    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 31, 1999]
    [Pages 858-861]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Memorial Day Ceremony in Arlington, Virginia
    May 31, 1999

        Thank you very much, Secretary Cohen,
    for your remarks, your devotion to your country, and your outstanding
    leadership. Secretary West, thank you for
    your work on behalf of our Nation's veterans. And to both of you, thank
    you for your support of the recent actions in Congress to raise the pay
    of our military personnel and to improve their quality of life, to
    improve the retirement systems of the veterans and their readiness.
        General Ivany, thank you for your
    remarks, your example, and your leadership. Colonel Brogan, thank you for your prayers. Superintendent
    Metzler, thank you for doing such a
    magnificent job of maintaining Arlington National Cemetery, in honor of
    those who are buried here and as a tribute to all America stands for. I
    thank the members of the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, Congress, the
    diplomatic corps, the armed services who are here. I welcome the
    veterans and the families of veterans and members of the armed services,
    my fellow citizens.
        I'd like to begin by asking that we all join in expressing our
    thanks to the Air Force Band and the Singing Sergeants for doing such a
    fine job here today. [Applause] They deserve it. Thank you.
        Even though the day is bright and warm, I ask you to indulge me, to
    spend a few extra moments to think about what it means that we here
    today mark the final Memorial Day of this century. To be sure, it has
    been a century that saw too many white stones added to these gentle
    hills, marking America's sacrifices for freedom for over 100 years, in
    two World Wars and many other conflicts. Again and again, America has
    been tested in the 20th century, coming through it all, down to the
    present day, with even greater blessings of liberty and prosperity, with
    our enduring optimism and steady faith in our common humanity.
        Thanks to our brave men and women in uniform, our Nation has never
    been more secure. Thanks to them, the cold war is now another chapter in
    the history books. Thanks to them, nations that fought two World Wars in
    Europe and in Asia, some of which had battled each other for centuries,
    now cooperate with each other as never before.
        On the eve of a new millennium, we can see clearly how closely the
    sacrifices of our men and women in uniform in the 20th century are
    linked to the yearning for freedom that gave birth to our Nation over
    200 years ago, a yearning based on the then radical premise that we are
    all inherently equal, fully able to govern ourselves, and endowed with a
    God-given right to liberty. That is our history, a history that beckons
    us especially on this Memorial Day and especially here at Arlington, the
    most powerful

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    evidence we now have that our country has accepted consistently the old
    adage that much is expected from those to whom much is given. From
    Concord to Corregidor, from Korea to Khe Sanh, from Kuwait to Kosovo,
    our entire history is written in this ground.
        As Secretary Cohen said, only 11 days ago a young man from Ohio,
    Chief Warrant Officer David Gibbs, was laid
    to rest here after his helicopter crashed in a training exercise on May
    5th in Albania. Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Reichert died in the same crash. We honor these two brave Americans
    who gave their lives in service to our Nation's highest ideals, joining
    other, more famous names who did the same. Here lie heroes of war, like
    John Pershing, George Marshall, Omar Bradley, President Kennedy; the
    great explorer Robert Peary; brave astronauts who gave their lives to
    increase our knowledge of the heavens; Medgar Evers, who fought for
    freedom at Normandy on D-day and then fought for freedom all over again
    at the University of Mississippi; familiar names, like Joe Louis,
    Justice Earl Warren, Abner Doubleday, Medal of Honor winner Audie
    Murphy. All different, all American, all made our presence possible.
        We are the oldest constitutional democracy in the world, but we must
    never forget in the context of human history just how quickly we have
    come to where we are today. Secretary Cohen quoted another famous
    American veteran who is buried here, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He
    fought in the Civil War and went on to serve on the United States
    Supreme Court until he was 93 years old. A young man caught him at the
    age of 90 reading a copy of Plato's ``Republic'' and asked whatever in
    the world he was doing, reading that weighty tome. And he said, ``I am
    doing this to improve my mind.''
