From secret hideouts in South Asia, the Spanish-Syrian al-Qaeda strategist published thousands of pages of Internet tracts on how small teams of Islamic extremists could wage a decentralized global war against the United States and its allies.
With the Afghanistan base lost, he argued, radicals would need to shift their approach and work primarily on their own, though sometimes with guidance from roving operatives acting on behalf of the broader movement.
Last October, the writing career of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar came to an abrupt end when Pakistani agents seized him in a friend's house in the border city of Quetta and turned him over to U.S. intelligence operatives, according to two senior Pakistani intelligence officials.
With Spanish, British and Syrian interrogators lining up with requests to question him, he has turned out to be a prize catch, a man who is not a bombmaker or operational planner but one of the jihad movement's prime theorists for the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.
Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.
Nasar's masterwork, a 1,600-page volume titled "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," has been circulating on Web sites for 18 months. The treatise, written under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri, draws heavily on lessons from past conflicts.
Nasar, 47, outlines a strategy for a truly global conflict on as many fronts as possible and in the form of resistance by small cells or individuals, rather than traditional guerrilla warfare. To avoid penetration and defeat by security services, he says, organizational links should be kept to an absolute minimum.
"The enemy is strong and powerful, we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah," he said in one paper. "The preparations better be deliberate, comprehensive and properly planned, taking into account past experiences and lessons."
Intelligence officials said Nasar's doctrine has made waves in radical Islamic chat rooms and on Web sites about jihad -- holy war or struggle -- over the past two years. His capture, they added, has only added to his mystique.
"He is probably the first to spell out a doctrine for a decentralized global jihad," said Brynjar Lia, a senior counterterrorism researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, who is writing a book on Nasar. "In my humble opinion, he is the best theoretician among the jihadi ideologues and strategists out there. Nobody is as systematic and comprehensive in their analysis as he is. His brutal honesty and self-criticism is unique in jihadi circles."
After the bombings in Madrid and London, investigators fingered Nasar as the possible hands-on organizer of those attacks, because he had lived in both cities in the 1990s. But so far, investigators have unearthed no hard evidence of his direct involvement in those attacks or any others, although they suspect he established sleeper cells in Spain and other European countries.
'A Very Difficult Man'
Nasar was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1958 and studied engineering. In the early 1980s, he took part in a failed revolt by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood against Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad. According to his own written accounts, he fled the country after that, then trained in camps in Jordan and Egypt. Later, he said, he moved to Europe when it became clear that Assad was firmly entrenched in power.
He arrived in Spain in 1985. He married a Spanish woman who had converted to Islam, and through that connection, he became a dual Spanish-Syrian citizen. He also made contacts with other Syrian emigres who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. His neighbor in a small town in the province of Granada was Tayssir Alouni, a journalist for the al-Jazeera satellite television network who would later interview Osama bin Laden. Another friend was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was convicted last fall on charges of running an al-Qaeda cell in Spain.
In 1987, Nasar journeyed to Pakistan and Afghanistan to help Muslim fighters in their rebellion against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. He trained at camps, met bin Laden and joined the ruling council of al-Qaeda, according to a Spanish indictment filed against him.
When he returned to Spain in 1992, he concentrated on building his own cell there and also traveled widely in Europe to set up other al-Qaeda groups in Italy and France, according to the Spanish.
"He's pretty much designed the structure of the cells that have operated in Europe," said Rogelio Alonso, a terrorism expert and professor at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. "He was the one with the prominent role as the individual who had the links with the higher echelons of al-Qaeda."
Although Nasar attracted the notice of Spanish police, investigators did not classify him as a serious threat. According to Spanish court papers, detectives had Nasar under surveillance in 1995. But when he moved to London that year, they stopped paying attention.
In London, Nasar led an above-ground life as a writer and voice of Islamic extremism. He did publicity work for al-Qaeda, helping to arrange interviews with bin Laden in Afghanistan for CNN and the BBC.
