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Tom Brokaw
Anchor, NBC Nightly News Author, The Greatest Generation
I am very much at home here. I say that not just in a rhetorical sense, but for the past almost 40 years now, San Francisco, and especially the Bay Area, have been a second home to the Brokaw family. In the past couple of weeks, I have really returned to my professional roots because, as a young reporter for NBC, I arrived here in the spring of 1966 just in time to cover Pat Brown versus Ronald Reagan, one of the most memorable campaigns that I will ever cover, and I remember so vividly coming to San Francisco on many occasions during that campaign year. It was so long ago that Frank Sinatra was still a Democrat in California, and he was raising money for Pat Brown.
In his last interview on his last day in office, Ronald Reagan granted me the privilege and the opportunity of reflecting on his life, and we did that in the Oval Office. It had all been very carefully arranged, and then when I arrived at the White House that day, Ken Duberstein, his chief-of-staff, said to me, “When the interview is over, the president asked for just a few moments with a photographer outside in the Rose Garden – this is his idea. I have no clear sense of what he wants to do or why, but when the interview is over if you would accompany the president to the Rose Garden, I know that we’d all be most appreciative and we’re curious about what, in fact, the president has in mind.”
So, in fact, we finished the interview – it was scheduled between 11 and noon on his final day. I was the only appointment on his calendar, and when the interview was over, the president got up and in that inimitable Ronald Reagan fashion said, “Well, Tom, why don’t we go out into the Rose Garden.” And I said, “Okay, Mr. President.” We went out, and there was a photographer, and the president directed him to take a picture of the two of us and turned to me and said, “You know, Tom, I wanted to have this picture on my last day because I remember you were covering my campaign in 1966 when almost no one was paying attention to me in the primary.” And he looked at me and a kind of a twinkle in his eye, and he said, “It worked out pretty well for both of us, didn’t it?”
I got to know other California politicians in those days. Just two weeks ago I had a memorable reunion with your mayor Willie Brown. We were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible talking about California and the magic of it, and I said, “Willie, if you were a small boy in Texas, would you still come here?” He said, “Tom, I’d borrow money to come to California.” And I said, “Willie, it’s no longer necessary for you to borrow money to come to California.” Willie Brown is the only politician that I know who took a vow of poverty, and by that it meant that he would only buy two-piece Brioni suits and not three-piece Brioni suits.
In all seriousness, I have so many cherished memories of this magical city: the inimitable hospitality of Charlotte Swig; the night that I chased the new mayor Joe Alioto up the steps of city hall trying to get an interview with him as the new mayor; coming here when the city was shattered by the earthquake and seeing the great Joe DiMaggio outside his home; going to a new place to hear some music – it was called The Fillmore. And then one day when I was in a taxi cab here in the 1960s, the taxi cab driver said to me, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m a journalist.” He said, “Man, I’m going to take you to a place you will not believe.” He took me to the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, and I filed the first network report on what was going on there – even though I didn’t clearly understand it. At the end of a long day, I’d love to go to the Matador, North Beach; go to Ernie’s and go to Jack’s; go to the Washbag, of course. I played for and against Moose’s softball team, and I loved Herb Caen in a way that I cannot adequately describe to you. I honestly still have a conditioned reflex when the plane is in the final pattern coming into San Francisco: I think, I’ve got to have a couple of items for Herb’s column – and then I realize that he’s gone, and it’s a terrible hole in my heart. But the fact that we still remember him in the way that we do is such a tribute to that great, great talent that he had and what he meant to all of us.
And, of course, this remarkable institution, The Commonwealth Club, still providing a prestigious forum for the issues of the day. I must tell you, it’s a humbling experience to have come to The Commonwealth Club first as a young reporter in 1966, less than four years out of South Dakota, to cover the great speakers that you had during the campaigns of those days, and then to be invited back for this occasion. And it is in the spirit of The Commonwealth Club that I talk to you tonight in a non-partisan spirit about some hard truths that we all have to acknowledge.
In the closing days of the 20th century, America, I think that it’s fair to say, was in a state of euphoria induced by a frenzy of stock trading, a bubble of options, prosperity, a mentality that the solutions to everything lay in a key stroke, a prospectus or a PowerPoint presentation. In the opening months of the 21st century, virtual reality was harshly replaced by a new reality of a burst bubble and a horrific attack on the symbols of our political, military and financial might. It is that reality that continues to define our time, and I believe demands our unalloyed attention wherever we live in this country, whatever our ideological or spiritual beliefs. For the question is, for this mightiest of all military and economic powers, this towering monument of democracy and rule of law: Can we find a secure place in a world in which there is so much hostility and envy about what is widely perceived to be our arrogance, our sense of entitlement, our unparalleled prosperity and privilege? Beyond security, will we take our place as an enlightened, compassionate and benevolent society that rightly protects its own interests while working with and learning from other societies with common goals?
