[A-List] US state: ruling class split

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

'America can lead the world, but not dominate and run it'

This is an edited version of Bill Clinton's speech

Thursday October 3, 2002
The Guardian

I take it almost everybody in this room supports what Prime Minister
Blair and I did in Kosovo. It was a clear and present emergency, you had
a million people being driven from their homes, but in the end, even
though we had all the Muslim world for it and most of the developing
nations for it, all of Nato for it, we could not get a UN resolution
because of the historic ties of the Serbs to the Russians. So we went in
anyway and as soon as the conflict was over the Russians came in and did
a very responsible job participating with the United States in an
international UN sanction peacekeeping environment.

You also see the same thing when we, the United States, do not
contribute in my view as much as we should to international
institutions. You know I have a difference in opinion with the
Republicans about whether we should be involved in the Kyoto protocol,
the comprehensive test ban treaty, the international criminal court, and
all these things, but these things stand for something larger, which is
our larger obligation to create an integrated world. You cannot have an
integrated world and have your say all the time. And America can lead
the world towards that but we cannot dominate and run the world in that
direction. There is a big difference.

So, having said that, do we want to strengthen these institutions? Yes.
Why? Because they contribute to an integrated global community.

One thing we know is that whenever possible the outcome is likely to be
better if Great Britain and the United States, if the United States and
Europe, are working together. We have half a century of evidence to
support that.

I am profoundly grateful for the partnership that we enjoyed in the
years when I served as president.

I am profoundly grateful for Britain's involvement with the United
States and with others in diplomatic efforts and where necessary in
military ones. You were there when we turned back Slobodan Milosevic and
the tide of ethnic cleansing which threatened every dream people had of
a Europe united, democratic and at peace for the first time in history.

You were there in 1991 when the United States and the global alliance
turned back Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. When we attacked Iraq
after Saddam Hussein threw the weapons inspectors out in 1998 you were
there. And then when you were working towards peace in Northern Ireland
we were there.

Whatever America did for Britain and Northern Ireland in the Irish peace
process, you repaid one-hundredfold in the aftermath of September 11.
Prime Minister Blair's firm determined voice bolstered our own resolve,
his calm and caring manner soothed our aching hearts; and the British
people pierced our darkness with the light of your friendship. In the
aftermath of September 11 we went to work against terror in a world
rudely awakened to its universal threat, and much more willing to
support the actions necessary to prevail.

I still believe our most pressing security challenge is to finish the
job against al-Qaida and its leaders in Afghanistan and any other place
that they might hide. I would support even committing war forces to
that. We have only about half as many forces in Afghanistan today that
we had in Bosnia after the conflict was over and we were keeping the
peace. I applaud Britain's commitment to finish the job in not only the
conflict but to winning the peace, to staying in Afghanistan with an
international force and with the kind of support necessary to make sure
that we do not have the disaster that occurred when the west walked away
from them 20 years ago.

A few words about Iraq. I support the efforts of the prime minister and
President Bush to get tougher with Saddam Hussein. I strongly support
the prime minister's determination if at all possible to act through the
UN. We need a strong new resolution calling for unrestricted
inspections. The restrictions imposed in 1998 are not acceptable and
will not do the job. There should be a deadline and no lack of clarity
about what Iraq must do. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime
poses a threat to his people, his neighbours and the world at large
because of his biological and chemical weapons and his nuclear
programme. They admitted to vast stores of biological and chemical
stocks in 1995. In 1998, as the prime minister's speech a few days ago
made clear, even more were documented.

In December 1998 after the inspectors were kicked out along with the
support of Prime Minister Blair and the British military we launched
Operation Desert Fox for four days. An air assault on those weapons of
mass destruction, the air defence and regime protection forces. This
campaign had scores of targets and successfully degraded both the
conventional and non-conventional arsenal. It diminished Iraq's threat
to the region and it demonstrated the price to be paid for violating the
security council's resolutions. It was the right thing to do, and it is
one reason why I still believe we had to stay at this business until we
get all those biological and chemical weapons out of there.

What has happened in the last four years? No inspectors, a fresh
opportunity to rebuild the biological and chemical weapons programme and
to try and develop some sort of nuclear capacity. Because of the
sanctions, Saddam Hussein is much weaker militarily than he was in 1990,
while we are stronger, but that probably has given him even more
incentive to try and amass weapons of mass destruction. I agree with
many Republicans and Democrats in America and many here in Britain who
want to go through the United Nations to bring the weight of world
opinion together, to bring us all together, to offer one more chance to
the inspections.

President Bush and Secretary Powell say they want a UN resolution too
and are willing to give the inspectors another chance. Saddam Hussein,
as usual, is bobbing and weaving. We should call his bluff. The United
Nations should scrap the 1998 restrictions and call for a complete and
unrestricted set of inspections with a new resolution. If the
inspections go forward, and I hope they will, perhaps we can avoid a
conflict. In any case the world ought to show up and say we meant it in
1991 when we said this man should not have a biological, chemical and
nuclear weapons programme. And we can do that through the UN. The
prospect of a resolution actually offers us the chance to integrate the
world, to make the United Nations a more meaningful, more powerful, more
effective institution. And that's why I appreciate what the prime
minister is trying to do, in trying to bring America and the rest of the
world to a common position. If he was not there to do this I doubt if
anyone else could, so I am very, very grateful.

If the inspections go forward I believe we should still work for a
regime change in Iraq in non-military ways, through support of the Iraqi
opposition and in trying to strengthen it.

The west has a lot to answer for in Iraq. Before the Gulf war, when
Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds and the Iranians, there was hardly a
peep in the west because he was in Iran. Evidence has now come to light
that in the early 1980s the United States may have even supplied him
with the materials necessary to start the bio-weapons programme. And in
the Gulf war the Shi'ites in the south-east of Iraq were urged to rise
up and then were cruelly abandoned to their fate. We cannot walk away
from them or the proved evidence that they are capable of
self-government and entitled to a decent life.

This is a difficult issue. Military action should always be a last
resort, for three reasons; because today Saddam Hussein has all the
incentive in the world not to use or give these weapons away but with
certain defeat he would have all the incentive to do just that; because
a pre-emptive action today, however well justified, may come back with
unwelcome consequences in the future; and because I have done this, I
have ordered these kinds of actions. I do not care how precise your
bombs and your weapons are, when you set them off, innocent people will
die.

Weighing the risks and making the calls are what we elect leaders to do,
and I can tell you that as an American, and a citizen of the world, I am
glad that Tony Blair will be central to weighing the risks and making
the call. For the moment the rest of us should support his efforts in
the United Nations and until they fail we do not have to cross bridges
we would prefer not to cross.