United Kingdom
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
21 October 2005
Remarks With United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the Blackburn Institute's Frank A. Nix Lecture
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much, Creshema, for that wonderful introduction. That was so gracious and so beautiful. Thank you. And I understand you'll graduate pretty soon and I know great things await you.
And let me just say it's great to be back home in Alabama. I'm especially glad to be here home in Alabama with some of my friends.
Ambassador and Lady Manning of the United Kingdom, I am pleased that both of you could venture out of Washington for a little while in order to visit this great part of the country with me.
And of course, Foreign Secretary Straw and his wife, Mrs. Alice Perkins, who's sitting right here. I think I speak for all the American people when I say that the citizens of Alabama and the people of America are honored that you traveled with us here, across the Atlantic, to be with us in Birmingham -- and in Tuscaloosa. (Laughter.)
America owes the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and you, Mr. Secretary -- an enormous debt of gratitude. Servicemen and women from our two nations are literally working shoulder to shoulder in Iraq and Afghanistan on the front lines of freedom. And I know that America’s military families especially appreciate Britain’s courage and determination in this difficult fight. We have no better friend than Great Britain in this pursuit of freedom and liberty for the world and through that, for peace and security.
(Applause.)
I'm honored to join all of you here today at the University of Alabama to deliver the Blackburn Institute’s Frank Nix Lecture. I want to thank the Board of Trustees, President Witt, Chancellor Portera, all of the Nix family, and especially Dr. John Blackburn and his family, Mrs. Gloria Blackburn and my friend from childhood, Holly Blackburn. They're one of the oldest and dearest friends of my family. I want to thank you for giving me this very special opportunity to return home to Alabama. I just have to say one more word about Dr. Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn was not just a family friend. He was in many my father's mentor. You've done a great deal to my family over the years, Dr. Blackburn, and I'm honored to be back here with you.
(Applause.)
Now, I'm delighted to give this lecture but I'm also looking forward to tomorrow afternoon. (Laughter. Applause.) Because I just know that the Tide is going to roll, roll, roll right over the Tennessee Volunteers.
(Applause.)
I want to thank a number of members of my family who are here with me. My cousin, Yvonne German, and her husband, Roy, are here. My aunt, Genoa McPhatter, who has traveled with me from Norfolk,Virginia. And my aunt and uncle, Connie and Alto Ray, thanks for being here.
(Applause.)
Now, some of you may not know this, but it was actually here in Tuscaloosa at Stillman College, that my grandfather became the first member of my family to earn a college education. Granddaddy Rice was a poor sharecropper’s son in Ewtah, that's E-W-T-A-H, Alabama -- (laughter) -- and when he was somehow in his late teens, early 20s, he decided that he wanted to get book learning. And so he would ask people who came through how a colored man, which was the parlance of the day, might get to college. And he was told about this little college called Stillman College in a place called Tuscaloosa, not far from where he lived. So he saved up his cotton and he went off to Tuscaloosa and he went through one year of college. But then, when the second year came along and he had run out of cotton, they said, "Well, you'll have to leave because you can't pay for your education." My grandfather said, "Well, how are those boys going to school?" And they said, "Well, you see, they have what's called a scholarship and if you wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, then you could have a scholarship, too." And my grandfather said, "Well, that's exactly what I had in mind." (Laughter.) And my family has been Presbyterian and college-educated ever since."
(Laughter. Applause.)
I lived in Tuscaloosa, of course, when my father was the Dean of Students at Stillman College. But my hometown is just up Route 20 in Birmingham. And it's a place that I remember very fondly. It's a place of childhood toys and parties and really, in many ways, a secured childhood because I lived in a nice neighborhood where teachers and parents cared a great deal for the children and where we were all taught that we had every opportunity before us and that even if Birmingham had limited horizons for black kids, our parents didn't have limited horizons for us.
And so we went to Jack and Jill and Tots and Teens and we took flute lessons and piano lessons and ballet lessons and swimming lessons and on Saturdays, French lessons. And our parents gave us a world that despite the world around us was one that was loving and caring and secure.
But despite of my fond memories of Birmingham as a place where I was, as a child, secure. I also remember a place called "Bombingham" -- where I witnessed the denial of democracy in America for so many yearss. It was, after all, the city of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, where blacks were haunted by rebel yells and terrorized by nightriders and accused of burning their own homes.
And, of course, it was the city where my friend Denise McNair, and three other little girls, were blown up one Sunday morning while they were going to Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church. And it was a town where my father and his friends had to bear rifles at the top of the cul-de-sac in the community to keep nightriders out.
Throughout the South, when I was growing up, the organized cruelty of segregation was embodied in custom, encompassed in law, and enforced through brutality. Nevertheless, our Founding Fathers had dug the well of democracy deep in America. They believed that no act of God or fact of nature condemned one man to be the instrument of another. Our Founders knew that human beings are imperfect so they enshrined certain natural rights in our democratic institutions.
The only problem, of course, that was that when the Founding Fathers said, "We the people," they didn't mean me.
Nonetheless, the ideal of justice at the heart of this regime was the mirror that black Americans held in the face of their oppressors. This reflected a stark choice for our entire country: Either the principles of our nation’s Creed were true for everyone -- or they were true for no one.
If these truths were indeed self-evident -- if all men really were created equal -- then it was America that had to change, not America’s democratic ideals.
To be sure, blacks needed partners in government to help remove the unjust obstacles in our path to freedom. And the judges, and the lawmakers, and the bureaucrats in Washington eventually did their part, as did President Lyndon Johnson.