The answer to these questions will take on partisan overtones in the immediate future. But I would say to you tonight that these are not partisan issues. They transcend partisan divides, and they will be the measure by which we are all judged as stewards of what the late Yale President Bart Giamatti called, “the brief, precious time” that we all have on this planet.
For this audience, I need not recite how we have been tested before reaching back to the 18th-century origins of this grand and noble experiment. Indeed, there are events from recent history that are instructive and useful in this current debate. Just a few weeks ago I was invited to Atlanta to moderate a discussion between Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl and George Bush, the 41st president of the United States. It was called the Unification Conference, and it was organized around the forthcoming 14th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, an event that I was privileged to cover live from the Brandenburg Gate for three of the most memorable days of my life or career. These three men had their hands on the levers of power in West Germany, the modern state that grew out of the ruins of World War II and the Cold War; the Soviet Union in its declining days as an ideological empire but still a formidable military power; and, of course, the United States, the colossus, about to be triumphant in what John F. Kennedy once called “the long twilight struggle with communism.” Three men, distinct national interest and the udgment of history weighing on them during that chaotic and perilous period when the world that we had known for so long was coming apart in uncertain fashion. Three men who wisely and skillfully protected their national interests, enhanced history’s judgment of them and who worked toward a glorious common goal: a world peace. Frankly, in an unexpected fashion, it was quite touching to see Helmut Kohl, the proud German, stand at a public podium and turn to Gorbachev and to President Bush and emotionally thank them for not sending in the tanks and for supporting the idea of reunification. It was reassuring to hear Gorbachev say there is no question that the United States is the supreme power in the world today with great responsibilities and possibilities, and that he believes it will play that role successfully if it builds partnerships with other countries. That, he said, is the key. The rest is details. As for President Bush, mindful of the fact that his son’s conduct of American foreign policy is increasingly controversial, he said the UN has a very useful role to play but that reforms are necessary, especially in the Security Council, where Japan and Germany have no permanent role. Even though you can’t get unanimity of all issues, the president said, we should not give up on the United Nations.
As I watched these three battle-tested and battle-scarred veterans of domestic politics and international crises, I tried to imagine another similar conference 14 years from now. How would President Bush the 43rd, Vladimir Putin, Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac receive one another, how would the world receive them, and how would we assess their common and individual roles in the great test of 2003? If it were to be an honest evaluation, it would reflect, we all would agree, a great deal more discordance than harmony – a smaller view of the grander design.
How did it come to this? Well, the answer is not as straightforward as some would have you believe, nor is the solution as simple as they may argue, for we are living in a world fractured by many more separate economic and political agendas, by a growing schism between the two most popular faiths and cultures. We also have, as we know, an intractable hostility of historic proportions between Israel and the West Bank, a place where the fuse is always lit, and there’s a dangerous tendency to touch a lighted match to these incendiary issues, especially during a presidential election year.
First, the threat of terror here and abroad is real. It has been for some time. It did not begin with 9/11, and this is not the first administration to have struggled with it. The attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, the attack on the Americans in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia – all occurred in the previous administration. The single most devastating terrorist attack on U.S. military forces killed 239 Marines in Lebanon, Marines that were sent there by President Reagan. It has always been a dangerous world. In the lifetime of most of us in this room, we have lived through the greatest war the world has ever known, when more than 50 million people perished, when nations were realigned. We’ve also lived through cruel, costly wars on the Korean Peninsula and in Southeast Asia. We have watched with palpable anxiety a nuclear showdown between Washington and Moscow over missiles in Cuba. More recently, we wondered whether India and Pakistan would unleash nuclear weapons on each other. But however dangerous and consequential near and far were, we always knew where the lines were drawn. Even as the guns were firing, we knew that diplomacy was an option.
