Impact ’08 in Florida Transcript
Impact ’08 in Florida Transcript
September 12, 2008
SUSAN PURCELL: Honorable Adam Hasner is the House Majority leader currently in his third term in the Florida House, representing House District 87.
Professionally, Representative Hasner is a mergers and acquisition specialist providing legal, business and strategic counsel. We are very pleased that he was able to join us today.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome — join me in welcoming House Majority Leader Adam Hasner.
ADAM HASNER: Well, good afternoon, everybody. And it is great to be with you today as we welcome the Center for U.S. Global Engagement and the Impact ‘08 program back to Florida.
And I truly appreciate the opportunity, on behalf of our great state, our governor, Charlie Crist, our House Speaker, Marco Rubio, to say thank you for choosing Miami for this important forum.
Now, maybe there’s no coincidence that we’re here with 45 days to go before an election, and Florida is, once again, a battleground state. But more importantly, as was just mentioned, this organization’s bipartisan tone reminds us that we must find common ground to advance our nation’s agenda on the world stage.
Now, as Floridians, we understand that Florida plays an important role in America’s position in the world. And that’s not just because we’re a battleground state.
But the citizens of Florida, and certainly those right here in Miami-Dade County and in South Florida, understand that building strong alliances and partnerships with other countries is a necessary investment for our future.
Now, we live in a rapidly-changing world with new realities and challenges emerging every single day. And if you have a BlackBerry these days, they’re emerging every single hour. And as Americans, we must be ready to demonstrate the resourcefulness that has for so long characterized our national spirit.
I see many of my friends here today from Enterprise, Florida — so they understand this — that one in every five jobs in Florida is connected to international trade. And it is without question that the well being of Florida, in terms of our national security interests and our economic prosperity, is now inseparably connected to the world around us.
Our nation, ladies and gentlemen, and I think you would agree, our nation is blessed with a powerful military, and we owe it to those men and women who serve us with such honor, to not only provide them with the tools in order for them to be effective in doing their jobs, but to make sure that their efforts are complimented by strong and serious civilian partners who are dedicated to getting the job done on other fronts.
We must expand the reach of our goodwill to those who deserve it, as well as deliver our wrath to those who seek to threaten and harm us. Because it is vital to the reformation of how we are perceived abroad, and it is critical to creating a more stable and secure future for our country and the world in which we live.
I agree with Senator John McCain when he says that America must draw on all the tools at our disposal: diplomatic, economic, military, and the power of our ideals to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.
I welcome you all again here today. I hope each and every one of you enjoys this robust discussion, and I thank each and every one of you in this room for all that you do for our community and to help keep Florida on the move.
At this time, I would also like to welcome up to the stage and introduce the executive director for the Center for U.S. Global Engagement, Liz Schrayer.
LIZ SCHRAYER: Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to Impact ‘08 in Florida. It is just thrilling to be here and to have what I know will be a fascinating discussion today.
Thank you Majority Leader Hasner, Representative Brisé, and many, many elected officials, Democrats, Republicans, that have joined on in this effort.
It’s hard to believe that just 15 months ago, some of you have asked me, how did this all get started and how long have you been doing this? It was about 15 months ago that some of us joined at the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., led by our national co-chairs, Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Democrat; Former Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci, a Republican, who joined together to launch Impact ‘08.
With the who’s who in the national security and foreign policy community, many people that don’t agree on a lot of issues, certainly today, but they joined together about this issue. People like the National Co-Chair of the John McCain campaign, Tom Ridge, and the National Co-Chair Barack Obama’s Campaign, Tom Daschle. Jim Baker and Warren Christopher, two former Secretaries of State, who I think this state knows well, from their role in the 2000 recount.
And this group together, with the lists on your seats, have joined together to call on the next president, whomever he will be, to elevate the use of our non-military tools of global engagement, to invest in development and diplomacy as critical to our national security.
All of you in Florida know better than many of us who live in the East Coast sometimes, of how interconnected our world is, and that today, with infectious disease to terrorism, there are no borders.
A lot of people call for the use of hard power. Many people today call for the use of soft power. But we like to say that we call for the use of smart power. And that is the integration of defense, development and diplomacy together to deal with the 21st challenges that face us throughout the world.
Two of those D’s, as we call them, are under manned and under funded. And part of our effort is to make sure that we draw attention to them today.
It’s not surprising that one of the largest voices on our behalf has been the voice of the military community, as you will hear from General McCaffrey later today. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one of the staunchest supporters for calling for greater investments in global health, education, and creating economic opportunities throughout the world. Over 50 former four star generals have endorsed our message as well.
And we wanted to know recently: What do the current officers that are serving our country throughout the world believe on these same very issues? And we did a recent poll to take a look at those military officers who are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, throughout the world since 9/11, and we asked them the question of where these non-military tools fit in. 84 percent of them believe that strengthening development and diplomacy is as equal or more important to our national security as improving our military efforts.
Today, as part of Impact ‘08 in Florida, I’m delighted to say, thanks to many in this room, that a new and very powerful voice has been added to our coalition.
In today’s Miami Herald, many of you added your name to a full-page ad that joined in to say, Floridians care about building a better, safer world and calling on the next president to elevate and strengthen our non-military tools.
I want to thank all of you who have already been part of this, and particularly Susan Purcell and Susie Davis at The Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, for being fabulous partners, along with Barry Johnson and Karen Echols of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.
As Adam, you just said, you and Florida have a very unique perch when it comes to presidential elections. And that allows you, more than most people around the country, to see and engage the candidates in a very real and meaningful way.
And part of today is to ask of you to join us in this initiative, to join us in this movement, to urge them, as you see them and people around them, to talk to them about these very issues, and to urge them that when they — whoever ends up in office, commits to elevating our non-military tools of global engagement, become educated. We have fact sheets and information — and we’ll track it on our Web site — about what the candidates are saying — certainly a week from tonight, all eyes will be on both of the presidential candidates as they appear at their first debate focusing on foreign policy.
So we have taken this message throughout the country in many, many swing states, and we will be in other states as well this fall. But I think that I can report to you that the candidates are listening and hearing what we’re all saying.
And we want to just begin right before lunch a brief way for you to hear from the candidates themselves and join you, and I draw your attention to the screens to my — that one I’m not sure is working, but you can look over to the one to my right, and you can hear the story of Impact ‘08.
(Audience views video.)
LIZ SCHRAYER: I’m very proud to co-chair Impact ‘08 with Secretary Carlucci and to release today our statement, which is endorsed by such a distinguished bipartisan group of former cabinet officials, including fellow secretaries of state, defense, treasury and congressional leaders.
(Audience views video.)
LIZ SCHRAYER: Enjoy your lunch, and the program will begin -– will continue just in a few moments.
(Short recess.)
ROSA SUGRANES: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Can I have your attention, please, while you are having lunch.
Good afternoon. I am Rosa Sugranes. I’m the founder and chairman of Iberia Tiles Corporation, and I’m here today representing the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, which I chair 2005-2006. I’m also director of a Spanish company called Endura, which is a technology company that makes flight simulators for the U.S. Navy, which I find quite remarkable.
The Chamber is vitally interested in the upcoming election, and although prohibited from endorsing candidates, the Chamber endorses the Center’s mission of ensuring that the presidential candidates be motivated to incorporate greater use of development and diplomacy as the keystone of America’s engagement with the world.