They set new judicial precedents and passed new legislation and enforced our just demands, even at the point of a bayonet in places like Little Rock and Ole Miss, along the bus routes of the Deep South, and at a schoolhouse door here at the University of Alabama.
But make no mistake: Citizenship was not a gift that was given to black Americans. It was a right that was won through the courage and sacrifice of many impatient patriots, weary of hypocrisy, whose demand was "freedom now."
These impatient patriots were iconic leaders like my father's great friend, Fred Shuttlesworth and Bob Moses and, of course, Martin Luther King. There were people like Rosa Parks. There were people, white and black, who just saw that America had to end its own hypocrisy. And they were ordinary citizens who boycotted segregated buses and demanded equality at lunch counters and marched for their civil rights. They knew, too, that the fight against segregation had to be not just in one's heart but in one's own mind. And so the black citizens of America are free today because there are also individuals, like my father and my mother who were teachers, I would call them educational evangelists, who didn't just care for their children and educated them, but taught them that if they worked hard and learned, they could be liberated also by their minds.
Across the empire of Jim Crow, from upper Dixie to the lower Delta, the descendants of slaves shamed our nation with the power of righteousness and redeemed America at last from its original sin of slavery.
By resolving the contradiction at the heart of our democracy, America finally found its voice as a true champion of democracy beyond its shores.
And today, we face the same choice in the world that we once confronted in our country: Either the desire for liberty and democratic rights is true for all human beings or we are to believe that certain peoples actually prefer subjugation.
President Bush has chosen. He believes, as do I, that all people deserve freedom and democracy -- (applause) -- and as he had said, "The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity."
Now, there are cynics who have always doubted the universal appeal of democratic rights. They were once -- people who once believed that blacks were unfit for democracy, somehow too childlike or too unready or too incapable of self-governing. And there have been cynics that thought that democracy would not take hold in other places in the world.
Cynics claimed that "Asian values" would inhibit democracy in East Asia; that Latin culture would impede democracy in South America; that tribal society would negate democracy in Africa; and that despotic traditions would obstruct democracy in the former Soviet Union. These predictions have not come true. To the contrary, in the last fifty years, our world has experienced the most dramatic expansion of democracy in all of human history.
During America’s struggle for civil rights, the world’s democracies were like scattered islands in a hostile sea. But over the past five decades, whenever the tides of oppression have receded, free peoples have emerged to seize their democratic rights.
This enlargement of the democratic world is increasing international security, too. And there is a reason for this: States need more power to ensure stability and safety within their borders. But they also need legitimacy and democracy is the way to create legitimacy.
There was a time when America did not always follow this logic. For 60 years, we often thought that we could achieve security in the Middle East without democracy. And, ultimately, we got neither. And now, we must recognize, as we do in every other region of the world, that democracy is the only path to lasting security.
It is the case that America and the world have been secure when democracy is on the march; and vulnerable when democracy is in retreat. Now, of course, we hear the same cynical voices again that argued about Latin America and about Asia, about the former Soviet Union and, indeed, about minorities in our own country. They argue that the people of the Middle East, perhaps because of their color or their creed or their culture or even perhaps because of their religion, are somehow incapable of democracy.
They falsely characterize the support of democracy as "exporting" democracy, as if democracy were a product that only America manufactures. These cynics say that we are arrogantly imposing our democratic principles on unwilling peoples. But it is the very height of arrogance to believe that political liberty, and rights for women, and freedom of speech, and the rule of law belong only to us. All people deserve these rights and they choose them freely. It is tyranny, not democracy that has to be forced upon people at gunpoint.
So today, impatient patriots are raising their voices for justice across the Middle East. And whenever they gain opportunities to make truly free choices, they are choosing liberty, not oppression. They are choosing the natural desire for life, not the constant fear of death. They are choosing to be ruled by the consent of the governed, not by the coercion of the state. And in some countries, they are beginning to shrine these basic liberties in democratic institutions. At this important time, America is helping every nation in the broader Middle East that embraces the challenges of democracy.
We are supporting the impatient patriots of Afghanistan. Twice now, millions of ordinary Afghans have forded streams and walked miles and waited hours along dusty roads to vote in their country’s free elections. Afghanistan’s progress is amazing the world. But it is far from over. The Afghan people, though, are building their democracy with urgency and they're taking nothing for granted. They expect no less of us, their partners, and we are not going to let them down.
We are also supporting the impatient patriots of Lebanon. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens gathered in Beirut after the brutal murder of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and demanded the withdrawal of Syrian forces.
The United States and France, leading a broad international coalition with a Security Council mandate, helped the people of Lebanon to achieve their goal. And since then, the country has held its first free elections. Everyday it continues to liberate itself, but it must never again be subject to the fear and tyranny of an outside power that seeks to circumscribe its sovereignty.
We are supporting the impatient patriots of the Palestinian territory. For years, Yasser Arafat prevented the Palestinian people from undertaking the democratic reforms that they justly deserved. But since his death, with strong American and international support, the Palestinian people have elected a leader who calls for peace with Israel and recognizes the need to fight terrorism. Now, if both Palestinians and Israelis meet their obligations, there is a true opportunity for peace.
And finally, of course, we are standing together with the impatient patriots of Iraq. When Baghdad was first designed, nearly 1,200 years ago, it was conceived of as the "Round City" where no person would be closer to the center of justice than any other. Today, Iraqis are again reaching for the ideals of the Round City. Over 8 million citizens risked their lives to vote in free elections last January. And even greater numbers of Iraqis turned out courageously last week to vote in their constitutional referendum.
