What will a former US president do for US$153,000? Sing and dance like a monkey? Juggle? In the case of Bill Clinton, it is something a lot less entertaining -- selling out his integrity, supposing, or course, he had any left. This is precisely what he did yesterday, when he said the cross-strait "reunification process" is "moving in the right direction" during a pro-unification rally in Sydney, Australia.
Many former US presidents give speeches and write memoirs to keep themselves busy and earn some quick bucks. There are also more praiseworthy examples such as former president Jimmy Carter, who devoted himself to the promotion of peace and freedom by mediating the Israel-Egypt dispute and serves as the chair of the Conflict Resolution Program. No one expected Clinton to live up to Carter's high standard, but now Clinton has simply gone too far.
The occasion on which Clinton chose to speak, a pro-unification rally hosted by a well-known radical unification group and a mouthpiece of Beijing, is inappropriate enough. His appearance there suggests support for cross-strait unification, which is not something he should be committing himself to.
Those still hoping that Clinton would keep his foot out of his mouth by uttering some mumbo jumbo about world peace and globalization, rather than directly indicating his support for unification, were disappointed. Clinton wanted his sponsor to feel that its money was well spent. What he said at the rally assumed that unification was not only a given, but also the right thing. His speech conveniently ignored the fact that the people of Taiwan reject unification and that they have a right to decide their own future.
Not that long ago, Clinton, as US president, said publicly that any decision regarding the future of Taiwan required the consent of Taiwan's people. Why is he now assuming and praising unification, when the people of Taiwan have turned their back on such a choice? By contradicting himself this way, Clinton compromised his integrity as a former US president.
The future of Taiwan, be it independence or unification, has to be decided by the people of Taiwan through the democratic process. By failing to respect this right to self-determination in his talk, Clinton insulted an important US value: respect for democracy. By publicly embracing the unification propaganda of China, a country notorious for human-rights violations, Clinton insulted another fundamental US value: advocacy of freedoms. One expects a lot more of former US presidents, though not, perhaps, this one.
Just one day before Clinton's speech in Australia, US President George W. Bush was concluding his trip to China. Contrary to Clinton's disappointing conduct, Bush's performance was commendable.
Refusing, despite pressure from Beijing, to forsake US' friend Taiwan, Bush is the only US president so far to repeatedly emphasize the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in front of China's leadership and people on Chinese soil. He also did not mention the three Sino-US joint communiques during the trip, at least not in public. The only time he publicly conceded acceptance of the "one China" principle was on the last day of his trip in response to a question.
Most important of all was Bush's repeated emphasis on a peaceful resolution of the cross-strait issue. There is a world of difference between peaceful resolution and peaceful unification. The latter assumes unification is a given, while the former does not. The people of Taiwan have the right to decide their own future. That right must be respected. Bush apparently understands it, while Clinton does not. That makes the two men a world apart when it comes to integrity.
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