 |
Former President Bush Urges US Involvement in World Affairs
Former President George Bush echoed his son's calls for the United States to be a humble world leader during a talk Saturday at Yale University's 300th anniversary celebration.
"The United States has got to reach out. You can't treat everybody with arrogance, because we are the only remaining superpower,'' said Bush, who graduated from Yale in 1948.
Bush said Operation Desert Storm was successful because a coalition of countries worked together to end Iraq's aggression in the Middle East. Bush said it ``burns him up'' when critics say the military should have gone into Baghdad to get Saddam Hussein.
"The coalition would have shattered,'' Bush said. "We would have been all alone in world opinion.
"We did finish the job. We finished the job we set out to do,'' Bush said to applause from thousands of Yale alumni who came to hear his speech.
Bush also said the United States must keep Russia engaged in international affairs and avoid any kind of ``we won, you lost'' attitude toward Russia.
Bush's talk was part of Yale's tercentennial celebration for alumni, which also featured talks by university experts on medicine, science, literature, the arts and other disciplines Yale has shaped.
The younger President George W. Bush is also a Yale graduate, as was his grandfather, US Sen. Prescott Bush. One of the president's two daughters, Barbara, is a Yale freshman.
In This Section
|