    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [April 1, 1999]
    [Pages 485-489]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Military Community at Norfolk Naval Station
    April 1, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much. I'm just curious, can you all
    hear me out there?
        Audience member. No!
        The President. No? The echo is pretty bad, isn't it? Well, if I
    speak louder, is it better or worse? No difference. I'll do the best I
    can.
        First, I'd like to thank Secretary Cohen and General Shelton for their
    truly outstanding service in our administration at a difficult time. I'd
    like to thank Admiral Gehman, Admiral
    Reason, General Pace,
    General Keck, and the other leaders of all the
    forces represented here.
        I thank Secretary Danzig, National
    Security Adviser Berger, and others who
    came with me from the White House. Mayor Oberndorf, thank you for welcoming me to Virginia Beach.

    [[Page 486]]

        I'd like to say a special word of appreciation to the Members of
    Congress who are here: your representatives, Congressmen Scott and Sisisky; Senator
    Levin, our ranking member of the Armed Services
    Committee; and a special thanks to my longtime friend Senator Chuck
    Robb, who is one of the most courageous
    Members of the United States Congress, and Virginia is very fortunate to
    be represented by him.
        Let me say to all of you, I came here today primarily to thank two
    groups of people, our men and women in uniform and their families, for
    the service and sacrifice that makes America strong.
        I just met a few moments ago with several members of families,
    spouses and children of members of four different services who are
    deployed away from here now. They're all over here to my right. And
    whatever it is you would like to say to me today, I think there's a very
    good chance they said it. They did a very good job for you, and I'm very
    proud of them.
        I heard about the financial sacrifices, and I heard about the human
    sacrifices. I don't think that anyone could say it better than this lady
    over here with this beautiful baby in the red hat, with the ``I miss
    you, Daddy'' sign. I thank you. And this sign, ``I love my TR sailor.
    Support our troops.''
        I wanted to come here today because I want America to know that the
    sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform are fully mirrored by
    their families back home, by the opportunities that are missed to be
    with wives and husbands and children on birthdays and holidays, and just
    being there for the kids when they're needed at night and in the morning
    as they go off to school. They are fully felt in terms of the financial
    sacrifices of the family members left at home to pay the bills and see
    to the health care and other needs of the children.
        And America should know that and should be very, very grateful to
    all of you. We are grateful, and we think all Americans will be grateful
    as they know what you do.
        Let me also say I had a chance to speak, just before I came out
    here, with the 510th Fighter Squadron at Aviano Air Base in Italy, part
    of our Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, to thank them and to hear of
    their immense pride and determination in their mission.
        I know that many, many people here have friends or family members
    who are working hard in our mission in Kosovo. I know this port is home
    to 100 ships, not only the powerful battle groups now at sea led by the
    Enterprise and the Theodore Roosevelt but also ships in the Adriatic,
    guided missile destroyers like the Gonzalez, fast-attack submarines like
    the Norfolk. [Applause] Yes, you can clap for your ships; that's okay.
    [Applause]
        I can't name every ship or every unit, but I know that all of you
    are proud of all of them. Again, let me say, too, a special word of
    thanks to the family members of those who are deployed in the Kosovo
    operation now.
        And let me say to all of you, we spend a lot of time--perhaps more
    time than you would think--in the White House, and at the Pentagon,
    talking about our obligations to the families of our service members. We
    know that we are asking more and more of you as we have downsized the
    military and diversified and increased the number of our operations
    around the world. We know that the more we ask of you, the greater our
    responsibilities to you.
        We know that we owe you the support, the training, the equipment you
    need to get the job done. We know we owe you fair pay, decent housing,
    and other support. Our new defense budget contains not only a
    substantial pay raise but increased funding to keep our readiness razor
    sharp. It is our solemn obligation to those of you who accept the
    dangers and hardships of our common security.
        Since the cold war ended, we have asked more and more of our Armed
    Forces, from the Persian Gulf to Korea to Central America to Africa--
    today, to stand with our allies in NATO against the unspeakable
    brutality in Kosovo.
        Now, this is not an easy challenge with a simple answer. If it were,
    it would have been resolved a long time ago. The mission I have asked
    our Armed Forces to carry out with our NATO Allies is a dangerous one,
    as I have repeatedly said. Danger is something the brave men and women
    of our country's Armed Forces understand because you live with it every
    day, even in routine training exercises.
        Now, we all know that yesterday three Army infantrymen were seized as they were carrying out a peaceful
    mission in Macedonia, protecting that country from the violence in
    neighboring Kosovo. There was absolutely no basis for them to be taken.
    There is no basis for them to be held. There is certainly no basis for
    them to