To be sure, Iraqis still face a long, hard path to the democratic future they seek. Historical changes of scope and magnitude of this one are bound to be difficult. Iraq, of course, rests on the major fault lines of religion and ethnicity in the Middle East. The country was held together for most of its history through coercion and repression. Now, despite having known little but tyranny, the Iraqi people are trying to govern themselves through politics, not violence; through compromise, not conflict.
The citizens of Iraq do not want a civil war in their country. It is the terrorists in their midst who seek to make Iraq the spark that ignites a full-scale conflict among Muslims in the Middle East. Iraq’s security forces are fighting this enemy vigorously. Their ranks are growing more capable and America’s men and women in uniform, along with our British and Coalition partners, are performing historically and heroically to help Iraq in this difficult fight.
Now, the key to success is the development of democratic institutions that functions transparently and protects minority rights and serves the interests of all. The daily work of self-governance creates habits of cooperation that enable multiethnic societies to live and to thrive together in peace. Otherwise, someone or some group always gets repressed.
It will take the citizens of Iraq many years to translate the universal ideals of democracy into their own institutions of democracy. But we should note that unlike in our Constitutional Convention, the Iraqis have not made a compromise as bad as the one that made my ancestors 3/5th of a man.
Of all people, then, we in America know that democratization is a long and difficult process, not a singular event. We have no cause for false pride and every reason for humility as we help others along their journey to democracy. But we also know that it is crucial for citizens to lay firm foundations of freedom in the early years of democratic change.
A successful founding enables future generations of impatient patriots to transform their country over time -- not by looking for solutions beyond those institutions, but by appealing to the democratic principles at their very heart. These early years of democratic change in the Middle East, early years still, are vitally important. Now is not the time to falter or fade. We must remain confident, as one American abolitionist was, that "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
Just four years ago, the democrats of the Middle East were hiding in silence, or languishing in prison, or fearing for their very lives. Now, from Ramallah to Beirut to Baghdad, impatient patriots are finding new spaces of freedom to demand their rights and defend their freedom and strengthen their democracies. They are leading their countries to a future of hope and opportunity and dignity for all people.
At one point, not that long ago, the promise of democracy seemed distant here in Alabama, here in Tuscaloosa, here on this campus, and throughout America. But when impatient patriots in this country finally demanded their freedom and their rights, what once seemed impossible suddenly seemed inevitable.
So it was in America. And so it has been in much of the world. And so it shall be in the Middle East.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Taylor, thank you very much for that introduction and thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, and to the University for this invitation, for Alice and me and for David and Catherine Manning to come and join you here in Tuscaloosa in Alabama.
First and profound thanks to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for deciding that she needed to show me some real America. (Laughter. Applause.) So here we are in real America and -- (laughter) -- and tomorrow, Alice and I and David and Catherine Manning are going to this football game. (Laughter.) We've had our instructions. Our luggage has been searched for anything orange. (Laughter. Applause.) And I'm just hoping against hope that we're not invited next to see real America called Tennessee. (Laughter.) Just think about it because people might photograph me cheering the Alabama team. Anyway. (Laughter.)
Just as supporting Blackburn Rovers is a basic human duty, so I understand my duty tomorrow, Secretary of State. And we shall go there and I'm looking forward to Alabama winning and avenging the last occasion when Alabama met Tennessee -- and we won't talk about that. (Laughter.)
Could I also say how delighted I am to be here at the Blackburn Institute, in the presence of Dr. Blackburn and his family. I knew that Dr. Blackburn was a great man the moment that I saw his surname because as you've heard, Dr. Blackburn is or has to be named after the greatest town on earth, some even say the center of the universe, Blackburn, England, my parliamentary district. (Laughter.) My district or constituency, as we say in the United Kingdom, was once one of the world centers for cotton textiles. And cotton from right here in the Deep South of the United States was shipped over to England. It was spun, woven and finished in towns like Blackburn and many others across Lancashire and then exported throughout the world.
During the Civil War, yours, by the way, not ours, which was -- (laughter) -- well, we had one, too, but it was a little earlier -- (laughter) -- anyway, during your Civil War, the northern blockade on Confederate shipping led to the closure of many of the textile mills in my town and across Lancashire and put thousands of citizens out of work, all in short time. But commendably, cotton workers in the vein pledged their support, not for the Confederates but for the fight against slavery and they did so most notably at a meeting in the Free Trade Hall, the center, the capital of Lancashire, Manchester, England, in December 1962.
So the town and the area has long thought about the race issue, even though in those days the community was entirely white. Over the last 40 years, and again, interestingly, because of the cotton connection, Blackburn has become the home to two of the largest Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, hailing from India and from Pakistan. Together today they represent a quarter of the total population. Our home in Blackburn is in a mixed area. From my bedroom, I can, depending on the wind, hear the bells of Blackburn Cathedral competing with the call to prayer from a nearby mosque, opposite across the street is a -- what we would call a Sunday School, a religious school -- after school madrassas.
Now, the achievement of full social and economic equality for the Asian and the black communities in the United Kingdom still has some way to go. But we are proud, above all, of one thing -- immediate civil rights for all -- no argument and no delay. From the moment that the first immigrants settled in the United Kingdom, they got the vote. This was a benign legacy -- and not all of our legacies were benign -- of empire. For this right did not and still does not depend on British citizenship but simply on membership of the Commonwealth.