        A remarkable man, Justice Holmes; his life shows us how quickly we
    have come here. When he was a boy, he shook hands with a veteran of the
    American Revolution. As a young man he fought in the Civil War, where he
    was visited by President Lincoln. You may know the famous story that the
    President was wearing his trademark stovepipe hat, and he began, because
    he was so tall, to attract fire from the Confederate forces, until
    Holmes shouted, without thinking, these famous words, ``Get down, you
    fool.'' [Laughter] Lincoln replied, ``I'm glad you know how to talk to a
    civilian.'' [Laughter]
        Justice Holmes lived through World War I and the Depression. He
    watched the United States assume the mantle of leadership. And he always
    remembered what he had done as a young man--that war reminds us, and I
    quote, that ``our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of
    things.'' He understood that our freedom had been and always would be
    bought by men and women ready to protect it, sometimes at great cost and
    peril.
        So we did not become a great nation just because the land was
    generous to those who settled it, though it was; just because the people
    who came here worked hard and were clever and resourceful, though surely
    our forebears were. We became a great nation also because every time our
    beliefs and ideals have been threatened, Americans have stepped forward
    to defend them. From our biggest cities to our smallest towns, citizens
    have done what had to be done to advance the dream that began on the
    Fourth of July in 1776--always following Justice Holmes' famous
    admonition that we must be involved in the action and passion of our
    time, for fear of being judged not to have lived.
        So my fellow Americans, if today is a day for history, it is also a
    day to honor those who lie here and in countless other places all across
    the world in marked and unmarked graves, to honor them by looking to the
    future; to rededicate ourselves to another 100 years of our liberty, our
    prosperity, our optimism, and our common humanity.
        Today, there is a new challenge before us in Kosovo. It is a very
    small province in a small country, but it is a big test of what we
    believe in: our commitment to leave to our children a world where people
    are not uprooted and ravaged and slaughtered en masse because of their
    race, their ethnicity, or their religion; our fundamental interest in
    building a lasting peace in an undivided and free Europe, a place which
    saw two World Wars when that dream failed in the 20th century; and our
    interest in preserving our alliance for freedom and peace with our 18
    NATO Allies.
        All of us have seen the hundreds of thousands of innocent men and
    women and children driven from their homes, the thousands singled out
    for death along the way. We have heard their stories of rape and
    oppression, of robbery and looting and brutality. And we saw it all
    before, just a few years ago in Bosnia, for 4 long years,

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    until NATO acted, combining with the resistance of Bosnians and
    Croatians, to bring the Dayton peace agreement and to turn the tide of
    ethnic cleansing there.
        How did this all happen? Well, 10 years ago the Berlin Wall fell,
    ending communism's cruel and arbitrary division of Europe, unleashing
    the energies of freedom-loving people there, after two World Wars and
    the cold war, to be united in peace and freedom and prosperity. But that
    same year in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic
    became the last holdout against a Europe free, united, and at peace,
    when he stripped away the rights of the Kosovars to govern themselves.
    He then went to war against the Croatians and the Bosnians. And in the
    wake of that, after 4 years, a quarter of a million people were dead.
    Two and a half million people were refugees; many of them still have not
    gone home. There was a stunning record of destruction, told not only in
    lives but in religious, cultural, historical, and personal buildings and
    records destroyed in an attempt to erase the existence of a people on
    their land.
        In Kosovo we see some parallels to World War II, for the Government
    of Serbia, like that of Nazi Germany, rose to power in part by getting
    people to look down on people of a given race and ethnicity, and to
    believe they had no place in their country and even no right to live.
    But even more troubling, we see some parallels to the rumblings all
    around the world where people continue to fall out with one another and
    think they simply cannot share common ground and a common future with
    people who worship God in a different way or have a slightly different
    heritage.
        Think about the contrast of that to the military we celebrate today.
    Every morning on Memorial Day, I have a breakfast for leaders of the
    veterans community at the White House. And I stand there with eager
    anticipation as people who have fought or whose relatives have fought
    and often died in our wars come through the line. I noticed them today:
    There were Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans; there were Arab-
    Americans and Jewish Americans; there were Catholic Americans and
    Protestant Americans; there were African-Americans; there were Hispanic-
    Americans; there were Asian-Americans.