He edited an Arabic-language newsletter called al-Ansar, which was devoted primarily to the cause of fundamentalists fighting a long and bloody civil war in Algeria. Even in London's sizable community of Arab exiles and radical Muslims, Nasar stood out for his strong views and unwillingness to compromise.
In his newsletter, he defended the Armed Islamic Group, the Algerian rebel force known by its French acronym, GIA, for targeting Algerian civilians in a series of massacres that destroyed entire villages. When other Arab dissidents decried the tactics, Nasar turned on them as well, denouncing his critics in letters and in person.
"In Algeria, he pushed people to violence," said one Arab exile living in Britain who tangled with Nasar in the mid-1990s. "He was not just an editor. He served as a strategist for those people and played a very bad role in what happened in Algeria," said the exile, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared harassment from al-Qaeda supporters.
British intelligence officials also took note of Nasar's activities in their country and questioned him on at least two occasions, according to people who knew him. But he was never placed under formal investigation, they said.
"He's very intelligent and powerful in making his arguments," said an Arab dissident who knew Nasar well and also spoke on condition of anonymity. "But he is also a very difficult man. His tough attitude created many, many enemies for him, even in jihadi circles."
With his pale white skin and red hair, Nasar physically blended into British society more easily than many Islamic fundamentalists. But he sometimes struggled to reconcile his beliefs with his surroundings.
For instance, friends said, he was well educated on the finer points of Western classical music and enjoyed talking at dinner parties about composers. But he refused to actually listen to the music, for religious reasons. And while he rejected the authority of secular institutions, he once filed a libel lawsuit in a British court against the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat.
Unlike many of his acquaintances who favored arranged marriages, the unsmiling Nasar possessed a romantic streak and surprised friends by doting on his Spanish-born spouse. "I was in his house once and he was putting out all these romantic touches for his wife," said one of the Arab dissidents. "I asked him, 'Where did you learn how to do that?' He said, 'We Syrians, we know these things.' "
'Moving Beyond Al-Qaeda'
Nasar departed London in 1998 to return to Afghanistan, according to intelligence sources. There, he forged close ties with the new Taliban government and swore an oath of allegiance to Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader. He was given a position in the Taliban Defense Ministry.
He also resumed his contacts with al-Qaeda, but frequently clashed with bin Laden, according to Arab dissidents and Nasar's own writings.
In an e-mail to bin Laden in 1999, recovered from a computer hard drive in Kabul by the Wall Street Journal, Nasar complained that bin Laden was getting a big head from his frequent media appearances. "I think our brother has caught the disease of screens, flashes, fans, and applause," Nasar wrote.
In public statements and in interviews with Arab media, Nasar said he was happy to work with al-Qaeda but emphasized that he was an independent operator. His theories of decentralization had already taken shape: It would be a mistake, he said, for the global movement to pin its hopes on a single group or set of leaders.
"My guess is that he saw bin Laden as a narrow-minded thinker," said Jarret Brachman, research director for the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "He clearly says that al-Qaeda was an important step but it's not the end step and it's not sufficient."
Nasar's theories of war also called for the most deadly weapons possible. In Afghanistan, he worked with al-Qaeda leaders to train fighters in the use of "poisons and chemicals" at two camps near Jalalabad and Kabul, according to the State Department. After the Sept. 11 hijackings, Nasar praised the attacks. But he said a better plan would have been to load the hijacked airplanes with weapons of mass destruction.
"Let the American people -- those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations' wealth, megalomania and the desire to control others -- be contaminated with radiation," he wrote. "We apologize for the radioactive fallout," he declared sarcastically.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Nasar went into hiding, moving to Iran, northern Iraq and Pakistan, according to intelligence officials. In November 2004, the State Department posted a $5 million reward for his capture.
Within a few weeks, Nasar responded by posting a lengthy statement on the Internet. He denied reports that he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks or the Madrid bombings, but issued warnings of his own.
