Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

lost their lives in the Pacific Theater during World War II, including those killed at Pearl Harbor and later in Korea and Vietnam. The sight of those graves and the thousands of World War II veterans and their families who attended the service was a solemn reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made for our freedoms.

I stayed up all night in the little cottage we occupied at Kaneohe Marine Base, working on my book and the latest draft of my speech for Beijing. One happy by-product of the Harry Wu incident was that it generated huge publicity for the UN conference. All eyes were now on Beijing, and I knew that all eyes would be on me too. My staff and I had been working on remarks that would forcefully defend the U.S. position on human rights and expand conventional notions of women’s rights. I would criticize Chinese government abuses, including coerced abortions and the routine squelching of free speech and free assembly. Soon enough I was on an Air Force jet for the nearly fourteen-hour flight to Beijing, but without my favorite traveling companion. Chelsea had to go back to Washington with her father to start school.

After we ate dinner on the plane, the cabin lights were turned off and most of the passengers bundled themselves in blankets and curled up to sleep as we crossed the Pacific.

But the speech team still had work to do. We were on our fifth or sixth draft, and we needed to show the text to our resident foreign policy experts, who had joined us in Honolulu along with other administration officials and support staff. Winston Lord, the gentlemanly former Ambassador to China whom Bill appointed Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Eric Schwartz, a human rights specialist on the National Security Council; and Madeleine Albright huddled at a dimly lit worktable and pored over the text. Their job was to catch any inaccuracies or inadvertent diplomatic gaffes. Given all that had preceded it, one wrong word in this speech might lead to a diplomatic brouhaha. Their review was critical, I knew, but I was always wary whenever the experts weighed in. Often they were so intent on leaving their carefully nuanced, diplomatic imprint on a draft that they turned a good speech into mush. Not so in this case.

“What do you want to accomplish?” Madeleine had asked me earlier.

“I want to push the envelope as far as I can on behalf of women and girls,” I said.

Madeleine, Win and Eric recommended that I strengthen a section defining human rights and refer to a recent affirmation of those rights at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. They suggested beefing up passages about the effects of war on women, particularly the devastating proliferation of rape as a tactic of war and the increasing number of women refugees resulting from violent conflict. Most important, they understood that the power of the speech lay in its simplicity and emotion. They kept me out of trouble but were careful not to intrude with a heavy hand.

Brady Williamson, a Wisconsin lawyer who led my advance team, received daily inquiries from Chinese officials as to what I was going to say in my speech. They made it clear that while they welcomed my physical presence at the conference, they didn’t want to be embarrassed by my words and hoped that I “appreciated China’s hospitality.”

On trips such as these, sleep is a precious commodity. We rarely got enough and became accustomed to attending meetings, dinners and other events with eyelids drooping and heads nodding. When we finally arrived at the China World Hotel, one of Beijing’s luxury establishments for foreign visitors, it was after midnight. I had time for only a few hours of sleep before heading off to my first official event on Tuesday morning, a colloquium on women’s health sponsored by the World Health Organization, where I spoke about the gap in health care between women in rich countries like ours and those in poor countries.

Finally, it was time to enter the Plenary Hall, which looked like a mini United Nations.

Although I had delivered thousands of speeches, I was nervous. I felt passionately about the subject, and I was speaking as a representative of my country. The stakes were high―for the United States, for the conference, for women around the world and for me.

If nothing came out of the conference, it would be viewed as another missed opportunity to galvanize global opinion on behalf of improving conditions and increasing opportunities for women and girls. I didn’t want to embarrass or let down my country, my husband or myself And I didn’t want to squander a rare opportunity to advance the cause of women’s rights.

Our delegation had been busy negotiating with other delegations over the language in the conference’s plan of action. Some delegates clearly disagreed with the American agenda for women. The fact that women’s rights was an emotional issue made the delivery of my speech harder for me. I had learned during health care reform that my own strong feelings rarely help me in my delivery of a public address. Now I had to make sure that the tone or pitch of my voice would not confuse the message. Like it or not, women are always subject to criticism if they show too much feeling in public.

Looking out into the audience, I saw women and men of all complexions and races, some in Western garb and many dressed in their nation’s traditional clothing. The majority wore headphones to listen to simultaneous translations of the speeches. That was a curveball that I hadn’t anticipated: as I spoke, there was no response to my words, and I found it difficult to get into a rhythm or gauge the crowd’s reaction because the pauses in my English sentences and paragraphs didn’t coincide with those in the dozens of other languages the delegates were hearing.

After thanking Gertrude Mongella, the Secretary-General of the conference, I began by