The Center of U.S. Global Engagement is absolutely right. It’s literally a new world. Our future economic prosperity, and the well being of Florida, for that matter, is now connected to the rest of the world as never before.
There is much the U.S. private sector can do, but we also need the right government policies in place to ensure that we can put our abilities to work.
It is vital that our foreign policy enables free trade, wide access to talent and technology, and security of our citizens working and traveling abroad.
The next president needs to make investing in global development and diplomacy a priority. We all should be asking our presidential candidates in both parties to seize this opportunity to help build a better and safer world.
And now it is my honor, I’m very pleased to introduce the Honorable Ronald Brisé. Representative Brisé is currently the Florida State Representative for District 108 and a whip in the Democratic Caucus. He’s the vice president of the Black Caucus and he’s the Democratic ranking member on the Utilities & Telecommunications Committee. He is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of IPIP Corporation, an international telecommunications carrier based in Miami.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Representative Brisé.
RONALD BRISE: Thank you, Rosa. Thanks again to the Center for Global Engagement, the Center of Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce for hosting Impact ‘08 here in Florida, and particularly in Miami.
As a member of the state legislature and executive vice president of a small international telecommunications carrier, and as a father, I am honored to be here today to participate in this very important discussion about America’s role in the world and how the next president of these United States will face the challenges pertaining to foreign policy.
Many of us here in this room strongly disagree when it comes to politics and who we think should be the next president. But all politics aside, as Floridians, we have a very unique role in this presidential election.
I believe that it is our obligation — forgive me — to let candidates know where we stand on the various issues, particularly international development and diplomacy.
We can agree that whether Senator Obama or Senator McCain is elected, we must elevate and strengthen our non-military tools for global engagement for a better, safer Florida, and a better and safer world.
Today I am pleased to introduce the moderator for today’s event. Antonio Mora is the anchor of CBS 4 news at 5:00, 6:00 and 11:00. He is best known nationally for the years he spent as a news anchor for Good Morning America. He has also reported for virtually all of the ABC broadcasts, including World News Tonight, Nightline and 20/20. He is the first Hispanic male to anchor a regularly-scheduled national broadcast news show, and the first Hispanic male to be the lead anchor at a network-owned station in Chicago.
He is a recipient of a national Emmy, nine local Emmys, the Peabody Award — two Peabody Awards, rather, and an Edward Murrow Award. He received an LLM from Harvard Law School, a JD from Universidad Catholicon Andreas Beo in Caracas, Venezuela; two honorary doctorates, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Please help me in welcoming a very familiar face, Antonio Mora.
(Applause.)
ANTONIO MORA: Thank you, Representative. I was very impressed with your Spanish, by the way.
Good afternoon, everyone. I am really honored to be here for this very important and terrific event. I was very pleased to be asked to be here.
American foreign policy affects us all. We often think about it in a macro sense. My personal experiences, it’s affected me from the day I was born. I was born in Havana a year before Castro marched in, and its determined my life in many ways ever since. My dad’s career was in international banking, and that brought us to the United States, and then took us to Venezuela.
I worked as an international lawyer in New York for many years before becoming a broadcaster, and then I did a lot of international work as a correspondent for ABC News. I’ve traveled the four continents and reported from more than a dozen countries.
So it affects all of us in ways we sometimes don’t think about it. And I have international relations in my blood. My great grandfather, Cosmero Deliante, was Cuban Secretary of State, and he was the president of the General Assembly of the League of Nations back in the ‘20s. My grandfather worked with the U.N. in Geneva. My dad worked for one of the international organizations, eight organizations in Washington.
My great contribution to international relations is that I’m a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and I occasionally pay my dues on time.
But as a journalist, one of my great frustrations is just how little attention is paid to the world in our broadcast news and in our newspapers and magazines.
It’s — I hope I don’t bore you with a couple of quick anecdotes. In 2000, not long after Hugo Chavez had taken over in Venezuela, I went to the people at ABC News, and I said, “You know, I think we should do a story on this guy. He’s already gone to see Saddam Hussein, the first Western leader to hang out with Saddam in Iraq. He went to see Kadafi. He was already going on and on and on about his anti-American tendencies, including refusing American aid when there were horrible mudslides there that killed thousands of people.”
And the response from the World News Tonight people was, “Hugo who?” And that’s how little attention is paid. And no matter how much I tried, I completely failed at trying to get them to pay attention to Chavez back then. I’m not sure it would have done any good, but at least some awareness of this guy in Venezuela would certainly have been helpful back then.
And a few months after my failure with Chavez, in the spring of 2001, I gave a commencement address at a college in Pennsylvania. And back then, describing network news, I said, “It’s a terrible irony that at a time of globalization, where our dependence on other countries increases daily, what we tell of the world beyond U.S. borders decreases daily. This isolationism will undoubtedly hurt us.”
And I went on to give a couple of examples of how interconnected we were and what — how what happened elsewhere in the world would affect us here. And in light of what happened a few months later, on September 11th, the examples are laughable. I told the story about the love bug virus that was created by a poor kid in Manila and how that cost billions of dollars in damages around the world within 24 hours. And then I said, quote, “A few OPEC countries cut back oil production, and all of a sudden you’re paying $40 bucks to fill up your SUV.” I paid 87 yesterday. What did I know?
Well, I find it a shame that now we are seeing — the media tends to get the blame. But it’s — we’re the easy whipping horse. And I think that, unfortunately, what’s happened is, that whenever we look at the ratings when international stories are done, the ratings have consistently demonstrated a lack of interest in the American public. And so that’s why something like this organization is just so important to bring awareness that we are interconnected, and the world is going to come to our doorstep and will continue to come to our doorstep as we so, unfortunately, learned seven years ago.
I do find it a shame now that the economy has taken a front seat in the news. I really had hoped we would see a more robust policy – a more robust discussion of foreign policy as we headed to the election this fall. I hope we still will, because obviously the economic crisis is also showing us how the world is involved in what’s going on. We’ve got a global economic crisis, and we’re seeing players like Barclay’s in China come into play with what’s happening with the investment banks and the commercial banks in our country.
So American foreign policy often has, you know, a powerful and direct affect on us. Especially, you know, here in South Florida. And I’m not telling you guys anything you don’t know. Now we’re seeing the Russians coming back to Cuba, even talking about stationing rockets there and creating a space center. One in five of our jobs here in South Florida is connected to international trade. Who knows how many others are connected to international tourism. Russian ministers were hanging out with Chavez in Venezuela just this week. We’ve seen the hurricanes and the desperate situation they’ve created in Haiti and in Cuba, and we know what that means; if that isn’t dealt with and if aid doesn’t go to Haiti and to Cuba, then we’d have a migration problem that comes right to us a few months later. So it is something that affects us on a daily basis.
Now, I hope our being here today is just a – you know, a small but positive step toward not only increasing awareness of how American foreign policy impacts the world, but also on how the rest of the world impacts us.
The Center for U.S. Global Engagement, through Impact ’08, has done, you know, terrific work around the country, along with its various state partners, in bringing these vital issues to the forefront of the political debate. And we are really lucky to have two great people here today who have seen these issues firsthand with incredible breadth of experience.