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    be tried. All Americans are concerned about their welfare.
        President Milosevic should make no
    mistake: The United States takes care of its own. And President
    Milosevic should make no mistake: We will hold him and his government
    responsible for their safety and for their well-being.
        But I ask you also to resolve that we will continue to carry out our
    mission with determination and resolve.
        Over the past few weeks, I have been talking with the American
    people about why we're involved with our NATO Allies in Kosovo and the
    risks of our mission and why they're justified. It's especially
    important that I speak to you and, through you, to all men and women in
    uniform about these matters.
        The roots of this conflict lie in the policies of Mr.
    Milosevic, the dictator of Serbia. For
    more than 10 years now, he has been using ethnic and religious hatred as
    a path to personal power and a justification for the ethnic cleansing
    and murder of innocent civilians. That is what he did first in Bosnia
    and Croatia, where the United States, with our allies, did so much to
    end the war. And that is what he is doing in Kosovo today. That is what
    he will continue to do to his own people and his neighbors unless we and
    our allies stand in the way.
        For months, we tried and tried and tried every conceivable peaceful
    alternative. We did everything we could through diplomacy to solve this
    problem. With diplomacy backed by the threat of NATO force, we forged a
    cease-fire last October that rescued from cold and hunger hundreds of
    thousands of people in Kosovo whom he had
    driven from their homes.
        In February, with our allies and with Russia, we proposed a peace
    agreement that would have given the people of Kosovo the autonomy they
    were guaranteed under their constitution before Mr. Milosevic came to power and ended the fighting for good.
        Now, the Kosovar leaders, they signed that agreement, even though it
    didn't give them the independence they said they wanted and that they
    had been fighting for. But Mr. Milosevic
    refused. In fact, while pretending to negotiate for peace, he massed
    40,000 troops and hundreds of tanks in and around Kosovo, planning a new
    campaign of destruction and defiance. He started carrying out that
    campaign the moment the peace talks ended.
        Now the troops and police of the Serbian dictator are rampaging through tiny Kosovo, separating men
    from their families, executing many of them in cold blood, burning
    homes--sometimes, we now hear, with people inside--forcing survivors to
    leave everything behind, confiscating their identity papers, destroying
    their records so their history and their property is erased forever.
        Yesterday Mr. Milosevic actually said
    this problem can only be solved by negotiations. But yesterday, as he
    said that, his forces continued to hunt down the very Kosovar leaders
    with whom he was supposed to be negotiating.
        All together now, more than half a million Kosovars have been pushed
    from their homes since the conflict began. They are arriving at the
    borders of the country, shaken by what they have seen and been through.
    But they also say--as a delegation of Albanian-Americans, many of whom
    have relatives in Kosovo, told me personally in the White House
    yesterday--that NATO's military action has at least given them some hope
    that they have not been completely abandoned in their suffering.
        Had we not acted, the Serbian offensive would have been carried out
    with impunity. We are determined that it will carry a very high price,
    indeed.
        We also act to prevent a wider war. If you saw my address to the
    country the other night and the maps that I showed, you know that Kosovo
    is a very small place. But it sits right at the dividing line of Europe,
    Asia, and the Middle East; the dividing line between Islam and
    Christianity; close to our Turkish and Greek allies to the south; our
    new allies, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, to the north;
    surrounded by small and struggling democracies that easily could be
    overwhelmed by the flood of refugees Mr. Milosevic is creating.
        Already, Macedonia is so threatened. Already, Serbian forces have
    made forays into Albania, which borders Kosovo. If we were to do
    nothing, eventually our allies and then the United States would be drawn
    into a larger conflict, at far greater risks to our people and far
    greater costs.
        Now, we can't respond to every tragedy in every corner of the world.
    But just because we can't do everything for everyone doesn't mean that
    for the sake of consistency we should do nothing for no one.

