A muted welcome for elder Bush

Former President George H.W. Bush stressed the importance of choosing "hope over hate" yesterday to resolve tensions in the Middle East.

The 41st president was delivering the annual Fares Lecture -- his second in less than ten years -- before a near-record crowd of 4,800 in the Gantcher Center. The audience's welcome was mixed: while students protested both before and during the speech, others applauded, sometimes at his insights, but mostly at his jokes. Many, however, believed the speech lacked substance, especially considering the current tension in the Middle East.

Between jokes about his wife Barbara and jibes at the protesters, an affable Bush Sr. offered an optimistic outlook on eventually achieving peace in the region.

"I believe that in the longer run," Bush said, "the 21st century will offer leaders throughout the Eastern Mediterranean a real chance to emerge from their current conflict.

"If only for a time, I've seen hope surmount hate in the Middle East itself." The former president recalled the 1991 Madrid peace conference, where he saw "a room full of Arabs and Israelis sitting across from each other and beginning to talk about peace."

"It made a profound impression on me," he said, "and I believe it can happen again."

Bush explained that problems in the Middle East and tension between the United States and the region were the result of false stereotypes. He mentioned negative perceptions of Saudi Arabia which had developed in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001 and said that such stereotypes offended him.

Bush was on the verge of tears as he recalled a conversation with a young Arab-American girl after the terrorist attacks. "Does this mean they are going to knock down my school?" the girl asked.

Bush said that Americans must remain tolerant. "We've got to continue to strive to be a kinder and gentler nation." The same, he said, goes for people Middle East with negative perceptions of America.

In his speech, Bush also defended Operation Desert Storm, which he said had directly resulted in the Madrid meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials, and dismissed the idea that military interventions in Iraq -- past or proposed -- were about oil.

"It was about liberating a sovereign nation back then," he said. "The United States wants to see all the people in the eastern Mediterranean and indeed throughout the Arab world live in peace and security."

Today, a war would be about making Saddam Hussein "give up his insane quest for weapons of mass destruction." "Our goal there is not regional hegemony," he said. "We want [people in the Middle East] to have the freedom to determine their own destiny."

Bush also defended his decision to halt the war against Iraq in 1991 and not remove Saddam Hussein from power because the American-led coalition had achieved the goals of the United Nations' mandate -- to evict Iraq from Kuwait.

Had the US continued into Baghdad, Bush said, "the coalition would have instantly shattered and the political capital we had gained as a result of our principled restraint to jump-start the peace process would have been lost."

Twelve years later, with Hussein once again an American foreign policy priority, Bush resisted offering insight into what actions his son's administration might take against Iraq.

"We only have one president," he said. But he said that perceptions that George W. Bush wanted to "go it alone, rush into war" were false.

"We've got to keep the pressure on," he said. "The more united that pressure is, the more chance there is that this matter will be resolved in a peaceful manner."

But he said that war could eventually be the right option, and that there was such a concept as a "just war."

Many students were unimpressed by the former president's remarks.

"I felt like a lot of what Bush said sort of came out of nowhere," said sophomore Rebecca Aguirre. "His stories didn't make much sense in relation to the lecture topic."

David Cades, a senior, said Bush was funny "but didn't say much."

Bush delivered the speech after introductions by University President Larry Bacow, Leila Fawaz, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, and Issam M. Fares, the Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon and the lecture series' sponsor. He also answered six questions, which were chosen from ones submitted online beforehand.

The mood was noticeably different from last year, when Bush's successor, former President Bill Clinton, delivered the Fares Lecture. Then, students could hardly contain their applause; yesterday, protestors interrupted the speech at least twice, and many students decided it wasn't worth clapping.

At Bush's first mention of Desert Storm, one group of about six protestors blew a whistle, raised banners and sang anti-war chants. As police officers escorted the protesters out of Gantcher, Bush joked that "we've now found another really good reason to use duct tape." The audience burst out in laughter.

But the reaction to Bush's quips was mixed.

"I found some of his comments about the protesters very offensive," sophomore Leah Rogers said, "but I also thought that some of the techniques of protest were offensive as well."

Dianna Darsney, a senior, said that his comments were funny and appropriate, given the circumstances.

"If you are going to throw yourself out there and disrupt a speech like that you have to know that you are going to be subject to scrutiny and or being mocked. It was no doubt tense. And when Bush made jokes, he eased that tension."

Before Bush's speech began, a group of 51 students and professors from Fletcher, Tufts' school of international affairs, expressed opposition to war in Iraq by distributing a letter to the media outlining the possible risks of military intervention.

"We believe that a war of prevention against Iraq now is both strategically and morally unjustifiable and will set a dangerous international precedent that this country will eventually come to regret," the letter read.