Now the lines are often illusory. Diplomacy has been devalued by intransigence among friends and the mockery of our enemies. Fourteen years after the end of the Cold War, when the threat of a massive nuclear exchange between the two mightiest military powers ever collapsed in a dramatic and exhilarating fashion, the world is in many ways a more dangerous place. More countries, more unknown people, have nuclear weapons. The United States finds itself in a great contradiction, revered for its culture and opportunities, reviled for its policies, a revulsion that is only deepened by the underestimated impact of Arab-language cable and satellite news services broadcasting images of helmeted and heavily armed Americans patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities – the same cable and satellite news services that show the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now from behind the Palestinian lines with their cameras aimed at the Israeli tanks, planes and missiles. The introduction of Al-Jazeera and the other Arab-language, all-news outlets has been a transformational event, I believe, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the Islamic world. The power of those images and commentary for the first time altered the power structure in many countries. As we saw during the days leading to the war, the “Arab street,” as it’s called, was energized not by emirs and kings, but by satellite dishes.
I was in Turkey just before the war began, and on Saturday the new prime minister, in an interview with me, suggested that by Tuesday of the following week the United States would have a deal that it wanted. In exchange for aid, American forces – the 4th Infantry Division – would be able to operate out of Turkey. The next day the streets of Ankara and the other Turkish cities were filled with Turkish citizens protesting the war because they had been watching the debate on cable and satellite television. It’s important for you to know, as well, that Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia and the other outlets are not just propaganda machines. In fact, they reflect a very strong point of view, but they have a great deal more independence than many in this country would have you believe. I think that the administration and the American people didn’t appreciate – as I did not – the ramifications of this new power. In this world of instant information and communication, it is the power to mobilize the enemies of this country or the people who disapprove of what we’re doing.
When I am in Baghdad now, as I have been several times in the course of the last two years, I am often struck by what must be going through the minds of the Iraqi citizens when they come to an intersection in their own capital and have to get permission to pass from a young American man or woman – a soldier in Kevlar, helmeted atop a Humvee, heavily armed, terrified for their own security, and rightfully so because of the irregular war that is being waged against them, and how that is breaking the consciousness of the Iraqi people about who we are and what we have in mind. But it’s important to remember that the prism through which the United States is now viewed is not confined to the Islamic world alone.
Earlier this year, after the major combat in Iraq, the German Marshall Fund polled 8,000 Americans and Europeans. In less than a year, the preference for a strong American presence in the world had dropped from 64 to 45 percent. Majorities in six of the seven European countries disapproved of the administrations handling of the international policies. In the Islamic world, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that in Indonesia, which as we all know is the most populous of the Islamic nations, the favorable view of the United States fell from 61 percent to 15 percent in a year. In Kuwait, which the United States, after all, rescued from an Iraqi invasion in 1991, more than half the people polled said they worry that someday the Americans would pose a threat to their country. In Pakistan, which is a principal American military ally in the war on terror, 72 percent of the people surveyed recently said they were worried that America represented a military threat to their country. In poll after poll, in country after country, America is losing the battle for hearts and minds, often by wide margins. In some countries, President Bush is seen by the rank and file as a more dangerous man than Osama bin Laden. However unjustified the administration may claim those conclusions are, they represent an objective, daunting challenge, not just to the George Bush presidency but to all of us in this country, all of us in this room and our place and our country in a world where hostility equates vulnerability. It is, I believe, as urgent as any problem any president has faced, and it is not, I repeat, a partisan issue. For the fulcrum that it represents is the fulcrum between national security, national interest and our place in a globally interdependent world.
Here are just a few of the other objective realities of our time: For most of the 20th century, the Christian faith represented about 30 percent of the world’s population. In the closing days of the 20th century, Islam represented about 20 percent of the world’s population. By 2025, given trends of current demographics, those numbers will be reversed; Islam will be the dominant faith in the world, a faith in which too many of the clerics are on a holy crusade against the Western culture, the ideal that defines us. Too many young Muslims are being raised on a diet of hatred for the Western ideal of secular governments, gender equality, religious tolerance. The prime minister of Malaysia just this past week – Mahathir Mohamad, one of Southeast Asia’s leading political figures – told the Islamic Conference that the Jews rule the world by proxy, that Jews get others to fight and die for them. It was a speech ostensibly aimed at encouraging moderation among Muslims, yet its opening thesis was that Jews get other people to fight their wars and die for them. Who do you think he had in mind when he said “get others to fight and die for them”? However outrageous and anti-Semitic the claim, it had a receptive audience. The prime minister received a standing ovation and acclaim from the officials of America’s Arab allies, including the Egyptian foreign minister at the meeting. Even Hamid Karzai, the American-backed president of Afghanistan, called the remarks correct.