        Just look around here today at the kinds of people who are wearing
    the evidence of their service to our country. We are a stronger country
    because we respect our differences and we are united by our common
    humanity.
        Now, we cannot expect everybody to follow our lead, and we haven't
    gotten it entirely right, now. We don't expect everybody to get along
    all the time. But we can say no to ethnic cleansing. We can say no to
    mass slaughter of people because of the way they worship God and because
    of who their parents were. We can say no to that, and we should.
        It is important that you know that in Kosovo the world has said no.
    It's not just the United States or even just our 18 NATO Allies with us.
    People on every continent--Arabs and Israelis are sending assistance,
    Protestants and Catholics from Northern Ireland, Greeks and Turks,
    Africans, Asians, Latin Americans; even those whose own lives have been
    battered by hurricanes and other natural disasters and who have hardly
    anything to give are sending help, because their hearts have been broken
    and their consciences moved by the appalling abuses they have seen.
        Our objectives in Kosovo are clear and consistent with both the
    moral imperative of reversing ethnic cleansing and killing, and our
    overwhelming national interest in a peaceful, undivided Europe which
    will ensure we will not have to send large numbers of young Americans to
    die there in the next century in a war. The objectives are that the
    Kosovars will go home; the Serb forces will withdraw; an international
    force, with NATO at its core, will deploy to protect all the people,
    including the Serb minority, in Kosovo. And afterward, to avoid future
    Bosnias and future Kosovos, we will learn the lesson of the Marshall
    plan and what we did for Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell, by
    working with our European allies to build democracy and prosperity and
    cooperation in southeastern Europe so that there will be stronger forces
    pulling people together than those that are driving them apart.
        I know that many Americans believe that this is not our fight. But
    remember why many of the people are laying in these graves out here--
    because of what happened in Europe and because of what was allowed to go
    on too long before people intervened. What we are doing today will save
    lives, including American lives, in the future. And it will give our
    children a better, safer world to live in.
        In this military campaign the United States has borne a large share
    of the burden, as we

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    must, because we have a greater capacity to bear that burden. But all
    Americans should know that we have been strongly supported by our
    European allies, that when the peacekeeping force goes in there, the
    overwhelming majority of people will be European, and that when the
    reconstruction begins, the overwhelming amount of investment will be
    European. This is something we have done together.
        And I ask you, in the days and nights ahead, to remember our brave
    pilots and crews flying over Serbia, to keep their families in our
    thoughts. I visited with them recently. I know that they risk their
    lives every day, and they even avoid firing back sometimes at people who
    fire at them because they fire from heavily populated areas, and they
    want to avoid killing innocent civilians.
        I ask you to support all possible efforts to relieve the suffering
    of the people of Kosovo. Even those who escape will be struggling with
    what happened to them for a long, long time. And this afternoon, I ask
    all Americans to join with those who have urged us to engage in a moment
    of remembrance at 3 o'clock eastern daylight time, in honor of those who
    have given their lives for our country.
        I also ask all Americans to honor, along with those who have given
    their lives for our freedom, the living symbol of American valor, our
    veterans and their families, the present members of armed services and
    their families, wherever and however they serve.
        How fitting it is that we are standing against ethnic cleansing with
    our wonderful, myriad, rainbow, multiethnic military in our increasingly
    diverse society that involves both the strength of our differences and
    the even more powerful pull of our shared American values. Our military
    inspires the world with their respect for one another and their ability
    to work together. And you pass every test with the same flying colors,
    red, white, and blue.
        Those who lie in this sacred place and in all those other places the
    world over, many of whom will never even be known, they would be very
    proud of today's men and women in uniform. And in the bright new century
    ahead, those who live free with pride in and without fear of their
    heritage or their faith will be very grateful to today's men and women
    in uniform.
        I thank you all. God bless you, and God bless America.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:17 a.m. in the Amphitheater at Arlington
    National Cemetery. In his remarks, he referred to Maj. Gen. Robert R.
    Ivany, USA, Commander, and Col. Edward T. Brogan, USA, Chaplain,
    Military District of Washington; John C. (Jack) Metzler, Superintendent,
    Arlington National Cemetery; and President Slobodan Milosevic of the
    Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).