"As a result of the U.S. government's declaration about me, the lies it contained and the new security requirements forced upon us, I have taken the decision to end my period of isolation," he wrote. "I will also resume my ideological, media-related and operational activities. I wish to God that America will regret bitterly that she provoked me and others to combat her with pen and sword."
Around the same time, Nasar posted his 1,600-page book on the Internet. In it, he critiqued failed insurgencies in Syria, Egypt and Afghanistan and offered a new model aimed at drawing individuals and small groups into a global jihad.
Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements, in Herzliya, Israel, called Nasar's book "brilliant -- from their point of view." He said researchers fear that it is already serving as a how-to manual for uniting isolated groups of radical Muslims for a common cause.
"We are witnessing a new generation of jihadists who were not trained in the camps in Afghanistan," Paz said. "Unfortunately, this book has operational sections that may be more appealing to this new generation."
Monday, May 22, 2006
Boston College Commencement 2006 by Secretary Condoleezza rice
Thank you very much. Thank you to Chairman Pat Stokes, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, to Jack Connors, the vice chairman and, of course, a special thanks to Father Leahy and to Father Monan who have given the leadership of this great university that has made it a very, very special place.
It's wonderful to be back here in Boston and to join you for this splendid ceremony today. As an academic, I'm honored to be here at Boston College, a place of learning that is respected today not just in America, but throughout all the world. As a student of a Catholic high school, the Sisters of Loretta taught me, I am pleased to be at an institution of higher education with such strong and celebrated Catholic and Jesuit traditions.
But as a sports fan, I'm feeling a little uneasy standing right here on the 50-yard line of Eagles football. You see, I got my Master's Degree at Notre Dame. (Boos.) I acquired a passion for the fighting Irish. Now for decades, I have to admit, though, I've been on the other side of what has become known as "the holy war" between our Catholic colleges. And for decades I've watched in frustration as Boston College has consistently ruined some of Notre Dame's best seasons. (Applause.) Now I want to assure you I'm not here to wish the Eagles goodwill, but I do want to congratulate you on an impressive debut in the ACC last year and to say I know you'll do it again. (Applause.) Members of the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, distinguished alumni and guests and especially graduates and students, family and friends, Class of 2006, thank you for welcoming me here. I will always remember my undergraduate commencement at the University of Denver. I remember how proud my parents were. I remember the thrill of achieving an important goal. What I don't remember is one word that my commencement speaker said. And chances are that you won't either and I promise not to take it personally.
Instead, all of you in the Class of 2006 will leave Boston College with other, more lasting memories. I bet most of you will remember Marathon Monday and a certain show called BC. I'm guessing most of you will remember late nights at Mary Ann's and parties at the Motts. (Applause.) Well, maybe you won't remember all of them. (Laughter.) And of course, I imagine that all of you will have no problem remembering that October night of your sophomore year when, after 86 years, the Boston Red Sox finally broke the Curse of the Bambino. (Applause.)
But of all your experiences at Boston College, none is more meaningful, of course, than the education you've received here. You see, education is transformational. It literally changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and that is why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential. As John F. Kennedy once said, "All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."
The American vision of education inspired the founding of Boston College. For thousands of citizens facing discrimination and disadvantage, Boston College has been a sanctuary and a source of empowerment, a place where hardworking, capable people who just needed opportunity and someone who believed in them.
This college's mission resonates with me on a very personal level, for I've learned in my own life that education is the single greatest force for equality in the world. I first learned about the transformational power of education from stories about my paternal grandfather, a real family hero. You see, Granddaddy was a poor sharecropper's son from Ewtah -- that's E-w-t-a-h -- Alabama. And one day, Granddaddy decided he was going to get book learning so he asked, in the parlance of the day, where a colored man could go to school. And he was told that there was this little Presbyterian college just about 50 miles down the road.