It is my distinct pleasure to introduce General Barry McCaffrey. At the time of his retirement from the Armed Services, General Barry McCaffrey was the most highly decorated four-star general in the U.S. Army; having been awarded four Purple — three Purple Hearts, twice awarded the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor, and two Silver Stars.
General McCaffrey served as commander of the U.S. Southern Command from 1994 to 1996. After retiring from the Army, he served for five years as Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy — we knew him as the Drug Czar — until 2001.
He currently serves as an adjunct professor of International Affairs at West Point, a national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, and he is the president of his own consulting firm based out of Arlington, Virginia.
Our other guest, as former White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer was the primary spokesperson for President Bush. You all know him well, I’m sure. He served as spokesman during the historic presidential recount. He was also there during September 11th, two wars, and the Anthrax attack. His best-selling book, “Taking Heat” details his years in the White House. It reached number seven on the New York Times best seller list.
Since leaving the White House, Ari has worked extensively in the world of sports. He has helped Major League Baseball deal with its controversies, as well as its opportunities. He’s a big Yankee fan. We’re going to try to convert him to the Marlins. He liked the Dolphins. He’s a big Dolphins fan. We got to get him to the Marlins.
And he has also been involved with the Sony Ericsson and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. He also helps advise several major corporations about their communications issues.
Now, we also want to make sure that all of you join in this conversation. You’ll have that opportunity. There are note cards at all your tables, and please feel free, write down any questions you may have for them. And we will — the staff will pick them up and bring them to me, and we will make sure to ask those questions.
So why don’t I get the General up here first, and let’s start a discussion. And the first question I’m going to have them both address is: What do you both see as the most critical global challenges facing our next president?
General McCaffrey.
(Applause.)
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, thanks very much for the introduction and the opportunity to be here. And I’m certainly delighted to have continued to be part of the Center’s engagement on this notion of development, diplomacy and defense as being the three pillars of effective international policy.
Certainly Dr. Purcell, Liz Schrayer, Carolyn Reynolds, Mondale and others, I’ve been very proud to be part of our continuing dialogue leading up to the presidential elections.
Let me also just briefly take note, there’s a bunch of people here I’ve worked with in the past years. I’m happy to see again. Many of you helped me get U.S. Southern Command moved to this Crossroad of the Americas instead of the other possibilities, which included Camp McCoy, Wisconsin and Trent Lott International Airport, down the road here in Mississippi, and Newt Gingrich’s Atlanta and other contenders. But the right thing happened at the end, and we were really proud to see U.S. Southern Command with the active intervention. A lot of you in this room made the transition.
And certainly to Gene Prescott, who owns this beautiful hotel, was part of that. And Mayor Don Slesnick was part of it, mayor of this beautiful community. Tom Hill, who is here, one of my successors at U.S. Southern Command.
By the way, every time I see Tom Hill, one of the finest soldiers I’ve met in my career. Terrific communicator talking to young soldiers. And, you know, he may not remember this story.
I listened to him give a speech, a bunch of freshman at West Point, where I’m now on the faculty, and he -– they’re, you know, a bunch of kids who are under tremendous strain. They’ve been there. They’re under physical and emotional and academic pressures. And he said, “Look,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you, I was raised in a tough Texas family.” He said, “My first –“ “I finally left home and I went off. Dad sent me off to the University of Texas, I remember.” And he said, “The first semester I was just overwhelmed. I was working a job. I was partying all night. I was trying to keep up with my studies.” And he said, “I finally wrote a letter home and said what pressure I was under, and I hoped I’d be able to continue handling this load.” And he said, “Back came a letter a few days later,” and he recognized his dad’s handwriting; the first and only letter he got from his dad. And he opened it with trembling hands and it says, “Dear son. Save the bullshit for your professors. Dad.”
Oh, Tom grew up in a family of direct words.
Let me also just say, that I -– you know, I’ve done a couple of these events, and I want to underscore I’m intensely political but non-partisan. So I’ve been — for a better part of a decade, very closely involved with Senator John McCain. He’s a national hero. He’s an example to many of us of political and personal courage. A man I admire enormously.
And I’ve been very much engaged with the Obama campaign. Dr. Susan Rice and Dr. Tim Romer and others, trying to, you know, remain objective and to talk about some of these national security issues.
Now, having said that, let me respond quickly. I know Ari Fleischer — by the way, Ari and I share one thing for sure in common. Both of us have enormous empathy for those in public life, and we’re delighted to be not one of their number. So Ari, I thank you for your public service and the chance of joining here today.
Three thoughts on the challenges to the next president. And two of them, I’m going to rank order and not talk about. Number one, obviously, is the economy.
You know, and I gave talks over the last several years. It’s hard to imagine, having taught economics at West Point, I am sure I don’t understand how the economy worked, which gives me a leg up on a lot of you, who may think you do.
But it’s hard to imagine how you can run massive deficits between tax revenues and expenditures; how you can run massive trade imbalances between imports and exports; how you can have no national energy strategy at all and start transferring much of America’s wealth to foreign countries, many of whom wish us ill; how you can debase the currency; how you can have a credit meltdown; how you can have a housing bubble that was fed, in large part, by corruption and incompetence on the part of those in the business community dealing with this issue, and at the end of the day, say you have a long-term, stable economic idea.
It simply isn’t going to work. Hopefully, these two candidates will focus on these issues.
Some of us are unsettled by attack ads, out of both candidates, that sound more like 1950 Chinese Mao propaganda than they do an attempt to focus on the issue.
So the economy will be number one for the next commander and chief. And I say that because our security depends primarily on our economic strength and the values of our citizens more than anything else.
The second issue. And, again, I need to put this on the table so we’re reminded of it. The next president has got to fix the U.S. Armed Forces. It’s starting to come apart. It’s vital to America’s foreign policy, to our deterrence. It should not be the primary tool of foreign policy. You know, international diplomacy 101, you list the eight tools: Covert action, economic leverage, diplomacy, international trade, new treaties. It’s the last tool to be picked up, but it better work when you reach for it. And this military of ours, without question, the most courageous, effective military we have ever fielded. I see them all the time in combat, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Special Ops community. 36,000 killed and wounded. There’s actually a war going on. And $750 billion into that defense community in seven years.
But our Army is starting to unravel. Our Air Force and Naval power, which depends upon cutting-edge technology, is not being funded. And so 15 years from now, when we’re talking about mischief on the Pacific Rim, we’re going to be in trouble. So the next president has got to face up to the — a growing problem and fix America’s Armed Forces.
Now, finally — and I think this really is what we’re talking about — we have a problem. Our greatest power — and I say this as, you know, as an American government professor — is our — the thing we’re most keen on defending is the Constitution of the United States. It’s our bill of rights. It’s our values. It’s our moral authority in the international community that gives us the most leverage. And that has been badly damaged.
And that isn’t necessarily only a function of the current administration and some of the egregious misjudgments of Secretary Don Rumsfeld. By the way, thank God for Bob Gates coming in, and now empowering Dr. Condi Rice to reengage on diplomacy. Lots of things are starting to go right now.
