11:15 a.m., Nov. 21, 2002--Which do you think is more of a threat Susan E. Rice asked, stretching out her arms and cupping her hands like the plates on the scale of justice, Sadam Hussain or terrorists?
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| “Personally, I think the U.S., as the moral leader of the world, would feel compelled to confront human rights abuses and genocide, but we fail to,” national security expert Susan Rice said. |
Rice, a former National Security Council staffer to President Bill Clinton and assistant secretary of state, said terrorism is by far the more serious threat and that a war on Iraq would impede the world’s ability to stop terrorism.
Rice was responding to a question from the audience during a special question-and-answer session before her talk, “Managing Allies and Adversaries: A Critique of U.S. National Policy,” Tuesday, Nov. 19, in Mitchell Hall.
Rice, who also served as director for international organizations and peacekeeping at the National Security Council from 1993-95, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She was on the UD campus as part of the Global Agenda 2002 series on terrorism presented by the World Affairs Council of Wilmington and UD’s Center for International Studies and departments of Communication and Political Science & International Relations.
Terrorists don’t do things the way conventional armies do, and that makes it difficult to trace their activities, Rice said. You need the cooperation of the nations and the people who harbor these groups.
She gave as an example the way some terrorist organizations finance their operations. Rice said they don’t always move money through established institutions and can use unconventional ways of raising money, like selling diamonds or gold.
To be able to identify the location and activities of a terrorist group, infiltrate and destroy it would take an enormous amount of cooperation on the part of the countries and the people who now protect them, she said. And, that is not going to happen if the administration continues to press a war on Iraq, with or without the cooperation of the rest of the world. In fact, Rice said, a war with Iraq will fuel hatred of the U.S. and further diminish our ability to detect terrorist activities at home and abroad.
A student asked Rice why the Clinton administration didn’t go after terrorists or Osama bin Laden.
She said that until after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Clinton administration’s information was that bin Laden was providing funding for terrorists but not directly supporting their operations. Once the administration was able to prove the bin Laden connection, the Sudanese government refused to expel him so he could be prosecuted. When Sudan finally expelled bin Laden, he escaped to Afghanistan with his financial network still intact in Sudan.
That lack of international cooperation, plus the fact that there wasn’t public support in the U.S. to fight terrorism until after 9/11, influenced policy, she said.
Rice was asked what she thought the U.S. role should be in dealing with human rights abuses and genocide. “Personally, I think the U.S., as the moral leader of the world, would feel compelled to confront human rights abuses and genocide, but we fail to,” she said.
Article by Barbara Garrison
Photo by Duane Perry
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