So Granddaddy Rice saved up his cotton to pay for his first year's tuition and he went off to Stillman College. But after his first year, he didn't have any more money and they told him he was going to have to leave school. And Granddaddy said to a college administrator, "Well, how are those boys going to school?" And the administrator said, "Well, you see, they have what's called a scholarship. And if you wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, then you could have a scholarship, too." And Granddaddy Rice said, "You know, that's just what I had in mind," and my family has been college educated and Presbyterian ever since. (Laughter and applause.)
Because of all that my grandfather and others of my ancestors endured, including poverty and segregation, they understood that education was a privilege, but also that privilege confers obligations. And so today, I would like to suggest to you what I think are five important responsibilities of educated people.
The first responsibility is one that you have to yourself, the responsibility to find and follow your passion. I don't mean just any old thing that interests you, not just something that you could or might do, but that one unique calling that you can't do without. As an educated person, you have the opportunity to spend your life doing what you love and you should never forget that many do not enjoy such a rare privilege. As you work to find your passion, you should know that sometimes, your passion just finds you.
That's what happened to me. I was supposed to be a concert pianist. I could read music before I could read. And I started college as a music major. But around the end of my sophomore year, I started encountering prodigies, 12-year-olds who could play from sight what it had taken me all year to learn, and I thought, "I'm going to end up playing piano bar or teaching 13-year-olds to murder Beethoven or maybe playing at Nordstrom, but I'm not going to play Carnegie Hall." And I went to my parents and I decided that I had better find something else to do.
I was lost and confused, but one day, a wonderful thing happened. I wandered into a course on international politics taught by a Czech refugee who specialized in Soviet studies, a man who had a daughter by the name of Madeleine Albright. With that one class, I was hooked. I discovered that my passion was Russia and all things Russian. Needless to say, this was not exactly what young black girls from Birmingham were supposed to do in the early 1970s, but it just shows you that your passion may be hard to spot, so keep an open mind and keep searching.
The second responsibility of an educated person is the commitment to reason. Boston College has prepared you with a true education. You haven't been taught what to think, but rather, how to think, how to ask questions, how to reject assumptions, how to seek knowledge; in short, how to exercise reason. This experience will sustain you for the rest of your lives, but no one should assume that a life of reason is easy; to the contrary. It takes a great deal of courage and honesty. For the only way that you will grow intellectually is by examining your opinions, attacking your prejudices constantly and completely with the force of your reason.
This can be unsettling and it can be tempting instead to opt for the false comfort of a life without questions. Unfortunately, that's easier to do than ever. It's possible today to live in an eco-chamber that serves only to reinforce your own high opinion of yourself and what you think. That is a temptation that educated people have a responsibility to reject. There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately. But at those times when you're absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don't allow yourself the easy course of the constant "amen" to everything that you say. (Applause.)
A commitment to reason leads to your third responsibility as an educated person, which is the rejection of false pride. It is natural, especially among the educated, to want to credit your success to your own intelligence and hard work and good judgment. And it is true, of course, that all of you sitting here today are here because you do, in fact, possess these qualities, but it is also true that merit alone did not see you to this day.
There are many people in this country and in this world who are just as intelligent, just as hard working and just as deserving of success as you are. But for whatever reason, maybe a broken home, maybe poverty, maybe just bad luck, these people did not enjoy all of the opportunities that you have had at Boston College. Don't ever forget that. Never assume that your own sense of entitlement has gotten you what you have or that it will get you what you want. Boston College has summoned all of you to the Jesuit ideals of compassion and charity for those less fortunate. Now commencement marks your opportunity, indeed your obligation, to graduate with wisdom and humility. (Applause.)
The fourth responsibility of the educated person is to be optimistic. Too often, cynicism can be the fellow traveler of learning and I understand why. History is full of much cruelty and suffering and darkness and it can be hard sometimes to believe that a brighter future is indeed dawning. But for all of our past failings, for all of our current problems, more people now enjoy lives of hope and opportunity than ever before in all of human history. This progress has been the concerted effort not of cynics but of visionaries and optimists, of impatient patriots who dealt with our world as it was, but who never ever accepted that they were powerless to change that world for the better.