So while we've had our share of problems, I take it for granted civil rights for all and that's not something, as we heard so eloquently from Secretary Rice, which any African American, above all from the South, could or would ever do. And although I, of course, was familiar with the history here, it was the difference in experiences, which made me unprepared for a moment I shall never, ever forget.
It was at a press conference in London, which I shared with Secretary Rice, in February of this year. And was, I believe, the first overseas tour by the Secretary since her confirmation by the Senate as Secretary of State. I have great admiration, by the way, for your constitutional arrangements but as I said to the Secretary, I think the time that it's taken her to confirm senior appointments through the Senate is one that would certainly drive our Prime Minister completely nuts -- (laughter) -- great man, he is -- and, of course, cause total atrophy in our system because in your system, I think, it can take ten weeks and in our system, it takes all of ten seconds to become Secretary of State. It's one of the values of a monarchy, but I won't go into that. (Laughter.)
Anyway, there we were and the Secretary was making her first overseas tour since becoming Secretary of State, the press conference was taking place in very fine room in the very ornate building that's the British Foreign Office. But for all its importance and the grand surroundings, occasions like that can sometimes be something of a ritual. The Secretary and I are both professionals so we know how to deal with the unexpected from the journalists present at the press conference. But this time, the surprise for me came from the Secretary herself. We've both been asked about democracy in Iraq and the Secretary was, towards the end of an instructive answer about the time it has always taken to build democracy in any society, when there was a brief pause, a quick intake of breath, a change of tone and register and then a phrase that you've just heard in her speech, too, when she said, "When the Founding Fathers said, 'We the people', they didn't mean, me."
And that may sound very familiar here. It was quite a surprise in those different surroundings in London. It's not usual, in any event, for we politicians, especially on the diplomatic beat, to express our real feelings. But there it was, a dozen words with three separate volumes of meaning.
First volume: Even for the United States, it took time to build democracy for all. Second volume: There's some experiences so searing and being black in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s was one such that even if you hold one of the highest offices in the world, those experiences still break through. Third volume: The deep beliefs on which the Secretary's approach and especially her foreign policy is founded, everyone has the right to freedom and democracy, has a great human yearning for progress and that's one of the most powerful forces in the world.
And yes, as I've seen, of this Secretary. Her abiding desire, driving force, is to see that sense and that practice of democracy translated across the world. The Secretary in the speech skated over the kind of compromises, which we in the United Kingdom and the United States and across the so-called developed world, used to make particularly at the time of the Cold War. Some may say those compromises were necessary -- well, that's the future historians. But the compromises were that provided people and leaders were on the side, we didn't inquire too much about the nature of the regimes that they were running.
That world is gone -- or is going. But one of the reasons it's going much faster than I ever thought possible is because of the determination of the Secretary, of President Bush, if I may say, to of my Prime Minister, Prime Minister Blair, so thank you, Secretary.
(Applause.)
And you know, on a slightly lighter note, the Secretary's words so impressed me that I wrote about them in the world's most important newspaper, The Lancashire Evening Telegraph -- (laughter) -- which, as you may have guessed, is based in the heart of my district in Blackburn.
Well, the Secretary and I originally got to know each other when she was acting as the National Security Advisor and in the aftermath of the 11th of September. Two wars have occurred since then in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In both, the United States and the United Kingdom have stood side-by-side and we in the United Kingdom have been very proud to do so. One war, Afghanistan, there was a broad international consensus behind it; the other, Iraq, still causes much controversy.
But both will be judged by historians and decades to come by whether these awful tyrannies -- both Afghanistan and Iraq -- have been transformed and are transformed into stable democracies. The people of Afghanistan and of Iraq deserve their freedom and democracy, just as much as the people of Blackburn and as much as the people here in Tuscaloosa and in Birmingham, Alabama. We cannot build democracy abroad without nurturing and sustaining democracy at home.
At the struggle for civil rights in this town, in Birmingham and in many like it, have a powerful effect on me and on my generation. I was only upper sixth at school, what you would call high school senior year. Martin Luther King was a great hero to us. The American Civil Rights Movement showed that ordinary people could act extraordinarily. For example, the Freedom Riders, James Meredith, insisting on his right to be the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi and all those who took part in sittings and boycotts, who showed that individual actions can change the world for the better.
When Martin Luther King said that, "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability" and when he spoke of the "fierce urgency of now," he inspired us to put our effort into building a fairer and a better future. And the courage of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in profound changes but not, absolutely not, because change at that time, was inevitable. No, the change happened because many individuals inspired by great leadership made choices about their own lives, refusing to accept that the world had inevitably to stay the same.
As now, more than 40 years since Dr. King led the brave marches through the streets of Birmingham, the world has changed much. This generation -- that by the one just a little younger than I am -- is, I'm told, apathetic, bored by politics, not interested in trying to change the world. And the evidence cited includes relatively low participation rates in U.S. Presidential elections and British general and local elections. Declared membership of political parties across Europe has, it's true, halved over 20 years. And this apparent and growing apathy seems to be spread to a degree amongst all age groups, but is worst amongst younger adults. The United Kingdom's Electoral Commission, this week, published research evidence showing that younger people are much less likely to see voting as a civic duty than older age groups. Worse still, our Electoral Commission said that there's evidence suggesting that those opt out of elections now, they continue to do so as they get older.
