|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON | |
 June 11, 1999 
|
||
|
|
President Bill Clinton speaks to Jim Lehrer about the Kosovo conflict and the progress towards peace in the Balkans.
|
|
JIM LEHRER: On a more personal basis, Mr. President, some suggested when this operation began that the Lewinsky impeachment matter had weakened your moral authority to lead the country in a difficult situation like this. Were they wrong?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
| A partisan issue? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
JIM LEHRER: What is your analysis of why, for instance, the overwhelming majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives did not vote to support this air war in the beginning? PRESIDENT CLINTON: You know, I don't know. I prefer to be grateful for those who did support it. And, quite a number did. We had very good support. A minority of Republicans in the Senate, but a substantial number supported us in a very vocal and effective way and were prepared to go even further, to ground forces as you know. So, I'm grateful for the support we did have. A lot of serious thoughtful Republicans said they thought we were doing the right thing. Speaker Hastert voted with us. And I would remind you that we got a very good vote early on with the help of the speaker for the deployment of American forces in a peacekeeping operation. So, you know -- and then they voted to support the troops and fund the air war -- so I'm grateful for that. And, I leave it to others to interpret why they did what they did.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: He did. JIM LEHRER: -- when it was in the Senate, was asked why there were so many Republicans who were not supporting this. And, he said it had to do with trust. And he said "this President has debased the one currency we each have in this business and that's trust and he'll never get it back." That's what his explanation as to why Congress didn't support you any more than they did. PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think that's pretty self-serving. I'm not going to do what's right for my country because I don't like Bill Clinton. And, you know -- I think that's pretty self-serving. You know, I was gratified when a few years ago a historian of the presidency said that I had kept a higher percentage of my commitments to the American people than any of the last five presidents who preceded me. An academic man at the time I had never even met. And, so I think that, you know, that element of the other party who devoted the better part of seven, eight years -- more than seven years now to attacking me personally because they knew the American people agreed with my ideas, and the direction in which I was taking the country. And on one occasion, much to my eternal regret, I gave them a little ammunition. But I have been trustworthy in my public obligations to the American people. And I have have been trustworthy in my dealings with them. And I have -- I don't agree with them. When I don't, I tell them. But, you know, we've gotten quite a lot done when they've put aside their personal frustration at not owning the White House.
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
| Addressing the critics. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Gosh no. I find that in Washington in this sort of what the professor Deborah Tannen called this "culture of critique." If I make a mistake, people want me to admit that I made a mistake. And I have tried to do that. I think it's quite therapeutic. It's hard to do and I had to get hit upside the head to do it but I did it and it was good for me. But, if they turn out to be wrong, they just change the subject or keep insisting that it was, you know, just a fluke. I think that -- you know, I think the most important thing is were we right to take a stand in Kosovo against ethnic cleansing. Were we right to do it more quickly than we did in Bosnia? Should we set up -- have a principle that guides us which says, OK, in a world where people are fighting all the time over racial or ethnic or religious problems, we can't tell everybody they've got to get along. We can't stop every fight like the fight between Eritrea and Ethiopia and the struggles in Chechnya. But where we can, at an acceptable cost; that is without risking nuclear war or some other terrible thing, we ought to prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians and the wholesale uprooting of them because of their race, their ethnic background or the way they worship God. I think that's an important principle myself. I think it's a noble thing. I think the United States did a good thing.