But we have damaged our moral authority. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, a notion, much of it, unfair, that we are anti-Islam in the international community; that we have been unilateralists; that we’re contemptuous of collective organizations; OES, UN, EU, NATO; that, you know, the going into Afghanistan, which was the right — by the way, I will reveal, I thought intervention in both Afghanistan and taking down the Saddam regime were the right things to do. I thought that then and I still do.
The egregious misjudgments and flawed execution were subsequent problems. But I do think we’ve had a damaged standing in the international community. That’s not just Muslims. You know, I — like many of you, when you travel in the international community now, if you’re in Poland, dealing with their National Security Council, you’re going to hear about America’s flawed foreign policy. Or Columbia, which I spent a week down there with this brilliant President Uribe a few months back.
So we’ve got a challenge. Our ability to call upon the world to help us has been minimized.
Now, having said that, it seems to me we ought to turn to the topic at hand, which is smart power.
It almost is a –- it goes without saying that our soldiers and Marines and Special Ops troops are the ones most interested in seeing us use the leverage and power of our inter-agency process to deal with these problems.
I know it’s bothersome to Dr. Rice, who I greatly admire, as Secretary of State. When I say categorically that as a general statement, when you look at the current engagement in this so-called War on Terror, a bad metaphor I would argue. Better that we talked about a cancer facing the international community.
When you look at that, I say, “Look, the only people at war here are the Armed Forces and the CIA.” The CIA being one of the most disciplined, courageous, effective organizations in our government, with tremendous international standing.
But they’re out there alone. 35,000 unclassified figure, CIA people, a $35 billion budget, and the U.S. Armed Forces, which is way under resourced for the foreign policy we elected to pursue.
In the other areas, it seems to me the next administration needs to rebuild USAID and give it the leverage that it needs. We need to fund an adequate foreign diplomacy. We had Secretary Bob Gates out in Kansas making just this argument.
We have to understand that if -– if you don’t like nuclear weapons, and you see, as I do, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the principal threat facing us, then you’ll like international treaties that get the global community to agree that that’s the primary threat we face.
The best thing we did on Saddam’s WMB wasn’t this terrific, high tech Air Force of ours bombing them; it was U.N. arms-controlled inspectors on the ground. We’ve got to understand these international organizations benefit smart U.S. foreign policy.
On that note, again, let me say how pleased I am to be part of this effort. And Liz and all of your colleagues, thanks for allowing me to be here. Welcome Ari Fleischer.
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, good afternoon. You know, it wasn’t so long ago I used to spend all my afternoons, most of my nights, and all of my mornings surrounded by the White House Press Corps. So believe me, it’s a pleasure to be with you.
Dr. Purcell, thank you very much for having me today. Thank you to everything that you are doing here in this organization. Liz Schrayer, wonderful to see you again. My friend Carolyn Reynolds — where did Carolyn go? It’s good to see you. And to Jeff Berkowitz as well. All the global engagement. It’s an honor to be here. Antonio, wonderful to see you, and General.
Anytime I see anybody anywhere who wears the uniform of our country, the only two words I can think of are “Thank you.” It’s an honor to be here.
Now, it was just about this time of day, a few short years ago, where it was my job to take that podium in the briefing room and assume the sacred position of a human piñata. I eagerly look forward to doing that again today. Antonio, I hope you won’t poke and probe too hard. But I’m looking forward to anything that you have. I want to take your questions.
But let me make a confession before I get into the — answer to the question that was asked. Because Antonio was being very polite in the introduction, and he didn’t tell you that in the 21 years that I spent in Washington, I worked for three United States Congressman, one United States Senator, and the President of the United States. Republicans all.
What he didn’t tell you is that I was actually raised a liberal Democrat. My parents, to this day, remain proud, principled Democrats who were and are horrified that I worked for George Bush. And they were horrified I became a Republican. In fact, when I left the White House in the summer of 2003, my mother did an interview with a little local hometown newspaper in a suburb of New York where I live, and they asked her what she thought about my becoming a Republican and leaving Washington, and she said she hoped that this was a phase I was going through and that I would grow out of it.
My father, not to be outdone, my father said to the same little local paper that if his son was going to rebel, it’s better I became a Republican than a drug dealer, but not by much.
Well, General, it took my college years, which included a visit to West Point for a program that I know you’re associated with, where I started to become an increasingly conservative Democrat, thanks to Jimmy Carter. And then thanks to Ronald Reagan, I changed parties shortly after Congress, because in my view, it’s love of this country, it’s patriotism, plus the fact that I got my first job and started to pay taxes.
At the White House, one of the best parts of being Press Secretary was, I used to sit in on every foreign summit meeting the president had. Whether the President would travel abroad or whether the foreign leaders would come to the United States, I’d be in the Oval taking notes on everything the President would do and say and just listening. This is how I would brief the press.
I would think about what was said in the meeting. I knew the President extraordinarily well. I knew what it was he wanted said, what he didn’t want said. But I would absorb it all. And I would see the unique role that the United States has around this world.
Everybody but everybody wants to come to America, no matter what our standing in the world. And I think this is something that most likely doesn’t it matter who wins on January 20th, will pass.
But our standing in the world, even in bad times, even in controversial times, remains. We are the envy of the world. Every foreign leader wants to come to the United States. Almost everyone has something they want.
We are a generous and a good nation. We have a lot that we give. And it is our giving that also makes this world a better and a freer world.
I saw the malaria programs, the AIDS programs that were paramount in this administration to improving the lives of people who are needy around this world, particularly in Africa.
And whoever the next president is going to be, in my judgment, has three immediate tasks they’re going to face. And it’s going to be very hard. And I say this to you as someone who is a part of a transition. Just over eight years ago, thanks to Florida, it was a shorter transition than it could of otherwise been.
But the fact is, whoever wins on January 20th is almost going to stand by themselves, from January 20th for at least a few weeks, maybe a few months, because the Senate is very slow to confirm people. So it is the gut, the character, the judgment of the person who will be the president that will be the most driving thing about how they will govern.
They will have a secretary of defense and a secretary of state on day one, but there won’t be any assistant secretaries of anything. It will take months.
Priority number one is going to be of a smooth transition, given the events that are on the ground in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
As the General pointed out, we have people who wear the uniform of this country here being shot at each and every day. And to have a seamless transition, to protect their lives, to protect their mission and still to emerge victorious in the mission that they are engaged in, in my judgment, will be the top priority and the hardest priority, especially since both candidates are determined to recalibrate some of the things George Bush has done.
Barack Obama, of course, to change fundamentally what George Bush has done in both Afghanistan and in Iraq. That transition, amidst a shooting war, will be the hardest foreign policy priority for whoever comes into office.
Number two is going to be managing our relations with the major powers of China and Russia, both of whom are going to vex the next president at almost each and every step along the way.
Russia throwing its muscle around, particularly in terms of energy, and Russia’s abundance of natural gas and pipelines that they turn on and off, as they see fit, to use their power to influence events in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and, of course, Western Europe is also the end of those pipelines.
China, the growing behemoth. If in China, you are one in a million, there are 1,300 people exactly like you. In China, if you take the top 25 percent of Chinese with the highest IQs, there are more of them than there are of all people in all the Americas.
This is the growing economic power of this world, and it’s a country that itself doesn’t know how that power is going to be used. On the one hand, it’s a sort of sometimes marvelously capitalistic country. On the other hand, it’s a Communist dictatorship, determined to keep power in the hands of the elite, while growing wealthy, so their middle class can gain and grow, an opportunity for the United States and the Western world, as that middle class grows.
