February 1, 2002

My fellow Americans,

5000 years ago, human civilizations began to arise, some half-million years after our earliest ancestors had emigrated from Africa, first to the Middle East and, eventually, to all the lands of the Earth. The earliest civilizations, and many throughout history, were autocratic and totalitarian, with little or no concern for the individual rights of the peoples being governed. Although democracy arose in ancient Greece, allowing decisions to be shared among all "citizens", half the population - women - were excluded.

225 years ago, a new country, a representative democracy, dedicated to the truth that all people are equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, was created here in the United States.

Since that time, we have had many battles with totalitarian regimes, some hot, some cold. These regimes, and the wars we fought with them, caused the deaths of 180 million people during the 20th century. Inconceivable carnage: 180 million people killed, in one century, as a consequence of people trying to impose a totalitarian ideology on other people.

And if we do not continue to fight these battles, we will be led, as George Orwell so memorably put it in his great novel "1984", to the establishment of this vision of horror: a boot stamping a human face, forever.

In our new century, we are now engaged in a struggle with terrorist organizations that span many countries, and that are supported, at least in part, by some of those countries. The country which gave the most support to those terrorists who killed over 6000 innocent people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, last September, was Afghanistan.

And by "Afghanistan" understand that I do not mean the people of Afghanistan - the vast majority of whom were oppressed by their unchosen rulers, the Taliban, a totalitarian group which perverted the teachings of Islam in an unspeakably blasphemous way, as have the terrorists. The people of Afghanistan deserve the rights all humans deserve: freedom of speech, religion, the press; a reasonable standard of living; protection from external and internal enemies - the same rights we here in America have taken for granted for so many years.

Our fight against the terrorists, Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, and others with a world-wide reach, is also a fight against the Taliban, their sponsor, and against other supporters of worldwide terrorism. But it is a fight for the people of Afghanistan, as well as for freedom-loving peoples everywhere.

We asked the Taliban to surrender peacefully, but they chose not to do so. It apparently did not occur to them that if our predecessors could conquer Germany and Japan, two of the greatest war machines ever assembled, in World War II, we could surely conquer the Taliban now. I have already outlined our first steps in this fight, and now I want to speak to our more long-term strategies.

Let me remind you what our predecessors did after World War II in Japan and Germany, conquered countries: we helped them rebuild; we helped them institute democracy; we helped them acquire some of the highest standards of living on earth. Now they are among the most faithful allies of democratic civilization. They have freedom of speech, religion, the press; a reasonable standard of living; and protection from external and internal enemies.

The people of Afghanistan deserve no less. We have provided humanitarian aid to them for the past several years - as much as the Taliban has allowed. The time is coming when we will provide them not just with basic goods, but with basic freedoms. After a period - possibly several years - of occupation and assimilation of democratic structures, Afghanistan can, and will, join Hawaii, Alaska, and the other continental states, to become the 51st state of the United States of America.

We will help our 25 million soon-to-be citizens to:

• raise their average life expectancy from its current 46 years (compared to 77 for the rest of the United States);
• raise their per capita income from its current $800 (compared to $33,900 for the rest of the United States);
• decrease their infant mortality rate from 15% (compared to 0.7% for the rest of the United States);
• increase their literacy rate from 32% (compared to 97% for the rest of the United States);
• and - most important - increase freedom - of speech, of the press, of religion - from 0% to 100%.

The blessings of democracy will be made more visible and accessible to our new neighbors, among them Pakistan and Iran. And we will be good neighbors - ask Canada and Mexico. The state of Afghanistan will be declared a major disaster area, and as such, become eligible for billions of dollars in Federal funding.

And we will have given democracy another foothold in a region of the world where civilization began, but where many terrorists operate. Our Afghan citizens will help us immeasurably in the war against terror, both overt and covert. And their freedom of religion will be fully protected, as it is everywhere in America, and has been for over 200 years.

To those who say: You may conquer Afghanistan, but can you get conquered people to accept democracy, and assimilate them into the United States? I say to you: men and women everywhere, throughout history, have yearned for freedom, and democracy is the best way to preserve freedom.

I say to you: ask the citizens of Germany and Japan. Ask the citizens of Alabama, of Mississippi, of Georgia...

I say to you: America has 6 million Islamic citizens right now, as well as citizens of all the religions and ethnicities to be found on this planet. We all live together, with greater diversity and peace than in any time or place throughout human history. Further, the Northern Alliance, which over time has had a more credible claim than the Taliban to be the legitimate representative of the people of Afghanistan, has expressed a desire for a multi-party democracy in Afghanistan.

We will provide a permanent multi-party democracy in Afghanistan.

This bold strategy I describe to you today is by no means a short-term fix for all the problems of countering terrorism. It will take at least a few years to fully implement. We will also need to make many changes, both day-to-day and long-term, in our way of life: increased security measures; additional funding for a larger military; a complete overhaul of our military and defense strategies; greater cooperation with our allies; and stronger diplomatic, and other, efforts to settle long-standing disputes in the Middle East, including especially more use of the United Nations.

We also need to recognize that one of the underlying causes of the horrendous loss of life in the 20th century was the poverty and misery of people who were then easily led, by charismatic leaders, to death in the hands of an ideology. An example of this is the way Germany was treated after World War I, which, along with a complex of other causes, led to World War II, during which 50 million people died. This is why we treated Germany - and Japan - completely differently after World War II.

The United States spent more than 1 1/2% of its output over 4 years - the equivalent, in today's money, of over $600 billion dollars - to rebuild Europe. All of Europe, not just the winning countries. And it has paid off - Europe has become a strong, vibrant democratic entity, as has Japan, and World War III has been staved off.

So what shall we do about the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of the Middle East, yearning to breathe free? I will be proposing to the Congress a program of humanitarian aid targeted to those people in the underdeveloped countries of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa who need it the most. This aid will be an investment in the future of all mankind. And in order to guarantee the aid gets to the people it is intended for, we will insist on end-to-end administration of all aid programs by the United Nations.

The United States has been engaged with the rest of the world at various times in the past. When it had its closest engagement in peacetime, as in the post-World War II period, the United States has been instrumental in bringing the blessings of freedom and prosperity to other countries half a world away from us. The time has come to begin a new engagement, to re-dedicate ourselves to the proposition that we can, and must, care what happens to our fellow people all over the globe; that we cannot turn our eyes away when our fellow people are suffering, oppressed, and dying; that the United States is no longer an island, but part of the main and, from henceforward, involved in all mankind.

Thank you and good night.