Here in America our own ideals of freedom and equality have been borne through generations by optimists, by people of reason, to be sure, but just as importantly, by people of faith, people who reject the all-too-common assumption that if you can't see something happening and measure it, then it can't possibly be real.
There was a time when the goal of democracy in America seemed impossible, but because people had faith in democracy's promise, today, it seems that it must have always been inevitable. There was also a day in my own lifetime when the hope of liberty and justice for all seemed impossible. But because individuals kept faith with the ideal of America, it seems that it was always inevitable that today, there has been a decade since we last had a white male Secretary of State. (Applause.)
You have been fortunate to study at a college where reason and faith exist together and reinforce one another. But you're headed into a world where optimists are too often told to keep their ideals to themselves. It is your responsibility as educated people to remain optimistic no matter what, but that's not all. You have an obligation to act on those ideals and this, I believe, is the final responsibility to the educated person; really, the most important responsibility of all, to work to advance human progress.
What do I mean by human progress? I believe that all human beings share certain fundamental aspirations. They want protections for their lives and their liberties. They want to think freely and to worship as they wish. They want opportunities to educate their children, boys and girls, and they want to be ruled by the consent of the governed, not by the coercion of the state. So I would define human progress this way. Progress is humankind's ability to view more and more of our differences, whether of race or religion or culture or gender, not as a license to kill or a cause for repression, but as matters of no moral significance whatsoever.
All too often, difference has been used to divide and to dehumanize. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the Birmingham of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, a place that was once quite properly described as the most segregated city in America. I know how it feels to hold aspirations when half your neighbors think that you're incapable or uninterested in anything higher. In my professional life, I've listened with disbelief as it was said that men and women in Asia and Africa and Latin America and Russia and in the Middle East today did not share the basic aspirations of all human beings. Somehow, it was thought, these people were just different and by that, it was meant unworthy, unworthy of what we enjoy.
It is your responsibility as educated people to reject these prejudices and to help close the gaps of justice and opportunity that still divide our nation and our world. I know this mission is very close to the heart of Boston College. The Jesuit ideal of service to others has inspired this class to devote thousands of hours of your own time to help those in need. Most of you have spent a summer break on mission service or worked here at home in impoverished American communities, perhaps in New Orleans after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Others ventured beyond our shores to assist the needy in countries like Brazil and Jamaica and Mexico.
This experience, I imagine, has taught you that progress never unfolds passively or inevitably. No, the promise of human progress is always carried forward by men and women who serve a cause greater than themselves. I know how hard it can be these days, when we see images of genocide in Darfur or violence in Iraq or destruction along our own Gulf coast, to believe that such a thing of human progress is possible is sometimes difficult. I know that even optimists among us sometimes feel tested today, but in moments like these draw solace from education and also from historical perspective.
I spent last summer reading the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. I read of Jefferson and Adams and Washington and Hamilton. And when you read of their lives and their times, you are struck by the overwhelming sense that there is no earthly reason that the United States of America should ever have come into being. But not only did we come into being, we endured. And not only have we endured, we have thrived. We have thrived despite the fact that when the Founding Fathers said, "We, the people," they didn't mean me. We have thrived despite the fact that my ancestors were deemed to be three-fifths of a man and sold at auction. We have thrived despite the fact that it was only in my lifetime that we finally guaranteed the right to vote for all Americans. So remember, even when the horizon seems shrouded in darkness, the hope of a brighter beginning is always in sight. (Applause.)
I've been told that in keeping with the senior tradition, all of you gathered this morning on the roof the Beacon Street garage to watch the sunrise on your last day as college students (applause) -- your first day as men and women of the world. This morning indeed marks a new and glorious beginning for all of you and all of you are well-prepared for what lies ahead. You now leave Boston College to join the ranks of the world's most privileged community, the community of the educated. So as you leave, let me ask you to bear a few things in mind. Remember your responsibilities to find your passion, to use your reason, to cultivate humility, to remain optimistic and always to serve others. Remember this moment right now and remember all of those who contributed so that it could come -- your parents and your families and your friends who supported you through all of these times. (Applause.)