And finally, it is inevitable, an issue that will haunt whoever is the next president in any decision they make, and this is the Middle East. Do you deeply engage? Do you try to be the one who has done something that no other president has done before you and successfully bring the parties together for a lasting peace, especially when there is no spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority with any weight or credibility or influence that can make peace. What do you do about the Middle East and about Israel?
When I was there, it was one of the worst issues. The second Intifada began in September of 2000, and it grew only worse in 2001, as Israel elected Ariel Sharon as its president, a real statement from the Israeli people that they wanted to move to a position of strength, not diplomacy. Nobody knows what the future will be in that powder keg. It will be a daunting problem for whoever comes into that White House.
To me, those are the three major issues. That’s what whoever comes next will face.
It’s my honor, again, to be with you. And now, I look forward to sitting in that chair and being your human piñata.
ANTONIO MORA: Why don’t we start this off by looking forward to next week. Fortunately, the first debate, presidential debate will be focused on foreign policy. You both advise presidents. Why don’t you act as advisors to presidential candidates here. What should they focus on next week?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, number one, if I were John McCain, in the days right before the first debate which is focused on foreign policy, I would call for a change in –
(Interruption.)
AIR FLEISCHER: It’s almost a Jewish wedding. They didn’t break, but…
ANTONIO MORA: As a press secretary, it’s very disconcerting to see a podium get carried away.
ARI FLEISCHER: If I were John McCain, given what’s happening this week in financial markets, I would a day, two days before the debate, call for a change in topic and make the debate an economic one. I would try to engineer a last-minute change to show that John McCain, who has economic problems, can focus, shift — switch gears to the economy, which if things going this week or continuing next week, that debate is going to have a discordant ring, if they’re talking foreign policy and everybody else in America is talking economics.
Having said that, I think John McCain’s task is to show that he uniquely, standing on that stage, has leadership and judgment, all the things that experience is supposed to measure.
Barack Obama’s job is to show that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in Washington, you have the wrong ideas. And I’ll be fascinated by this. It plays to John McCain’s strength, arguably. In politics, always be careful when someone plays to your strength, because, as George Bush likes to point out to people, he enjoyed being misunderestimated. The expectations -– the expectations will be high for Senator McCain. What do you think they should be with John?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, you know, one of the — I think Ari’s comments are on target. One of the problems I’ve had is that traditionally, we’ve said that foreign policy stopped at the — partisan politics stopped at the oceans’ shores. And then when it came to the international community, we wanted to see bipartisan consensus on sensible policies that made us a player in the international community, a respectful one, part of collective efforts. But also that it would be – that we wouldn’t have two parties’ positions.
And, by the way, a two-party system served us pretty darn well. It had adversarial hashing out of different viewpoints is a pretty good thing to do, both in the law and in politics, but not in the international community.
A lot of the problems we face in the international community — and I’ve told both — both these campaigns the same thing. When it comes to Mexico, both party bases have bad ideas. You know, the Democrats’ lauding the notion of we’re exporting jobs to Mexico, and I would counter, by the way, that were it not for 12 million Central American and Mexican workers in this country, we wouldn’t have an agricultural system that works, daycare centers, construction industry, et cetera. And then you’ve got the third-rail Republican politics which says John McCain, by the way, had a terrifically sensible position on immigration, and then he got frightened off it by the terrible backlash of people afraid of crime and uncontrolled migration on the frontier and the four border states.
So somehow we’ve got to get these two candidates to talk about common solutions to problems that are difficult to think through.
Now, the other thing, a personal viewpoint. A lot of the big issues that we face, certainly in foreign policy, coming up with a decent idea is pretty easy. It’s the execution that’s tough.
So Afghanistan, I just came in in June, you know, thanks to Bob Gates, we got $10 billion in road construction money headed there, and Dr. Rice is engaged, and we doubled the military footprint on the ground.
But the key to Afghanistan is, we’ve got to be there for 25 years with an international set of partners, NATO. We’ve got to engage Pakistan, engage the Iranians. That’s the challenge. So we’ve got to tell the American people, “Be patient.” Right now it’s $2.4 billion a month in Afghanistan. We need bipartisan support for a long-term engagement. That’s what I hope comes out of this debate.
ANTONIO MORA: How effective – and Charlie Wilson, from, you know, Congressman Charlie Wilson, Charlie Wilson’s War, wrote a piece in the Washington Post called, “Charlie Wilson’s Peace,” and he argued that if — when we helped the Afghans beat the Russians, that if we had gone in with the kind of humanitarian aid that was necessary to build roads and to build infrastructure, that we wouldn’t be seeing all the problems we’ve seen now.
How confident are you both of that; that — that U.S. engagement in that way, in that constructive way, will be effective?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, we did go in with humanitarian aid. In fact, one of the phone calls that I remember with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair was saying that the first –
ANTONIO MORA: And now — we’re talking 30 years later, you know, I mean –
GENERAL McCAFFREY: 30 years later.
ANTONIO MORA: Charlie Wilson was talking about Afghanistan when the Russians were in there and that we gave, you know, the covert arms for them to defeat the Russians, and then back then we should have gone in.
ARI FLEISCHER: But we didn’t give them aid back then.
ANTONIO MORA: So I guess my question is: How effective do you think — is he right? If we had gone into Afghanistan, if we had engaged in Cuba 40 years ago, if the U.S. engages on all those different levels of helping other countries, how effective will that be?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: I think it always varies case by case, country to country and era by era.
And this is the hardest thing about those people, myself included, we’re committed to having a foreign policy that involves not just the military, but foreign aid, diplomacy, et cetera. You have to make a very careful judgment about where we can do things to be effective, and so we don’t waste the taxpayer’s money to get a backlash where people say, “We have problems at home, don’t spend it abroad.”
My suspicion is, in Afghanistan right after the Soviets left, we had very little influence. We have military influence with Mushahadin. I don’t think we could have had — because we didn’t have a central government that was effective, any type of aid program that worked. Now we have a tenuous government in Afghanistan that is doing the right things, trying to, we have a chance for success. It will take decades. Foreign aid is always a slow water tap. It never quickly solves anything. It’s an important slow water tap that turns things around, never right away, though.
ANTONIO MORA: Do we have to turn that water tap on much further?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, you know, I – yeah, I might have a different view on this. You know, the — Afghanistan is a fascinating place to me. A beautiful country. Our soldiers like the Afghans. They’re incredibly good businessmen and they’re — God knows they put a constitution together. They got an elected parliament. They got a president who is a – you know, sort of a modern day miracle worker.
Now, the problem is, there’s no roads there. There’s no schools there. There’s no clinics there. There wasn’t an Afghan security force. There’s still no police force. This year, we’ll spend $36 billion in Afghanistan, and a couple of hundred million dollars on counter drug operations.
Afghanistan is a giant opium plot. $4 billion worth of opium. You can’t get there if you don’t confront the opium problem. You know, when it comes to antidrug operations, right now there are 15 DEA agents in Afghanistan. We’ve got more counter drug law enforcement people in Newburgh, New York, than we do in Afghanistan. There’s four of them in Pakistan.
