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| White House | AP Cabinet & State | AP |
Thu May 23,10:02 AM ET By The Associated Press Excerpts from President Bush (news - web sites)'s speech before the German Bundestag on Thursday:
___ Our generation faces new and grave threats to liberty, to the safety of our people and to civilization itself. We face an aggressive force that glorifies death, that targets the innocent and seeks the means to murder on a massive scale. ___ Those who despise human freedom will attack it on every continent. Those who seek missiles and terrible weapons are also familiar with the map of Europe. Like the threats of another era, this threat cannot be appeased or cannot be ignored. By being patient, relentless and resolute, we will defeat the enemies of freedom. ___ Different as we are, we are building and defending the same house of freedom. Its door is open to all Europe's people. Its window is looking out to global challenges beyond. We must lay the foundation with a Europe that is whole and free and at peace for the first time in its history. ___ Ours is the first generation in 100 years that does not expect and does not fear the next European war. And that achievement, your achievement, is one of the greatest in modern times. When Europe grows in unity, Europe and America grow in security. ... Americans do not see the rise of a rival; we see the end of old hostilities. We see the success of our allies, and we applaud your progress. ___ America is committed to NATO (news - web sites) membership for all of Europe's democracies that are ready to share in the responsibilities that NATO brings. ___ America and Europe must throw off old suspicions and realize our common interest with Russia. Tomorrow, in Moscow, President Putin and I will again act upon these interests. The United States and Russia are ridding ourselves of the last vestiges of Cold War confrontation. We have moved beyond an ABM treaty that prevented us from defending our people and our friends. Some warned that moving beyond the ABM treaty would cause an arms race. Instead, President Putin and I are about to sign the most dramatic nuclear arms reduction in history. Both the United States and Russia will reduce our nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds, to the lowest level in decades. ___ For the United States, Sept. 11, 2001, but a deep dividing line in our history, a change of era as sharp and clear as Pearl Harbor or the first day of the Berlin blockade. There can be no lasting security in a world at the mercy of terrorists, for my nation or for any nation. Given this threat, NATO's defining purpose, our collective defense, is as urgent as ever. America and Europe need each other to fight and win the war against global terror. ___ Together, we oppose an enemy that thrives on violence and the grief of the innocent. The terrorists are defined by their hatreds. They hate democracy and tolerance and free expression and women and Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them. Others killed in the name of racial purity or the class struggle. These enemies kill in the name of a false religious purity, perverting the faith they claim to hold. In this war, we defend not just America or Europe, we are defending civilization itself. ___ The evil that has formed against us has been termed the new totalitarian threat. The authors of terror are seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Regimes that sponsor terror are developing these weapons and the missiles to deliver them. If these regimes and their terrorist allies were to perfect these capabilities, no inner voice of reason, no hint of conscience would prevent their use. Wishful thinking might bring comfort, but not security. ___ NATO must be able and willing to act whenever threats emerge. This will require all the assets of modern defense: mobile and deployable forces, sophisticated special operations, the ability to fight under the threat of chemical and biological weapons. ___ Each nation must focus on the military, its strengths it can bring to this alliance with the hard choices and financial commitment that that requires. We do not know where the next threat might come from. We really don't know what form it might take, but we must be ready as full military partners to confront these urgent threats to our common security. ___ We must continue to stand for peace in the Middle East. That peace must assure the permanent safety of the Jewish people. And that peace must provide the Palestinian people with a state of their own. ___ In the midst of terrorist violence in the Middle East, the hope of a lasting accord may seem distant. That's how many once viewed the prospect of peace between Poland and Germany, Germany and France, France and England, Protestant and Catholic. Yet after generations have traded violence and humiliation, we have seen enemies become partners and allies in a new Europe. We pray the same healing, the same shredding of hatred might come to the Middle East. And we will be unrelenting in our quest for that peace.
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