Bob Wise: “I think with the eloquence of many who have spoken here on both sides, it is important to remember what happened 9 years…”

“I think with the eloquence of many who have spoken here on both sides, it is important to remember what happened 9 years ago in Tiananmen Square. The people must remember. The U.S. Congress must remember. The President of the United States and, yes, the Chinese people and government must remember. But I have got to ask, too, why do we not remember and remember how important it is to engage? Would anyone have seriously suggested that Presidents Reagan or Bush or Ford or Carter, going all the way back, should never have gone to Moscow to meet with the Soviet Union, now, of course, the Russians, because of the gulags, because of the Korean Air 007 shooting down, because of the oppression in Afghanistan and countless other countries? Of course not. We knew they had to go. Or Richard Nixon, should he not have gone to China? Talk about human rights violations. Mao Tse-tung and the Red Guard were running in full bloom at the time. Millions massacred, millions incarcerated. Deng Xiaoping himself, a later leader of China, was being subjected to imprisonment by the Red Guard, but we had to engage. The President of the United States standing in Tiananmen Square does not gloss over what happened there; it highlights it. It highlights it because of the attention it draws, and I think President Clinton will stand well in representing what Americans believe. We have to look at this trip in the entirety, not in separate events.”