There are more than 2.3 billion Muslims in the world, and they’re not confined by geography. They’re an ever-expanding political, economic and cultural power, but they also represent a culture in turmoil as a result of population pressures, economic and political oppression, gender conflict and failure of the faith and the governments that it represents to keep pace with the evolution of the modern world of science, letters and fundamental human rights. I believe we get too little help, too little understanding from the masters who claim to be our allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the Middle East, including the Emirates. In too many quarters of this country, I also believe, the solution is simply to declare war on that entire faith, to belittle its beliefs or to relegate Muslims to a second-class status. That is bigotry in a mirror. This past week NBC News disclosed that Lt. Gen. William Boykin – an evangelical Christian, a man with a great record of military heroism, but for reasons that are not entirely clear who has been appointed deputy undersecretary for intelligence charged with finding Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – has been giving a series of speeches in which he says, My God is bigger than their god; their god is simply an idol. The real enemy is Satan.
That, I would suggest to you, does not advance understanding. No army can kill all those who declare themselves enemies of the United States. We are learning painfully every day in Iraq the effectiveness of asymmetrical warfare as a political tool when warriors are willing to commit suicide to achieve their goals. For all of our obvious powers, we will be Gulliver in a Lilliputian world unless we learn to recast that power in a more innovative and understanding and benevolent fashion; unless we learn to find new ways to first neutralize and then turn back the winds of anti-Americanism sweeping the world; unless we learn to listen as well as proclaim, to participate as well as to charge off alone; unless we improve the intelligence of which we make the big decisions that commit this country to war.
We have inherited a world we invented as a result of our determined stand for rule of law, human rights and economic pluralism against the oppression of communism, but we have been selective throughout administrations in our participation in international efforts and treaties. It is a world now running on the transformational technology that grew out of the American brilliance for invention, but it’s also a world that sees our arsenal of weapons, including nuclear, and wants to match it. That is the world that presents a clear and present danger to our future.To be fair, there are new responses under way every day; there are great burdens on the commander in chief and the Defense Department when the threat of terror is so great and it comes to us from so many unknown places. The administration also has organized a new office to deal with the perceptions of the United States in the Muslim world. A new Arab-language radio station is attracting a wide audience in the Middle East. Secretary Powell was successful in his return to the UN for a post-war agreement in Iraq, even if it was woefully short on troops and money. And, in fact, the Iraqi people and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power. But we need to think anew about how we go forward into the darkness, into this new sea that we’re being forced to navigate without the old charts, by stars alone. The Council on Foreign Relations has published an appeal for a return to public diplomacy with a coherent blueprint on how to construct a stronger, more positive American presence in the minds of those who live outside our borders, including a greater utilization of the private sector which is now the American surrogate in the eyes of so many. I’ve said to my friends who represent the great financial institutions or the global forces of American consumerism, It’s not enough to put up a billboard on the road leading from the airport in Thailand into Bangkok. You must do more, because you define all of us by your presence. I thought, in many ways, the most unsettling but symbolic moment of the months immediately after 9/11 was when the FBI Director Robert Mueller went on television and plaintively asked for anyone who spoke the Arabic language to please apply to the FBI.
As for me, I’m drawn, as I often have been in the past few years, to the lessons of what I called “The Greatest Generation,” the men and women who came of age in the Great Depression, a searing experience of deprivation. And just as they were emerging from that darkness, they were asked to take up arms against the two mightiest military machines in the history of mankind, one east and one west, in a crusade – no less than that – to save the world from the ravages of fascism and fanaticism. They prevailed at a great cost to their generation, and the years they could never regain. But they returned home not embittered or reclusive, not arrogant, but humbled by what they had gone through. And although America had unrivaled power in that time as well, these men and women of many faiths and ideologies returned as internationalists, not isolationists. They became involved in public service at every level and they built the enduring institutions of international cooperation that serve us today. They were not perfect; they did have bitter differences over monumental issues from race to gender to war in far-off places, but they never gave up on the notion that public service and diplomacy are noble callings. They demonstrated political courage that cannot be belittled or compromised by commentators that are little more than demagogues with microphones. They returned from a great war to another great cause: to promote, but especially to protect, the inherent values of this unique immigrant nation by example and understanding as well as by might. They enlisted as public citizens.
It is time for that same calling to go out across this land so our time can be defined by the many, not just by the willful few. It is time to take back the shrill dialogue from the extremes, the left and the right, to find common high ground through common purpose, to forge new relationships with old friends, to force those who are pressed to reform, to become again a nation respected for its power, admired for its resolve and cherished for its transcendent values. It’s time to re-enlist as citizens. Thank you all very much.