But remember this, too. You've had a wonderful opportunity to become educated people, but what really matters is not what you have learned and not what is said to you on this day, but what you do with all the days ahead of you. May God speed you on your way. Thank you. (Applause.)
It's wonderful to be back here in Boston and to join you for this splendid ceremony today. As an academic, I'm honored to be here at Boston College, a place of learning that is respected today not just in America, but throughout all the world. As a student of a Catholic high school, the Sisters of Loretta taught me, I am pleased to be at an institution of higher education with such strong and celebrated Catholic and Jesuit traditions.
But as a sports fan, I'm feeling a little uneasy standing right here on the 50-yard line of Eagles football. You see, I got my Master's Degree at Notre Dame. (Boos.) I acquired a passion for the fighting Irish. Now for decades, I have to admit, though, I've been on the other side of what has become known as "the holy war" between our Catholic colleges. And for decades I've watched in frustration as Boston College has consistently ruined some of Notre Dame's best seasons. (Applause.) Now I want to assure you I'm not here to wish the Eagles goodwill, but I do want to congratulate you on an impressive debut in the ACC last year and to say I know you'll do it again. (Applause.) Members of the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, distinguished alumni and guests and especially graduates and students, family and friends, Class of 2006, thank you for welcoming me here. I will always remember my undergraduate commencement at the University of Denver. I remember how proud my parents were. I remember the thrill of achieving an important goal. What I don't remember is one word that my commencement speaker said. And chances are that you won't either and I promise not to take it personally.
Instead, all of you in the Class of 2006 will leave Boston College with other, more lasting memories. I bet most of you will remember Marathon Monday and a certain show called BC. I'm guessing most of you will remember late nights at Mary Ann's and parties at the Motts. (Applause.) Well, maybe you won't remember all of them. (Laughter.) And of course, I imagine that all of you will have no problem remembering that October night of your sophomore year when, after 86 years, the Boston Red Sox finally broke the Curse of the Bambino. (Applause.)
But of all your experiences at Boston College, none is more meaningful, of course, than the education you've received here. You see, education is transformational. It literally changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and that is why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential. As John F. Kennedy once said, "All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."
The American vision of education inspired the founding of Boston College. For thousands of citizens facing discrimination and disadvantage, Boston College has been a sanctuary and a source of empowerment, a place where hardworking, capable people who just needed opportunity and someone who believed in them.
This college's mission resonates with me on a very personal level, for I've learned in my own life that education is the single greatest force for equality in the world. I first learned about the transformational power of education from stories about my paternal grandfather, a real family hero. You see, Granddaddy was a poor sharecropper's son from Ewtah -- that's E-w-t-a-h -- Alabama. And one day, Granddaddy decided he was going to get book learning so he asked, in the parlance of the day, where a colored man could go to school. And he was told that there was this little Presbyterian college just about 50 miles down the road.
So Granddaddy Rice saved up his cotton to pay for his first year's tuition and he went off to Stillman College. But after his first year, he didn't have any more money and they told him he was going to have to leave school. And Granddaddy said to a college administrator, "Well, how are those boys going to school?" And the administrator said, "Well, you see, they have what's called a scholarship. And if you wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, then you could have a scholarship, too." And Granddaddy Rice said, "You know, that's just what I had in mind," and my family has been college educated and Presbyterian ever since. (Laughter and applause.)
Because of all that my grandfather and others of my ancestors endured, including poverty and segregation, they understood that education was a privilege, but also that privilege confers obligations. And so today, I would like to suggest to you what I think are five important responsibilities of educated people.
