Make friends, not terrorists, Clinton tells Cornell graduates

Full text of the address

By Roger Segelken

Before an estimated 21,000 students, parents and friends, former president Bill Clinton delivers the 2004 Senior Convocation address Robert Barker/University Photography Copyright © Cornell University

Although not an overtly political message, Clinton's suggestions for conducting foreign affairs were a marked alternative to the current administration's path. He told the students, family members and general public who filled an estimated 21,000 seats at Cornell's Schoellkopf Field to build global partnerships so there "are fewer people who will have reason to resent us or to kill us." Most of the world's problems are not amenable to "unilateral solutions," Clinton said, placing his doctrine ("cooperate whenever we can and act alone only when forced to") in clear apposition to pre-emptive war.

The applause that greeted numerous rhetorical points served the dual purpose of registering support and warming audience hands on a chilly, breezy (but bright) morning in Ithaca, where more than one warm-up speaker joked about Cornell's famously frigid climate. The choice of Convocation speakers, made according to tradition by each graduating senior class, had provoked some criticism beforehand. But there were no anti-Clinton protestors in evidence in the stadium, which also will be the site of the university's Commencement exercises Sunday, May 30.

Clinton had begun his half-hour-long talk by mentioning personal links to the university, among them the fact that two former members of his administration were Cornell graduates, Attorney General Janet Reno and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. And, he noted, he had nominated another Cornell graduate, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to become the second female associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court -- although she had forbidden the president to reveal her class year, Clinton joked.

At Cornell University's Senior Convocation May 29, 2004, former U.S. President Bill Clinton poses with, from left, David E. Jackson II, convocation chair; Esther Tang, senior class president and alumni co-president; Ifunanya Maduka, student-elected Cornell trustee; and Russell M. Franklin, alumni co-president. Robert Barker/Cornell University PhotographyCopyright © Cornell University

In his only direct reference to Iraq, Clinton asked for prayers for the families of three Cornellians -- two alumni who died there as members of the U.S. armed forces, and for murdered civilian Nick Berg, "whose only mission in Iraq was to help people," Clinton said.

Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman, a 1977 graduate of the university, introduced Clinton, after noting a long-standing university tradition and a more recent one: The featured speaker at Cornell Commencements, when degrees are actually conferred, is always the university president, rather than an outsider, and the university awards no honorary degrees. Then 20 years ago, said Lehman, the Class of 1984 started the tradition of Convocation and the inviting of distinguished speakers -- among them over the years, scientists, artists and public figures. Following his speech, Clinton was awarded an engraved medallion by Class of '04 Convocation chair David E. Jackson II.

The speech by the former U.S. president from Arkansas had started slowly, as if his metabolism and vocal cords were trying to overcome the cold weather. But he quickly shifted gears to reach the barn-burner pacing and intensity that Clinton audiences have come to expect. He said there is an honest "and intellectually respectable disagreement in America today about whether we should use this moment of unrivaled military, economic and political superiority to go out and get rid of the bad guys in the world … or whether instead we should use this moment to build better frameworks of partnerships. It's an honest disagreement," Clinton said, leaving little doubt which path he prefers.

"If you live in a world where you cannot kill, occupy or imprison all your actual or potential adversaries," Clinton said, "then you have to make a deal. You have to try to build a world with more friends and fewer terrorists."

Although "we're thrown into a world of complete global interdependence," Clinton added, "only half the people are benefiting from it. People all over the world are trying to figure out how to hold on to their religious, their ethnic, their racial, their tribal characteristics that make them proud and give them identity without having to denigrate and dehumanize somebody who's different.

"It is, in some ways, the last, great struggle for humanity on this planet," Clinton said. "If we finally get it together, we can start looking for life in other solar systems. ... Finally we're being called upon to recognize what we have in common in this beautiful, cold, often rainy place with people in arid, hot deserts half a world away."

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"I believe we should do more to fight terror. I believe we should do more on homeland defense. I think we should check more than 5 percent of the containers that come into our ports and airports for chemical and biological and small-scale nuclear weapons. I think we should spend more money with the Russians and others to try to contain the biological and chemical stocks around the world that can get in the wrong hands.

"But if you live in a world where you cannot kill or occupy or imprison all your actual or potential adversaries, then you have to make a deal. You have to try to build a world with more friends and fewer terrorists. That is the purpose of politics, to bring people together when they cannot control each other and they must work together. It is easy to say and hard to do."

"Half the world is living on less than $2 a day, a billion people live on less than $1 a day, a billion people go to bed hungry every night, a billion and a half people never get a single clean glass of water in their lives, 10 million children die every year of completely preventable childhood diseases, one in four of all people who will perish on the Earth this year will die of AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to diarrhea. Most of them are little children who never got a single clean glass of water in their lives. If you solve all these problems, does it mean there will be no terrorists? No. But it means there will be fewer people who will have a reason to hate, to resent, to feel left out and left behind. One hundred and thirty million children never go to school at all. We are sitting here at Cornell celebrating the fact that students from all over the world got great educations -- in a world in which 130 million kids never darken a schoolhouse door anywhere. It would cost us a tiny fraction of what we are spending on defense and homeland defense to put every kid in this world in school for six years. We ought to do it."

"So I believe we need a strategy for terror and a strategy for building more friends and fewer terrorists. And I also believe that we should we try to build the institutions of international cooperation. There is an honest and intellectually respectable disagreement in America today about whether we should use this moment of unrivalled military economic and political superiority to go out and get rid of the bad guys in the world so that when there are other people who achieve parity with us, we'll live in a better world, or whether instead we should use this moment to build better frameworks of partnerships so we'll be more likely to cooperate, and when we're no longer the only military political economic superpower in the world, we'll be treated the way we would like to be treated. It's an honest disagreement."

"We're thrown into a world of complete global interdependence, but only half the people are benefiting from it. People all over the world are trying to figure out how to hold on to their religious, their ethnic, their racial, their tribal characteristics that make them proud and give them identity without having to denigrate and dehumanize somebody who's different. It is in some ways the last great struggle for humanity on this planet. If we finally get it together, we can start looking for life in other solar systems. ... finally were being called upon to recognize what we have in common -- in this beautiful, cold, often rainy place -- with people in arid, hot, Saharan deserts half a world away. "