what needed to be protected, and dramatically reduce the stocks.
If we went to a war in Iraq over chemical and biological weaponswhether or not they're found, and in what volumeI think what you should be thinking about is: What next? And I would like to see what Chet Edwards proposed last yearwhich the administration and the majority party in the Congress opposebecome the law of the land, this year. Because that could save you a lot more Iraqs in the future.
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