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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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George H. W. Bush - Address to the United Nations (October 1, 1990)
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| Parent | Parent Candidate |
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Post Date | , 12:am |
| Description | Mr. President, thank you very much. Mr. Secretary-General, distinguished delegates to the United Nations, it is really a great privilege to greet you today as we begin what marks a new and historic session of the General Assembly. My congratulations to the Honorable Guido De Marco on your election, sir, as President of the General Assembly. And on a personal note, I want to say that, having witnessed the unprecedented unity and cooperation of the past 2 months, that I have never been prouder to have once served within your ranks and never been prouder that the United States is the host country for the United Nations.
Forty-five years ago, while the fires of an epic war still raged across two oceans and two continents, a small group of men and women began a search for hope amid the ruins. And they gathered in San Francisco, stepping back from the haze and horror, to try to shape a new structure that might support an ancient dream. Intensely idealistic and yet tempered by war, they sought to build a new kind of bridge: a bridge between nations, a bridge that might help carry humankind from its darkest hour to its brightest day.
The founding of the United Nations embodied our deepest hopes for a peaceful world, and during the past year, we've come closer than ever before to realizing those hopes. We've seen a century sundered by barbed threats and barbed wire give way to a new era of peace and competition and freedom.
The Revolution of '89 swept the world almost with a life of its own, carried by a new breeze of freedom. It transformed the political climate from Central Europe to Central America and touched almost every corner of the globe. That breeze has been sustained by a now almost universal recognition of a simple, fundamental truth: The human spirit cannot be locked up forever. The truth is, people everywhere are motivated in much the same ways. And people everywhere want much the same things: the chance to live a life of purpose; the chance to choose a life in which they and their children can learn and grow healthy, worship freely, and prosper through the work of their hands and their hearts and their minds. We're not talking about the power of nations but the power of individuals, the power to choose, the power to risk, the power to succeed.
This is a new and different world. Not since 1945 have we seen the real possibility of using the United Nations as it was designed: as a center for international collective security.
The changes in the Soviet Union have been critical to the emergence of a stronger United Nations. The U.S.-Soviet relationship is finally beyond containment and confrontation, and now we seek to fulfill the promise of mutually shared understanding. The long twilight struggle that for 45 years has divided Europe, our two nations, and much of the world has come to an end.
Much has changed over the last 2 years. The Soviet Union has taken many dramatic and important steps to participate fully in the community of nations. And when the Soviet Union agreed with so many of us here in the United Nations to condemn the aggression of Iraq, there could be no doubt -- no doubt then -- that we had, indeed, put four decades of history behind us. |
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