Don't you think it's interesting that we are on the verge of a new century and you are going to have all these millenial celebrations and talk about 100,000 Web sites get added to the Internet every day and unlock the mysteries of the human gene and a modern rapid world we are going to be living in and here we are bogged down everywhere in the world by the oldest problems of human society: we fear people who are different from us. Pretty soon we hate them. Once we start hating them we dehumanize them and then it's easy to kill them. Now it seems to me, if we are going to reap the promise of the 21st century, if we don't want to go to Europe or some other place and have a bunch of Americans die in a bloody war, where we can nip this stuff in the bud, we ought to do it. That's what I tried to do, and I think it was the right thing do. |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
| The best moment of the Clinton presidency? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Oh, no, I won't say that. I don't know. So many things have happened here at home that have been important to me; passing economic plan, passing the Brady Bill and assault weapons ban, so many things have happened internationally, the role that I was fortunate to be able to play in the peace process in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland, but this could have the biggest long-term positive consequences if we do it right. But frankly, I hadn't, you know -- Sometimes people say "do you feel vindicated?" The answer is no. I think America has been vindicated. I think what we stand for has been vindicated. But keep in mind that there have been times in the past where people win a conflict and then squander the peace. So a lot of our work is still ahead of us. We've gotta get the people home, get the land mines up, work out the details of who is involved in the peacekeeping mission. We have to get this -- We've got to organize police forces and civil government for the Kosovars. And then the really big thing over the long-run, our European friends want to take the lead in this but we ought to help them, we've got to get the World Bank and all these other people involved in a development plan for the Balkans that involves not just Kosovo, but Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and I hope someday Serbia if they have a government that respects freedom and democracy and human rights. So that these people have something pulling them together instead of these ancient ethnic troubles pulling them apart.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, thank you very much. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you. |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
PRESIDENT
CLINTON: Oh, I think so. I think that, you know, the American people
have been very good to me and my family has been very good to me, and
we went through a process which resulted in a decision by the public
and by the Congress that I should serve. And no one -- no thinking American
wants to have a president of either party in any philosophy who cannot
fully serve and does not fully do his job or her job. And so I did what
I was hired to do by the American people. And I believe that as strongly
as I can say, it was the right thing to do. It was the moral thing to
do. And our children will have a better world because we have now stood
against ethnic cleansing and not only that, in this case, we are going
to be able to reverse it and let those people go home.
JIM
LEHRER: Senator Hagel, Republican from Nebraska, who voted for it -
The
truth is, you know, those folks ought to lighten up. They believe they
had an -- they say -- a lot of my Republican friends, you know, they
rail against the entitlement programs. They don't like the entitlement
programs. But the truth is, for a long time, they thought the White
House was an entitlement program. They never thought there would be
another Democratic president in their lifetime. They are all gearing
up again because they think they're entitled to the parking spaces outside
here and the office space and all. And this job here and this house
it doesn't belong to the Republican party or to the Democratic party.
The American people own this place. We're all just here for a little
while. They ought to just relax and realize I'm a temporary tenant,
and that we're all hired hands and we ought to work for the American
people, do our best, have the elections and then, let the people make
their decision and go on again. That's what a lot of this is. They have
just been mad ever since I won because a lot of them really never believed
there would be another Democrat in their lifetime. And attacking --
if you can't beat somebody on the ideas and the issues and the philosophy
and the direction of the country and if the country is doing very well,
so you just get madder and madder when the country does well, all have
you left is a personal attack and say well, I just don't trust the guy.
But that's not good for America. I don't attack them personally. I'm
not going to get into it. My door is always open. My phone is always
open and I'm going to keep working with them every way I can. 
JIM
LEHRER: Since, just in the last 24 hours since this thing has come to
this critical conclusion, concluding point, people who were criticizing
this action -- not just Republicans but pundits and people in foreign
policy establishment, they're still criticizing you. They -- does that
surprise you? 
JIM
LEHRER: As we sit here right now, Mr. President, is this the best moment
of your presidency? 
Now
if we get all that done, it might be perhaps the most satisfying thing
because it might prove that people can lay down their hatreds of people
who are different. You know, I basically think free people will figure
out a way to make the most of their lives and work out their problems
if they can get the rules of engagement right. That's why I gave somewhat
of an extended answer to what you said about the Republicans. Because,
I think, you know, differences are good. Nobody's got the whole truth.
But you gotta get the rules of engagement right. And I think what we
did in Kosovo was profoundly important.