We have a grossly — when I go to a PRT in Afghanistan, Provincial Reconstruction Team, a marvelous idea. 120 people living out in the wilds of some province, they’re suppose to be jump-starting the economy and women’s groups and politics and building roads. You have 120 people out there, and I say, “Well who’s the agricultural guy on the team?” “Mr. so and so is.” “Well, good. Good to see you. What are you, an Iowa farmer?” “Oh, no sir.” He said, “I’m a retired artillery lieutenant colonel. I just got hired two weeks ago to come over here.”
So one of — the next administration has to build USAID, build the public health sector, get the customs and border protection to be able to send trainers overseas to build frontier guards for Afghanistan. I don’t think we have even close to the resources involved in this effort that we should.
ANTONIO MORA: Well, Defense Secretary Gates said that we cannot kill or capture our way to democracy. I guess my question is: How much do you open that spigot, though? Senator Obama has said doubling the aid to $50 billion. Is that enough to open — and will this really make a change, if the U.S. increases aid around the world?
ARI FLEISCHER: It depends on where it’s spent and how it’s spent. I look at what’s happened with Egypt and Israel, as an example, where Egypt is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid — of course Israel is, too –- and it was a price we paid happily as part of one of the Middle East Peace Accords, when Anwar Sadat agreed to have peace with Israel. They got themselves in good standing and they received lots of money.
I will guarantee you, a lot of that money is siphoned off. A lot of that money goes to corruption. But a lot of that money — enough of a percentage has brought about sufficient stability in Egypt; that Israel and Egypt thankfully have a cold peace. And I will take a cold peace over a shooting war any day. And the foreign aid has been one of the things that helped make that happen.
But the problem, again, for people in the community, foreign aid cannot just be two magic words that solve all problems. Because unless there is a government on the ground that is capable of taking that aid and using that aid wisely and well and getting it to the people on the ground who need it, as opposed to people at the top who siphon it, it’s only partially effective. So it will always be a case by case.
I don’t know the specific number; should it be 25? 50? These are the things my former bosses used to do, double everything, sound good, look like you care.
Congress goes along. Congress bids it up. It should be triple because I care more than you. This is how money gets wasted as well. So I don’t know what the dollar amount is. I know what the approach should be, and it’s a tough-nosed approached.
ANTONIO MORA: And we’ve got millions of kids dying of malaria in Africa and millions of their parents dying of AIDS. We’ve got helplessness in the Middle East and in Asia. A lot of people believe that that’s one of the reasons that we’ve got these Jihadists, that, you know, there’s such hopelessness in so many places. Can U.S. engagement really change things around? Is that the only way we can do it?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Yeah, I think we ought to — you know, when you look back on our history — and I think Ari mentioned in his own comments — we haven’t had, thank God, one terrorist incident in this country since 9/11, during a period in which the Indonesians, the Saudis, the Brits, the French, the Spanish, a lot of our international community partners got nailed with devastating human and economic consequences.
Now, part of that’s just a good work of the FBI, and, you know, customs and border protection and the agency. A lot of good -– the Department of Homeland Security with its -– you know, all of its mismanagement of Katrina, nonetheless is a tremendous contribution to our domestic security.
Much of that, though, is American values. We’ve got 12 million foreigners out there stumbling around the country, and they wake up in the morning and say, “You know, we’re both working. Our two girls are going to school. We’re from Syria. We’ve got freedom of religion.”
And so, you know, again, I think our values are what protects us, in many cases, and those values ought to be expressed in the international community.
And at some point, this isn’t philosophy and rhetoric, it has to be dollars. If you want to win in Afghanistan, you’ve got to build a road around the ring road, down to the province capitals and down to the district capitals. And then you’ve got to establish a local police force. And right now, the only people working that are U.S. Army and Marine captains. And, you know, this brilliant General Dave Petraeus, about to be the Cen Com commander up the road here in Tampa said, “Money is combat power. Development. Human engagement.”
My problem is, it shouldn’t be the U.S. Army and Marine rifle company commanders doing it; it ought to be the State Department and USAID.
ARI FLEISCHER: You were talking about what creates terror and whether or not we can have a role because of AID in alleviating it. I also think it’s worth pointing out, the attackers on September 11th were all pretty wealthy. They were upper middle class Saudis for the most part.
In my judgment — and we may differ on this, I don’t know — the single event that created more terrorists anywhere around the world was the Mushahadin’s defeat of the mighty Soviet Union. It showed them that they can win through terror, through military. And that, in my judgment, sent a signal to the Saudis, and everybody else, we can take on America. There are things we can do.
ANTONIO MORA: So then –
ARI FLEISCHER: I think in Iraq, for example, in 2006 particularly, going in through Syria to kill Americans in Iraq was a growth industry, because it was successful. So we got more terrorists coming after us. As we surged and started to defeat them militarily, the flow from Syria has really stopped.
So there is also a cold calculation to this as well. People do, even in that part of the world, make realistic assessments about, do they want to go into the terrorism field or not.
ANTONIO MORA: That was going to be my next question, which relates to the now infamous Bush Doctrine, or at least Charlie Gibson’s version of it. How do we balance preemption and prevention?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, you know, to some extent, I thought that was a — sort of a silly question. We have always — and a lot of Americans don’t hear this get said publicly — we always had a doctrine of preemption to include with the use — first use of nuclear weapons. It is part of our declaratory policy that if we see a pending strike on the American people, we will take action. So that’s not new.
And by the way, I think that it’s a — it was zero support for the Iraq war, down to 20 percentile. I still think President Bush showed remarkable courage and leadership in responding post 9/11.
And so — so there is a -– a fact of the matter is, and, by the way, I was part of a group of people that went to a lot of these eight state sponsors of terrorism and our message was quite, quite clear. If you successfully strike us, we will take action against you, and I don’t mean the state, I mean against you personally; the head of government, the head of intelligence services, et cetera, and that was a very fruitful policy.
So, I say put that aside. That is a false issue, it seems to me. The real issue is: How do we get positive engagement with the international community so we don’t have to fight them. You know, I spent a lot of my life as a lieutenant and captain crawling around in the mud with a sackful of hand grenades and an M16 shooting it out with people at 25-feet range. We’re still doing that. So if we can spend money in diplomacy and economic creation and engagement — and public diplomacy doesn’t mean cheap videos done in State Department; it means getting very young people here to the University of Florida to study journalism. You know, you spend 50,000 bucks on some kid’s education, you get a lot more out of it than two smart bombs. You don’t get to choose to do one or the other. You’ve got to have military power. But we’ve got to put resources behind these other elements of international engagement.
ANTONIO MORA: But where do the resources come from? You mentioned that there are issues right now with the Army and the investment in technology. We need money there.
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Now, you talk about an unpopular statement. Right now, we, as Americans, 300 million of us, are spending 4 percent of GNP on national defense. This is the lowest amount we have spent in any of our so-called wars over the last hundred years. 17 percent Vietnam, 38 percent during World War II. We are not even close to bankrupting the country on the national defense piece of it.
Now, one could argue that, you know, are we really getting $14 billion a month worth of defense out of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? And many of us would suggest that if you put a few billion into the nation building, you’re going to be able to draw down your forces.