The first responsibility is one that you have to yourself, the responsibility to find and follow your passion. I don't mean just any old thing that interests you, not just something that you could or might do, but that one unique calling that you can't do without. As an educated person, you have the opportunity to spend your life doing what you love and you should never forget that many do not enjoy such a rare privilege. As you work to find your passion, you should know that sometimes, your passion just finds you.
That's what happened to me. I was supposed to be a concert pianist. I could read music before I could read. And I started college as a music major. But around the end of my sophomore year, I started encountering prodigies, 12-year-olds who could play from sight what it had taken me all year to learn, and I thought, "I'm going to end up playing piano bar or teaching 13-year-olds to murder Beethoven or maybe playing at Nordstrom, but I'm not going to play Carnegie Hall." And I went to my parents and I decided that I had better find something else to do.
I was lost and confused, but one day, a wonderful thing happened. I wandered into a course on international politics taught by a Czech refugee who specialized in Soviet studies, a man who had a daughter by the name of Madeleine Albright. With that one class, I was hooked. I discovered that my passion was Russia and all things Russian. Needless to say, this was not exactly what young black girls from Birmingham were supposed to do in the early 1970s, but it just shows you that your passion may be hard to spot, so keep an open mind and keep searching.
The second responsibility of an educated person is the commitment to reason. Boston College has prepared you with a true education. You haven't been taught what to think, but rather, how to think, how to ask questions, how to reject assumptions, how to seek knowledge; in short, how to exercise reason. This experience will sustain you for the rest of your lives, but no one should assume that a life of reason is easy; to the contrary. It takes a great deal of courage and honesty. For the only way that you will grow intellectually is by examining your opinions, attacking your prejudices constantly and completely with the force of your reason.
This can be unsettling and it can be tempting instead to opt for the false comfort of a life without questions. Unfortunately, that's easier to do than ever. It's possible today to live in an eco-chamber that serves only to reinforce your own high opinion of yourself and what you think. That is a temptation that educated people have a responsibility to reject. There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately. But at those times when you're absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don't allow yourself the easy course of the constant "amen" to everything that you say. (Applause.)
A commitment to reason leads to your third responsibility as an educated person, which is the rejection of false pride. It is natural, especially among the educated, to want to credit your success to your own intelligence and hard work and good judgment. And it is true, of course, that all of you sitting here today are here because you do, in fact, possess these qualities, but it is also true that merit alone did not see you to this day.
There are many people in this country and in this world who are just as intelligent, just as hard working and just as deserving of success as you are. But for whatever reason, maybe a broken home, maybe poverty, maybe just bad luck, these people did not enjoy all of the opportunities that you have had at Boston College. Don't ever forget that. Never assume that your own sense of entitlement has gotten you what you have or that it will get you what you want. Boston College has summoned all of you to the Jesuit ideals of compassion and charity for those less fortunate. Now commencement marks your opportunity, indeed your obligation, to graduate with wisdom and humility. (Applause.)
The fourth responsibility of the educated person is to be optimistic. Too often, cynicism can be the fellow traveler of learning and I understand why. History is full of much cruelty and suffering and darkness and it can be hard sometimes to believe that a brighter future is indeed dawning. But for all of our past failings, for all of our current problems, more people now enjoy lives of hope and opportunity than ever before in all of human history. This progress has been the concerted effort not of cynics but of visionaries and optimists, of impatient patriots who dealt with our world as it was, but who never ever accepted that they were powerless to change that world for the better.
Here in America our own ideals of freedom and equality have been borne through generations by optimists, by people of reason, to be sure, but just as importantly, by people of faith, people who reject the all-too-common assumption that if you can't see something happening and measure it, then it can't possibly be real.
There was a time when the goal of democracy in America seemed impossible, but because people had faith in democracy's promise, today, it seems that it must have always been inevitable. There was also a day in my own lifetime when the hope of liberty and justice for all seemed impossible. But because individuals kept faith with the ideal of America, it seems that it was always inevitable that today, there has been a decade since we last had a white male Secretary of State. (Applause.)