In my judgment and my experience, the problem is not apathy. I remain optimistic enough to believe that younger people care as much as my generation did, share common values and want to play a part in striving for a better world. And I don't believe for a second that younger people have given up on human progress. As much evidence reflects that in many ways, but let's include the rising membership of campaigning organizations, Greenpeace has seen a six-fold rise in numbers in two decades, and the United Kingdom Amnesty International has half a million members, nearly as much as the membership of Britain's three main political parties put together.
This summer, young people from all around the world put pressure on G-8 leaders to make poverty history. Millions of individuals connected by live worldwide television simultaneously clicked their fingers rhythmically to symbolize the death every three seconds of a child in poverty. This was not just a powerfully simple gesture, it was politics. So we have a puzzle. The evidence in voting patterns and political activities points to apathy. But there's plenty of evidence the other way that the desire for change and betterment is still strong. Indeed, that idealism remains alive and well in the age of globalization.
But for many, globalization in its political manifestation, including 24-7 saturation news coverage, looks distant and detached from people's lives, reinforcing a sense of alienation from conventional politics, diminishing people's sense of worth and dignity. But here's a paradox: Globalization is primarily an economic force and people aren't frightened, fearful, nor diminished by many of the main products of such forces, mainly ubiquitous worldwide consumer brands.
Indeed, the iPod, the can of Coke, recognized designer clothes are all chosen by individuals as a means of expressing their individuality not of undermining it. So how does one explain this paradox of the embrace of the consequences of economic globalization and the rejection of political globalization?
Well, here's my point. Branded consumer products may be global and their idea in the abstract certainly sometimes controversial. But they all have to be tried and consumed and enjoyed personally, locally. And through such experience come to be trusted.
So I believe that we in politics have to understand that it's precisely because of globalization that we have to make political experiences more local, more immediate, more face-to-face. And this need to go local is reinforced by something else rather paradoxical. For the six decades -- six and a half decades from the Russian Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the worldwide clash of ideologies -- of Marxism, Leninism, on the one hand; of capitalism on the other -- provided a ready-made narrative, an explanation, however tendentious for the problems which people were facing at a local level.
But while its history did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, ideology has since then become much less significant, a good thing, in many ways. It's been fundamental, that a great growth of democracy that we heard from the Secretary to the astonishing rise of the Asian economies in India and China. But it's also had the effect of making politics, whether national or international, seem more distant, more technocratic and disconnected. So we politicians, whether from left, right or center, have a big job ahead. And in the international sphere, what we have to do is to harness the idealism, which in many ways, has grown since ideology became less defined and important. And that, in turn, depends on trust, which has to be earned by politicians, whether on an international and national or other stage, but again, which can best be demonstrated locally to show that the actions which we take in the world affect daily lives in our own communities for the better.
And the policies, therefore, which we pursue for peace and stability against terrorism and the drugs trade, for good governance and against corruption, for democracy and against tyranny all, in their way, make contributions to the qualities of life in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham, and in Blackburn, Lancashire.
I came here after a short visit to Jamaica to look at the work, which the United Kingdom is doing to help the government of that country tackle the drugs trade, whose products finish up on our streets, on your streets. This is an active foreign policy, working on behalf of our local communities.
It was a great American politician who said that all politics is local and so that – today, I suggest increasingly, is foreign politics, foreign policy. In my town, as I have explained, there are at least 30,000 people of Pakistani and of Indian heritage. So, the terrible earthquake in South Asia just two weeks ago was a local tragedy to my constituents. And when, with Secretary Powell, I went to New Delhi and to Islamabad, that was a thought in 2002 to try to help prevent a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India. That diplomacy had a real impressing urgency for people back home. And the work we do locally to bind our race and faiths together is part of an international effort to thwart those who would divide us.
Politics, I believe, is only made relevant to people by its locality, the improving school or the safest street. So, we have to demonstrate more consistently, constantly, visibly, how an active foreign policy benefits individuals in Tuscaloosa, in Blackburn, in Birmingham, or in Baghdad. And I’m painfully aware that foreign policy must seem sometimes to be conducted in a parallel universe where we haggle over the fine details of footnotes to draft communiqués and line up for family photographs at international summits.
But we can and we do make a difference to real people. In February 2002, shortly after the fall of the Taliban, I visited Afghanistan. I remember going to a school, a girls' school, talking to some of the pupils and to parents and their teachers. As I was about to leave, one of the teachers, who was a young woman of about 30, insisted on showing me a piece of paper, a piece of photocopied paper that size. I then translated it in front of her and it read that this was a summons to this woman to appear in one of the Taliban’s police courts.
The crime that she had alleged to have committed, for which she admitted she was guilty, was a crime of educating her girls, because educating women was a crime in Afghanistan and the Taliban. I had always been aware of the horror of the Taliban in the abstract, but it was only then that I fully understood how the military action which we have had to take against the Taliban would change not just the individual lives of women like this teacher, but the lives of an entire generation and of generations to come of women in that country.
So yes, though even Afghanistan was controversial, you can come and talk to the women in those schools, you know immediately that we did the right thing and never the wrong thing.
And I’ve seen what can happen when, too, we lack the courage of our convictions. Four months ago, my first dismal duty during the United Kingdom’s Presidency of the European Union was to go to Srebrenica in Bosnia to mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre there, the worst in Europe since the end of the Second World War. More than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim, were taken away and killed as Europe simply had stood to one side and so did the rest of the world.