But I don’t think the national defense piece is what — our problem. We’ve got to raise taxes. Somebody’s got to pay for this engagement. Somebody’s got to pay for the customs and border protection. Both candidates talking about, we’re going to lower taxes. Hmmm. I wonder how we pay for these programs, you know.
And so I –- I don’t — I’m not too sure we got a realistic debate. Resources is not the problem on engagement in the international community.
ANTONIO MORA: Ari, you seem to want to say something?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, when it comes to resources, it seems to me these days that if you want to get any, and you’re a foreign country, you should make some very bad loans, and then the United States government will come running to give you money.
For those who have a real stake in this issue, this is where I think you’ve got a burden to show your fellow citizens that foreign aid money has a high rate of return. There still is skepticism about it, because people know about corruption, people know about waste. And so it has to come from one place. It comes from you and me, our neighbors, we, the taxpayers. That’s the only place it comes from. And it is going to be an era of very limited funds.
And even if we raise taxes the way Barack Obama is proposing to raise taxes, we’re still going to have massive deficits, because of Social Security, Medicare, and this is even before –- now we’re dealing with a $500 billion to $1 trillion new government creation to bail out some of these financial institutions.
So our economic house has just got to be put in order, too. And that’s part of this. Foreign aid is always going to be vulnerable, though.
ANTONIO MORA: One of the questions from our audience brings up the issue of moral authority and how we have — how you said that we’ve damaged our moral authority. Let me act as devil’s advocate here.
Growing up in Venezuela, “Gringo go home. Yankee go home. The imperialita.” Gringo was a common thread of the public discourse down there.
Nixon, back in 1959, as vice president got attacked in his limousine by, you know, a rioting crowd. There’s always been animosity toward the United States. Do you really think it is worse now and — as the question asks, what should the next president do first to change it?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, yeah, it is worse. It’s unarguable. I mean, you look at a few charitable trusts’ polling data, never in the country’s 200-plus year history has there been greater animosity toward perceived U.S. foreign policy, and, again, against the administration, the person of the president, the person of Secretary Rumsfeld than there is today. It is appalling.
It’s to the point at which there is no repairing it, and basically the next administration — by the way, I think that animosity is really shallow. You know, I –- you don’t see anybody in Saudi Arabia sending their kid to Madras and Pakistan. They’re sending their kids to Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Notre Dame and Stanford and the University of Florida.
So, I don’t think that animosity is serious. And even — you know, “Yankee go home” in Latin America, I’ve gone all over the Americas in uniform and been treated with respect and friendship. And so I think the level of goodwill and respect for American values is enormous in the international community.
Temporarily, we’ve damaged it. That Abu Ghraib thing was a — just a disaster for us. And, by the way, personal judgment again, that emanated from illegal orders by the Secretary of Defense given to the U.S. Armed Forces, that, thankfully, have been corrected. And I’ve been to Guantanamo. It’s okay now. It’s too late, the Europeans think it’s a vergin belsus (phonetic), but –
ANTONIO MORA: What does the next president do first to improve things?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, both John McCain and Obama said they — when they get in office they’re going to close Guantanamo, which, by the way, is going to be a tricky deal, because we’ve got to take treatment of these dangerous international criminals and put them in a federal pen somewhere in the U.S., which is not something most congressman are working to get -–
ANTONIO MORA: To get -–
GENERAL McCAFFREY: — near your sister (phonetic). So we’ve got a problem. But we’re going to — I think the next administration will clearly make signals that says, “Hey, we’re back. We’re going to operate under American values.”
ANTONIO MORA: And how are the – and, you know, I saw some crazy number that says that there are more military musicians than there are members of the American Foreign Service. Does the State Department and Foreign Service need to be buttressed, too? Is that part of the – of what we need to do, what they need to do to change America’s moral image?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, let me — I want to jump back in on that issue, though, about what happens, our relations abroad. Because sadly, I say this. But I do think come January 20th, 2009, much of this will dissipate.
ANTONIO MORA: Yeah.
ARI FLEISCHER: Because I think a lot of it is aimed at my old boss.
ANTONIO MORA: All right.
ARI FLEISCHER: And I think a lot of it is aimed at him because, particularly in Europe, he is perceived as a cowboy, a unilateralist, somebody who is not very intellectual. And I think that’s regrettable, but it’s the reality that you’re perceived. So I think it will pass.
The General is absolutely right. Not only do they send their kids to school here, not only the Saudis, but how — many people from foreign countries, but they come to our Mayo Clinic. They want to come to all our schools. We still have so much that makes us the magnet of the world.
Now, I also — just from a personal point of view, I was a French minor at a school that was very big on foreign languages. My mother is an immigrant to this country. I won’t take a back seat to anybody when it comes to being an internationalist. But we also, as Americans, have to ask ourselves: Is there also something about us that makes us a little bit distinct and different, that we should never give up, even if we’re criticized for it.
And in the early 1800s — and this is how the Marine Corps was born and the Navy was born — the Barbary pirates were the terrorists of the day, operating off the coast of Libya. And they used to routinely seize European ships, capture the ships, demand the ransom from the European get along-go along nations. They would pay the ransom, and then they’d wonder why they kept getting more ships hijacked. It was an economic move by these terrorists back then.
Thomas Jefferson came along and said, “America is different. We won’t pay a ransom.” He built the Navy. He formed the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps anthem is the Battle of the Tripoli, and we went in and we said, “We don’t pay,” and we went to war, and our ships stopped getting hijacked.
So we are and have always been a nation a little bit different from Europe. It’s always been because of geography, and I think other reasons much more accommodationist. And I think after World War II, one of the European lessons was, the role of the military, the role of force should almost be eliminated entirely.
And I think this is one of the problems we have in Afghanistan, with NATO being the edges of the spear. They have a different approach than America does to fight in a military battle with different rules of engagement.
So there’s also a degree here where we shouldn’t worry so much if we’re different from Europe. In some areas, I’m proud to be different.
ANTONIO MORA: Another question from the audience. Do you believe the next president can really build a bipartisan foreign policy?
GENERAL McCAFFREY: I don’t know, I think it’s a — the leadership in the House and the Senate, to be honest, has been discouraging in both parties.
Part of it is, so much is at stake in this election. So perhaps, after the election is over, given the enormity of the challenges we face, I mean, Social Security is not hard to fix if you start now and work it for 15 years. If you can’t gain agreement for another eight years, we’ll be in a crisis mode on Social Security.
Immigration is not hard to fix. We need three million workers a year crossing the border. They ought to cross with a legal card, be able to get minimum wage, OSHA safety standards, wire their money home. The problem is bipartisan cooperation.
So on a lot of these issues, the Congress will be the key. Congress will be even more controlled by the Democrats in the next — at the end of this election. And we’ll have to see the outcome of the election. It’s just too close to even have a clue. But one can only hope that we’ll say, “This is our president now in office, and these is our problems, and we’ll hash out a common sense solution.”
ARI FLEISCHER: Now, I think we have long passed the era of bipartisanship and foreign policy, I’m sorry to say. I remember on September 12th, 2001, a meeting in the Cabinet Room. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said to the President, “We will never go back. It will never again be the way it used to be.”