You have been fortunate to study at a college where reason and faith exist together and reinforce one another. But you're headed into a world where optimists are too often told to keep their ideals to themselves. It is your responsibility as educated people to remain optimistic no matter what, but that's not all. You have an obligation to act on those ideals and this, I believe, is the final responsibility to the educated person; really, the most important responsibility of all, to work to advance human progress.
What do I mean by human progress? I believe that all human beings share certain fundamental aspirations. They want protections for their lives and their liberties. They want to think freely and to worship as they wish. They want opportunities to educate their children, boys and girls, and they want to be ruled by the consent of the governed, not by the coercion of the state. So I would define human progress this way. Progress is humankind's ability to view more and more of our differences, whether of race or religion or culture or gender, not as a license to kill or a cause for repression, but as matters of no moral significance whatsoever.
All too often, difference has been used to divide and to dehumanize. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the Birmingham of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, a place that was once quite properly described as the most segregated city in America. I know how it feels to hold aspirations when half your neighbors think that you're incapable or uninterested in anything higher. In my professional life, I've listened with disbelief as it was said that men and women in Asia and Africa and Latin America and Russia and in the Middle East today did not share the basic aspirations of all human beings. Somehow, it was thought, these people were just different and by that, it was meant unworthy, unworthy of what we enjoy.
It is your responsibility as educated people to reject these prejudices and to help close the gaps of justice and opportunity that still divide our nation and our world. I know this mission is very close to the heart of Boston College. The Jesuit ideal of service to others has inspired this class to devote thousands of hours of your own time to help those in need. Most of you have spent a summer break on mission service or worked here at home in impoverished American communities, perhaps in New Orleans after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Others ventured beyond our shores to assist the needy in countries like Brazil and Jamaica and Mexico.
This experience, I imagine, has taught you that progress never unfolds passively or inevitably. No, the promise of human progress is always carried forward by men and women who serve a cause greater than themselves. I know how hard it can be these days, when we see images of genocide in Darfur or violence in Iraq or destruction along our own Gulf coast, to believe that such a thing of human progress is possible is sometimes difficult. I know that even optimists among us sometimes feel tested today, but in moments like these draw solace from education and also from historical perspective.
I spent last summer reading the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. I read of Jefferson and Adams and Washington and Hamilton. And when you read of their lives and their times, you are struck by the overwhelming sense that there is no earthly reason that the United States of America should ever have come into being. But not only did we come into being, we endured. And not only have we endured, we have thrived. We have thrived despite the fact that when the Founding Fathers said, "We, the people," they didn't mean me. We have thrived despite the fact that my ancestors were deemed to be three-fifths of a man and sold at auction. We have thrived despite the fact that it was only in my lifetime that we finally guaranteed the right to vote for all Americans. So remember, even when the horizon seems shrouded in darkness, the hope of a brighter beginning is always in sight. (Applause.)
I've been told that in keeping with the senior tradition, all of you gathered this morning on the roof the Beacon Street garage to watch the sunrise on your last day as college students (applause) -- your first day as men and women of the world. This morning indeed marks a new and glorious beginning for all of you and all of you are well-prepared for what lies ahead. You now leave Boston College to join the ranks of the world's most privileged community, the community of the educated. So as you leave, let me ask you to bear a few things in mind. Remember your responsibilities to find your passion, to use your reason, to cultivate humility, to remain optimistic and always to serve others. Remember this moment right now and remember all of those who contributed so that it could come -- your parents and your families and your friends who supported you through all of these times. (Applause.)
But remember this, too. You've had a wonderful opportunity to become educated people, but what really matters is not what you have learned and not what is said to you on this day, but what you do with all the days ahead of you. May God speed you on your way. Thank you. (Applause.)
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Hawaii and United States Air Force
(Hawaii is from Wednesday, May 24, 2006 to Friday, June XX, 2006 or Friday, July XX, 2006 and United States Air Force enlistment is middle to late 2006.)
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