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Wolfowitz quizzed at press brief by a confused Haitian
excerpted from Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Remarks at the World Affairs Council of Greater PhiladelphiaQ Thank you, Secretary of State. Iâm Morton Janvier (sp). Iâm from Haiti. Everything have been said, as a former soldier, everything a human being says is a lie. Thatâs what the universe is all about. The universe is a lie. So I was in Haiti, which is my country. I saw people -- (inaudible) -- we need food, thatâs the only thing we need. So since I was born, this country is the way it is, and now itâs worse. And as a superpower, Iâm here, since I came here -- we will come to my question, as everything is a lie, people say Iâm crazy, I donât know anything, Iâm just so stupid, Iâm a bad person. So what can I do, if you were in my place, in a situation I can help my country? I have the skill required to help them, but because everything is a lie, if I have to talk to anybody, anywhere -- Iâve sent letters, Iâve talked to people everywhere. It just doesnât work. Thatâs the way the universe goes. You canât change it. So now, what can be done to see the whole world together, every country? We donât have to fight each other in the sense we hate each other. We must love each other, share in the same piece of cake together, because we belong to one universe. Thank you very much. MR. WOLFOWITZ: Iâm not sure if it was a question, but I think you are certainly expressing your desire to see Haiti do better. And I think one of the keys to success everywhere is when people take responsibility for their own future, as we hope is going to happen in Iraq and weâve seen happen -- I mean, let me say this. Weâve seen it happen in many, many places in the world where 20 or 30 years ago, people were prepared to write people off. The rest of the Q&A session is worth a read. Here is some meat from it: Shortly after taking office, the secretary visited with his counterparts in NATO and he told them about the experiences of one of his predecessors, a man named Dick Cheney. Back in 1989 when Cheney was undergoing his Senate confirmation hearings, not a single mention was made of the word "Iraq." And yet Secretary Cheneyâs tenure at the Defense Department would turn out to be marked -- some indeed would say dominated -- by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the extraordinary victory of the coalition in Operation Desert Storm. -snip- When I became assistant secretary of State in 1982 there was one democracy in all of East Asia, and that was Japan. And there were, frankly, a lot of people who, I guess, considered themselves realists who said, Thatâs the way it has to be, thatâs the way itâs going to be forever, that Marcos is a -- I heard this -- Marcos is a bad guy, but you donât understand how inept the Philippine opposition is. I heard people -- intelligent, rational, humane people -- saying Korea has never had a democracy in its history, and itâs not capable of one. I heard people say, yeah, Taiwan has a terrible dictatorship, but itâs not nearly as bad as the one on the mainland. I mention those examples because in the course of the 1980s every one of those countries became a democracy, some more successful than others, but every one, I think, better off for it. And I think what the president spoke about in that speech at the National Endowment for Democracy, what he spoke about again a few weeks later in Westminster in London, sets out a horizon that some people say is hopelessly unrealistic; but I think itâs a false realism that says weâre better off if the Arab world continues to be governed by dictators. -snip- Posted by: Super Hose 2004-05-12 |
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