... And we need to a better job of getting the facts out. Most Muslims in the Middle East I'll guarantee you don't know the last time we used our military power was to protect poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. I had a Kosovar family in my office yesterday in Harlem, bringing their kids to see me because they were so grateful that America had given them a chance to build their lives. Most people in the Middle East have forgotten, if they did know, that it was America that advocating the establishment of a Palestinian state and a reconciliation with Israel, which would protect both sides' equities in Jerusalem. Now, we're not for running Israel out of the Middle East. If that's what they want, they ought to say that, but don't pretend that America has not been sensitive to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians. It's not true. And I think in America we need to do more to give courage and voice and pictures to our vibrant Muslim community of people that are anti-terror. We ought to get out all over the world how many Muslims died in the World Trade Center and what countries they claimed as home. Everywhere I go in New York, yesterday I was down in a park and these young people came up to me and said they were proud to be Muslims and proud to be living in America. One was Egyptian, one was Pakistani, and they just hated all this terrorism. They ought to be given courage and identified and given support to stand against this.

... Now here's how I think you ought to think about this. What do the positive things I mentioned, the global economy, the explosion of information technology, the biological sciences advances, and democracy and diversity, and the negative things I mentioned, global poverty, the environmental crises, the health crises, and terror, what do all eight of those things have in common? They all reflect the absolutely breathtaking increase in global interdependence, the extent of which the barriers of nation borders don't count for much anymore, and to which we are all effected by things that happen a long way from home. Things that used to happen a long way form home can now happen next door. In other words, I honestly believe it's very important if you want to understand the world in which you live that you see September the 11th as the dark side from all the benefits we've gotten from tearing down the walls, collapsing the distances and spreading the information that we have across the world. We have not changed human nature, we have not solved all the problems, and there are a lot of people that see the world differently than we do. You cannot collapse walls, collapse differences and spread information without making yourself more vulnerable to forces of destruction.

... And we need to do something, I will say again, about the schools. I saw a story the other day about a kid in a school in one of these Madrassas who was taught everything about the Koran and he was a very admirable young man, the kind of person you'd like to have in your family. He got up at four o'clock every morning to pray, he could answer any conceivable question about the Koran. He had good character, but a poisoned mind. He was taught that no man every walked on the moon but that dinosaurs existed because Americans and Jews re-created them to devour Muslims. But he was a good kid. He didn't teach himself that.

(Some Remarks as delivered by President William Jefferson Clinton Georgetown University). November 7, 2001