It lasted a few months. Everybody did their part to get everybody mad at each other. But look at what’s happening in New York this week with Ahmadinejad of Iran coming to the United Nations. Senator Clinton was supposed to make remarks, then Governor Palin was supposed to make remarks. Wouldn’t that have been the most wonderful shoulder-to-shoulder showing of American resolve against Iran? And what happened? It descended right away into politics. I didn’t know she was going to be invited. Well, if I’m not coming, you shouldn’t go,” and now no one’s invited of that stature.
This is a sad reflection on our ability to be together as one country to confront Iran. So I have very little faith, frankly, that we are in an era of bipartisanship.
ANTONIO MORA: You know, I think I speak for a lot of people in this group and a lot of people in South Florida. I think there’s great frustration, in this part of the country, that the Bush administration has focused so much of its energies — some necessarily in the Middle East and in Asia — but ignored Latin America. Ignored Cuba. Ignored Haiti. Ignored what’s going on in Venezuela.
How important — is that, you know, really a big mistake on the administration’s part, and what could the consequences be if they don’t engage in South America?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, and I know the General was more knowledgeable on the specifics of this than I am, given his background. But I will say at least for the time that I was in the White House, I remember the Millennium Challenge account was announced on a trip that the President made to South America.
And I think what happened was 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan kind of just blew out of the water most of the focus on issues in our hemisphere, because they’re not very newsworthy. It’s the good, solid work of trying to build the democracies that do exist in South America and Central America. And of course our relations with Mexico took a dramatic turn. Where President Bush, running for office, really wanted to do things on immigration, 9/11 set that back, and when he eventually was able to get back to it, the center couldn’t hold in Washington. There was no bipartisan consensus in the middle to have anything remotely, in my judgment, as a sensible immigration reform. As the General pointed out here, the opinions (phonetic) of both parties defeated that.
So I don’t think I share the premise of your question. I think it was much more the lack of focus, given the other controversies in the world.
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Well, you know, I spend – I was very closely involved with the Bush 41 administration and now the White House and obviously the Clinton Administration, and I tell people, practically speaking, I’ve spent a lot of days in the White House Situation Room, you know, Saturday morning, ten o’clock in the morning. And I tell people, there’s about a thousand people that run the government of the United States. And around 300 — this is an arbitrary number I came up with — that run the U.S. foreign and national security policy.
And on a given day, we’re capable of handling about three issues. That’s it. And then we get swamped. And it’s not that we lack intellectual skill or experience or dedication to country. It’s just too much.
If you’re not one of those three issues, we’re not talking about you. We stopped talking about Latin America on 9/11. The next administration has got to remind us, for God sakes, our economy is fundamentally dependent upon Canada, Mexico and Latin American.
Venezuelan, Columbian, Ecuadorian energy supplies — and, by the way, you know, Spanish is our second language for God’s sakes. Our culture, our families, our music has been informed, enriched by our north-south relationship.
So to the Bush administration’s, sort of, my sense of empathy with them, they did get wrapped up in 9/11. There was a war going on. The next administration has got to go back to what’s really vital to us, and that is the Americans first.
ANTONIO MORA: One final question. We — and a couple of the audience members asked variations on this. One says, “We have a great opportunity for bold foreign assistance reform. Would you support the creation of a Department of Global Development to provide a powerful voice for poverty issues within and across the U.S. government to make poverty history?”
There’s another variation of it as to, you know, whether there should be — where this all should be focused. If the — yes, we want to carry a big stick, but we also need to go out there and help all these countries around the world. How do we do it?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, to me again, it all begins with the type of government the country has.
Our only chances for success at really reducing poverty –- and we will never eliminate it — but to reduce poverty depends on the host government.
When you look at South Korea and North Korea, two nations that began at the exact same starting point when the armistice was reached in the Korean Peninsula in the ’50s, and now one is a thriving capitalistic country that has prosperous people, and the other has horrible poverty, the worst on Earth you in some measure – you could argue.
Why? Because of the type of government these places have.
So you have to have a starting point of a benign government that actually puts its people first. There, in the developing world, we do have chances. There just aren’t that many countries that fit that bill. Uganda is one. They’re trying very hard and trying to do a good job with it. Botswana is another. But there are other countries across Africa who don’t have a chance. It would be a waste of taxpayer money, no matter how benevolent we are. And so, again, careful judgments case by case.
Whether it’s the creation of a new cabinet level department or not, I don’t know. I think that we don’t need a cabinet-level agency to have a responsible host government, and to me that’s our starting point.
GENERAL McCAFFREY: I think those are big comments. You know, I — and I’m – I’m always uneasy about new names, new bureaucracies, and I’ve gone that route a couple times. It’s -– you know, many people argue, you’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But yet 22 percent of the federal budget goes to defense, and under 1 percent of foreign policy diplomacy in the USA.
We have a shameful under funding of international development money. We need to rebuild USAID. Call them what you want. If you got a few hundred people, you can’t organize stuff in the international community.
You go to Afghanistan and you talk to the USAID person, and then you talk to the U.S. Corps of Engineers, and, you know, we got a colonel there and 70-some-odd people, they’re enormously effective, and the USAID less so.
So you got to have a program. You got to have resources. And I do think the next administration ought to that this on. We ought to remember what our priorities are and remember that — by the way, one of the reasons that generals and admirals are all old guys is, none of us actually want to fight, you know. The young guys want to fight. What we want to do is use military power to back up and provide leverage to U.S. diplomatic covert action, economic power, et cetera. That means we’ve got to put resources and leadership and energy and public diplomacy where it belongs. And I’m sure the next team will do just that.
ANTONIO MORA: Thank you both very much indeed. (Applause.)
ANTONIO MORA: That is a fabulous point to end with, and on behalf of all of us, I first and foremost want to please join me in thanking our incredible keynotes, Ari Fleischer, General Barry McCaffrey, and our incredible moderator — I grew up in Chicago, and Chicago’s loss is Miami’s gain — and it is wonderful, of course, to have all of you.
(Applause.)
ANTONIO MORA: And to end, General McCaffrey, you said that, you know, people don’t want to be a fighter. There’s one place we all want to be a fighter, and that is when Madeleine Albright and Frank Carlucci kicked this off 15 months ago, Madeleine Albright said, “We want to raise our righteous voice around how we can make Impact ’08 build a better, safer world.”
So I ask all of you in Florida — again, I live in the Washington D.C. area, so we don’t get to see the candidates quite as much as you, and we know that Senator Obama is just down the street this afternoon. We know Senator McCain has been here and will be back, as will probably Governor Palin and Senator Joe Biden and their supporters, that are many in this room. Use your voice. Partner with us. I think you all — if you don’t know Jennie Rothenberg, you should. Jennie stand up — and her colleague Chris Kruger, who unfortunately couldn’t be here today, but has really led the effort. Call them. We want to work and partner with you.
Susan, and behalf of your organization, the Chamber, we thank you for partnering, and we look forward together to watch as whomever is sworn in on January 20th, 2009 in Washington D.C. to make sure, as again, Madeleine Albright and Frank Carlucci said, that we will hear the words about Impact ’08 building a better, safer world and committing to using and investing in our non-military tool kits that can help make us more secure, save lives, and really advance who we are and proud to be as Americans.
Thank you all for being here.
GENERAL McCAFFREY: Thanks very much.