Here was an example of where the international community had not stayed true to its ideals, where we did not have a strong enough belief in our ability to change the course of events. A terrible price was paid and all I could do, as I witnessed a field laid out with 700 coffins, 10 years after that massacre – only 10 years later were some of those families being allowed to bury their loved ones. All I could do was mourn those deaths and say, on behalf of the European Union and the United Kingdom, "Sorry." I don’t ever want to be in that situation again.
Our foreign policy, I suggest, has then to be one in which governments work to deliver specific benefits in pursuit of a distinctive vision. And it’s a reason why the European Union, for example, has agreed to double aid to Africa. It’s why the European Union and the United States, as part of this so-called Quartet, are working hard to find a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s why the European Union began membership negotiations with Turkey earlier this month, a powerful symbol that differing countries and religions can work together for the common good.
It’s also why the United Nations Security Council has to take extremely seriously the report before it from Prosecutor Mehlis about the circumstances leading to the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the -- who it is likely has been implicated in that murder. And it’s why there are some very important and instructive lessons for Syria and the need for Syria to respect a country the rest of us regard as independent, Lebanon, which, in all its existence, it’s always refused to do so.
And in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in the Europe of values, which we’re building step by step -- and yes, in Iraq, despite all the bitter controversy, we’re working for a better world and in my judgment, making real progress. This week, as we’ve heard from the Secretary, we’ve seen millions defying the terrorists by going out to vote in the Iraqi Referendum, in which they’ve had the right to say no if they want to. And we’ve seen the opening of a fair trial in which Saddam Hussein has the right to say, "Not guilty," if he wishes, a right which he never accorded to any of his victims.
I fully respect people’s rights to dispute our decision to go to war with Iraq. In our democracies, we have the right to argue angrily with one another. But I strongly believe that however frustrating, slow, and daunting the process may be, we are doing something genuinely worthwhile. We’re opening up choice and freedom to people who would otherwise be written off as not deserving the rights, which we enjoy and that is fundamental to my foreign policy vision.
Our two countries, United States and United Kingdom, have a shared faith in human progress and a common belief in the power of individuals to make their lives better through their own free choices in everyday life. But that faith and that belief are not and cannot be peculiar to Western democracies. The powerful desire for a better life is shared by youngsters in the Palestinian street who want to live in their own state, by Israelis who want to go about their business free of the threat of suicide bombs, by Zimbabweans who want to make the most of their country, but under responsible democratic leadership, and by women in Darfur who want food, shelter, and protection from rape.
So we all share the world more intimately than ever, through television and the internet, and just as we consume global products, so we share the suffering of others hundreds of miles away and their hopes for a better life too. Those Iraqis holding up their marked blue thumbs as they left the polling booths have as much right to shape their own lives through the ballot box as did a young Condoleezza Rice and the girls that she grew up with here in Alabama.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me thank you all for this invitation. Let me thank you, particularly, to the Nix family for allowing me to honor your father’s memory and let me thank you all for the privilege accorded to Alice and me to come to this great university.
Thank you very much, indeed.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: (In progress.) …by the podium and make your way toward the microphone. And also keep in mind this is a time for brief questions and not speeches from the audience. Any questions?
You've got a question.
SECRETARY RICE: (Off-mike.)
MODERATOR: Point to whomever you would like.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: That can't be a journalist. (Laughter.)
MODERATOR: There's one over there.
SECRETARY RICE: There's one over there. Yes.
QUESTION: Thank you for taking my question. Madame Secretary, Mr. Secretary, I have one for you and then you, Mr. Straw.
First for Madame Secretary, what do you think the future of a Security Council will be or do you think the future is damaged for the credibility after the Oil-for-Food scandal?
And for Mr. Straw, you spoke of the huge Muslim population in your hometown, with Europe trending towards Muslim demographic, how serious is the problem of assimilation toward the European culture? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you for two very excellent questions. On the Security Council, I do believe that the Security Council -- that first of all, the United Nations needs reform and we've pressed very hard for reform, particularly of the Secretariat and the Management practices of the United Nations. And by the way, this is something that Kofi Annan himself has called for because much of the problem with the oil-for-food scandal was that nobody seemed to believe that they had responsibility. The Security Council didn't do its job, the Secretariat didn't do its job, the UN Management didn't do its job.
And frankly, it is a terrible scandal because what it meant was that these very, very strict sanctions, which were imposed upon Saddam Hussein's regime because he was a threat to peace and international security, were having actually minimal effect on the regime and great effect on the people, which was just the opposite of what had been intended. So the real scandal is not just that there were apparently bribes taken and all kinds of problems with corruption, but also the effect was that these sanctions, therefore, really hurt -- to the degree that they had an effect -- it was more on the Iraqi people than on the regime, which was gaming the system.
I do think that after that and also after the failure to act for 12 years with Saddam Hussein that the UN Security Council faced some questions of its credibility. Now, we are also big believers that it needs to be reformed. It will eventually need to be expanded to look more like 2005, not like 1945. But the first key is what Jack Straw mentioned -- the Security Council has to act. It cannot, when there are major events in the world, when there are major threats to international security, it cannot fail to act. I think that we will see that the Security Council will need very much to be active about the Mehlis report and about Resolution 1559, but it also goes to the fact that it took us far too long to act on the Darfur, because the Security Council was tied up and held up by members of the Security Council who had other interests in Sudan and did not want to put those aside to deal with the very dire security situation there. So to the degree that the Security Council is going to remain relevant, it has to demonstrate that it can act and that it can act quickly.
QUESTION: Thank you.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: I think your question, sir, refers to Europe, rather than just to the United Kingdom. I know most about the UK and there's -- one of the differences, which I spelled out about the UK, is that from the moment that both the African-Caribbean community came to the UK and the Indian and Pakistani-Bangladesh communities by reason of a sort of quirk of our imperial history. Once they settled they got the vote. They didn't have to become citizens. So that has meant that, to use your phrase of assimilation, all these communities have been very involved in our politics. There's actually a higher turnout in my constituency amongst the Muslim communities than there is amongst the white community. And about half the membership of my party, the Labor Party in my town, is of the Asian communities and the other half if of the white, so that's the sort of upside.
The other side, however, is that this great growth of the Muslim communities coincided with a growth in Muslim fundamentalism in one sense, the best sense of the word, the communities became more devout. And also, coincided with a big slump in the traditional industries in which they were employed. For example, the cotton industry was still employing many thousands in my constituency when I was elected 26 years ago. It doesn't employ -- there's one mill left now. Those folk who got disproportionately knocked out of work in the early '80s were Asian men and that tended to turn the communities in on themselves. And it meant that the pattern of settlement where people live, residential patterns, which was becoming quite mixed, suddenly changed and there's now fewer mixed areas than there were 25 years ago, talking from of my area. That means you end with some, say, with Anglican schools, which are Holy Muslim in terms of the peoples in the schools.
Aside from the political parties, which are multiracial, some members of the white communities and the Asian communities do live rather parallel lives, by no means all, but some do, and that's something we're having to deal with. The bombings that we suffered on the 7th of July and the attempted bombings on the 21st of July were terrible. But one of the things that has happened is that it was a shock for all communities, and I think it's going to help to bring the communities together. So it's not a bad story but there's a long way to go.
One last point is, I refer to your phrase of assimilation. It's a word I tend not to use because it applies with this that what we need to do with the Muslim community is, bluntly, to turn them into honorary Christian whites. What we need to do actually is to ensure that there is mutual respect and full understanding and a sharing of values but from a – (inaudible) recognition that there are some people in our communities who are muslim faith, others of Hindu, others of (inaudible) and others of very many denominations of the Christian faith as well as the Judaic faith. Thank you.
MODERATOR: In order to allow as many people as possible to ask questions, please limit your question to either Dr. Rice or Foreign Secretary Straw.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: We'll be shorter, that's probably the answer. (Laughter.) We'll be shorter.
MODERATOR: Thank you. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Madame Secretary Rice, my name is Elizabeth Hendricks, a Blackburn Institute from Northport, Alabama. In a recent interview with The Time Magazine Editorial Board, you said that Iraq's new constitution, "Protects the rights of women, of minorities, of religious freedom", that in fact, that it's tried to balance the interests of various groups that have not had to balance those interests in a political process.
Since you are from Alabama, could you tell us your thoughts and comments regarding Alabama's constitution, written in 1901 with the expressed intent of taking power away from African Americans and poor whites and denying education as a right with Amendment 111 Section 256.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: This one's for you.
(Laughter. Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. (Laughter.) Well, I'm sorry to say that I have to tell I'm not intimately familiar any longer with the Alabama constitution. I once did take civics here -- (laughter) -- and probably at some point was.
The important thing is that state constitutions, of course, and state laws have since been superseded by national laws that ensure rights for all Americans and it is a very big change from the time that I lived my early years in this state. But the insurance of rights is not enough to ensure that people will be able to fully exercise those rights and particularly that they will be able to fully gain opportunity. And it is really, therefore, a question not just of the exercise or the granting of rights but it is a question of how people, particularly in a society like ours which emphasizes opportunity for the individual, how that opportunity comes.
Now, I can't comment on the specific clause that you are speaking to but let me speak for a moment about education because in the United States I don't think there is anything more important than access to a good education to make certain that you're going to be able to fully exercise your rights as an individual in the United States.
Not only did segregation produce unequal schools and quite unequal schools but it, of course, therefore produced unequal access to opportunity. I will say that some of that gap was made up by the community itself, by exceptional teachers, by exceptional community leaders who were determined not to let the children be denied those opportunities. I really do mean people who tutored in their homes and bought school textbooks and so forth.
I sensed that some of that energy about communities drawing together to make certain that educational opportunities, -- there needs to be reinvigorated and revitalized in the United States. And for, by all means, we have to make certain that the public school systems, which are still the means for most of our children to be educated, are educating our children equally. I've said this before and I'll say it again, one of the things that attracted me very early to President Bush was actually not on the foreign policy side, it was when he talked about the soft bigotry of low expectations in education because when there are poor schools in poor neighborhoods, they're going to disproportionately minority and those children are going to be hurt more than any others by the tendency to just move kids along. It is a scandal if a child in third grade can't read at third grade level.
And so I have been, myself, very attracted to the President's educational programs, No Child Left Behind, and so forth because there is no more important element for us as Americans than education. I talked about my grandfather and his access to education and my family after that was well set on its way.
So it's not just a question of rights; it's also a question of access to opportunity in order to be able to fully exercise those rights.
QUESTION: This is for Secretary Rice. Carol Henderson, graduating class of 2005, UWA. What I wanted to ask you was how has the recent hurricanes in Mississippi, Louisiana and your beloved Alabama affected you? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, why don't I say a word and maybe you would like to also -- first let me thank the international community and our good friends, Great Britain, one of the first phone calls I received was from David Manning, the Ambassador, to say that Great Britain wanted to help.
First of all, these were terrible natural disasters and terrible tragedies for the people affected by them. And the first reaction, of course, has to be the terrible tragedy for the people affected. But, of course, it did for our country call us to look, once again, at some pockets of America, some pockets of the South where poverty had gone unaddressed for many years and where race and poverty came together in a particularly bad way.
We all have known that they were there and I am hopeful that when these places are rebuilt, that they will be rebuilt in a way that encourages opportunity for people who have been left behind. Now, you cannot assure outcome but you can start to assure access to opportunity. And clearly, when you have a tragedy of that magnitude and when the pictures are the pictures that we saw, it does cause a kind of soul searching and it perhaps, in particular, causes a kind of soul searching for Black Americans like myself who were fortunate enough to have a grandparent who got us out.
MODERATOR: We have time for one more question.
SECRETARY RICE: Jack Straw's is going to say a word, sorry.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: All I was going to say was that for our point at that part, we were, obviously, pleased to offer what help we could. But just over awed by the scale of this disaster, I explained to the British House of Commons this was a disaster, which covered a larger area of land than the whole of the United Kingdom. And when one understands that, one understands the magnitude of the task and whatever the background any government would have faced huge challenges in dealing with it.
QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary and Foreign Secretary Straw. My name is Megan Stringer. I currently serve as the Student Fellow in the Blackburn Institute and also the Chairwoman of the College Republicans here on campus.
You spoke of involvement in local politics and the Frank Nix Lecture, as well as the Blackburn Institute, serve as the focus on ethical leadership in our communities. And you're speaking to a room full of young people who are going to be leaders -- are leaders now but will be leaders in local politics, state politics and national politics.
Do you have any advice for those of us about ethical leadership and the best way to, I guess, conduct ourselves in our careers?
(Laughter.)
SECRETARY RICE: He's actually run for office. I haven't so. (Laughter.)
(Applause.)
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Yeah, I spent my life running for office. (Laughter.) Because I was -- I think all of about eight years of my working life, I’ve been paid by -- from the elected office I’ve secured rather than earning an honest day’s pay. (Laughter.) It sounds a bit trite. The advice I’d give you is this: first of all, be true to yourself. Don’t try and do something slick that some PR guy tells you you’ve got to do. I’m serious about this. I mean, of course, you take professional advice about your appearance, about your speech and so on, but be true to yourself. Bear in mind that the most important thing in politics, as in life, is trust. It takes some time to gain and it’s very easy to lose and it is absolutely fundamental to the democratic process.
So, when you’re on the stump, if you don’t know the answer, don’t make it up. Say you don’t know the answer. People don’t mind that. They’re not expecting politicians to be a walking encyclopedia. They do expect you, however, to be informed about the thing you’re talking about.
(Laughter.)
So the Secretary and I said we didn’t know the answer -- I know to -- all sorts of issues that have been going on in the United Nations. We look at it lay, but if you don’t know the answer, you don’t know the answer. Think clearly about what you’re trying to do and bear in mind that politics is both about vision and about its application, in equal measure. If you have a vision without the application, you can actually do nothing; and if you have application without the vision, you don’t know where you’re going.
So you manage both and I look forward -- when I’m Dr. Blackburn’s age in a couple years time -- to coming and seeing you in high office. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: The only thing that I would add, and certainly not from the point of view of someone who is from the point of view of someone who has served in public service a lot is -- I think it’s very important that government officials or elected politicians always recognize that the people that they represent want the same things that they want. And they wouldn’t do anything that they wouldn’t ask someone else to do something that they themselves wouldn’t do. I’ve watched the debate coming back to the debate about democracy and I sometimes just don’t understand the arguments that are made that a people or a group of people or a country just somehow isn’t ready.
And I think to myself, particularly for officials who have the ability to do something about it, what if someone were to say that about you? How would you feel about it? And so, I think always remembering that human beings have the same aspirations and the same goals, that mothers in the Palestinian territories want their children to go off to university, not to be suicide bombers, is a very important foundation for trying to make a difference.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: Boy, I thought my question and answers were hard.
(Laughter.)
Dr. Rice, Mr. Secretary, on behalf of our great university, the University of Alabama, we would like to present you with these souvenir footballs. (Laughter.) I know one thing, they would be worth a lot more if Brody Croyle’s signature was on them.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: Dr. Rice, I know you’re an avid football fan. We’re excited about your participation in our coin toss tomorrow. Mr. Secretary, I understand you’re an avid fan of British football. Hopefully after this weekend, you’ll be an avid fan of Alabama football.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: And we understand both of you travel to many, many places and there’s a lot of memories for each and every place you travel. With this trip, there’s just two words we’d like you to remember us by and that’s "Roll Tide."
SECRETARY RICE: Roll Tide.
(Laughter. Applause.)
MODERATOR: Madame Secretary, Foreign Secretary Straw, thank you both so much. We are grateful to you for sharing your time and your experience with us. The Blackburn Institute uses a tree as its symbol. Its roots run deep, providing a strong foundation for growth and its branches extend broadly, reaching across generations. I’m reminded of the Greek proverb which states that society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.
Dr. Blackburn, would you please stand? Our university, our students and future generations will forever be grateful to you for establishing the vision of the Blackburn Institute. (Applause.) Thank you all for sharing this truly remarkable day with us and for coming to the Frank A. Nix Lecture.
Thank you. (Applause.)
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