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        Remember now, these atrocities are happening at the doorstep of
    NATO, which has preserved the security of Europe for 50 years because of
    the alliance between the United States and our allies. They are
    happening in violation of specific commitments Mr. Milosevic gave to us, to our NATO Allies, to other European
    countries, and to Russia. They are happening to people who embrace peace
    and promise to lay down their own arms. They put their trust in us, and
    we can't let them down.
        Our objective is to restore the Kosovars to their homes with
    security and self-government. Our bombing campaign is designed to exact
    an unacceptably high price for Mr. Milosevic's present policy of repression and ethnic cleansing
    and to seriously diminish his military capacity to maintain that policy.
        We've been doing this for 7 days now--just 7 days. Our pilots have
    performed bravely and well in the face of dangerous conditions and often
    abysmal weather. But we must be determined and patient. Remember, the
    Serbs had 40,000 troops in and around Kosovo and nearly 300 tanks when
    they began this, before the first NATO plane got in the air. They had a
    sophisticated air-defense system. They also have a problem which has
    been festering for a decade, thanks to the efforts of Mr.
    Milosevic to make people hate each other
    in the former Yugoslavia because they are Muslims instead of Orthodox
    Christians or Catholics; because they're Albanians instead of Serbians
    or Croatians, or Bosnian Muslims, or Macedonians, or you have--whatever.
    It is appalling.
        For decades, those people lived in peace with one another. For 10
    years and more, now, a dictator has
    sought to make himself powerful by convincing the largest group, the
    Serbs, that the only way they can amount to anything is to uproot,
    disrupt, destroy, and kill other people who don't have the same means of
    destruction--no matter what the consequences are to everybody around
    them, no matter how many innocent children and their parents die, no
    matter how much it disrupts other countries.
        Why? Because they want power, and they want to base it on the kind
    of ethnic and religious hatred that is bedeviling the whole world today.
    You can see it in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland. You can see it
    in the tribal wars in Africa. You can see that it is one of the dominant
    problems the whole world faces. And this is right in the underbelly of
    Europe.
        We have to decide whether we are going to take a stand with our NATO
    Allies and whether we are prepared to pay the price of time to make
    him pay the price of aggression and
    murder. Are we, in the last year of the 20th century, going to look the
    other way as entire peoples in Europe are forced to abandon their
    homelands or die? Are we going to impose a price on that kind of conduct
    and seek to end it?
        Mr. Milosevic often justifies his
    behavior by talking about the history of the Serbs going back to the
    14th century. Well, I value the history of this country, and I value
    what happened here in the 18th century. But I don't want to take America
    back to the 18th century. And he acts like he wants to take Serbia back
    to the 14th century, to 14th century values, 14th century ways of
    looking at other human beings.
        We are on the edge of a new century and a new millennium, where the
    people in poor countries all over the world, because of technology and
    the Internet and the spreading of information, will have unprecedented
    opportunities to share prosperity and to give their kids an education
    and have a decent future, if only they will live in peace with the basic
    human regard for other people. That is absolutely antithetical to
    everything that Mr. Milosevic has done.
        So I ask you--you say, what has this got to do with America?
    Remember, we fought two World Wars in Europe. Remember that the unity,
    the freedom, the prosperity, the peace of Europe is important to the
    future of the children in this room today. That is, in the end, what
    this is about.
        We're not doing this on our own. We could not have undertaken it on
    our own. This is something we're doing with our NATO Allies. They're up
    there in the air, too. If there's a peace agreement, they've agreed to
    provide 85 percent of the troops on the ground to help to monitor the
    peace agreement and protect all the ethnic groups, including the Serbs.
        This is something we are doing to try to avoid in the 21st century
    the kind of widespread war, large American casualties, and heartbreak
    that we saw too much of in the century we are about to leave.
        So this is not just about a small piece of the Balkans. But let me
    ask you something. When we are moved by the plight of three servicemen,
    when we stay up half the night hoping that our rescue teams find that
    fine pilot

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    who went down when his plane was hit, when we see a sign that says, ``I
    love my TR sailor'' or ``I miss my Daddy,'' we remember that all
    political and military decisions ultimately have a human component that
    is highly individualized.
        Think how you would feel if you were part of the half million people
    who lived peaceably in a place, just wanted to be let alone to practice
    your religion and educate your children and do your work, if people came
    to your house and your village and said, ``Pack up your belongings and
    go. We're going to burn your property records; we're going to burn your
    identity records. And if your husband or your son is of military service
    age, we might take them out behind the barn and shoot them dead''--just
    because you have a different religion, just because you have a different
    ethnic background. Is that really what we want the 21st century to be
    about for our children?
        Now, that is what is at stake here. We cannot do everything in the
    world, but we must do what we can. We can never forget the Holocaust,
    the genocide, the carnage of the 20th century. We don't want the new
    century to bring us the same nightmares in a different guise.
        We also want to say again how proud the United States is that each
    of NATO's 19 members is supporting the mission in Kosovo in some way--
    France and Germany, Turkey and Greece, Poland and Hungary, the Czech
    Republic, Britain, Canada, all the others. And this is also important.
        Let me finally say--I'd like to read you something. Near the end of
    the Second World War, President Roosevelt prepared a speech to give at a
    holiday honoring Virginia's famous son Thomas Jefferson. He never got to
    give the speech. But it still speaks to us, his last words. And to those
    of you who wear the uniform of our Nation and to those of you who are
    part of the families of our Uniformed Service members. I ask you to heed
    these words.
        After the long war was almost drawing to a close, these were
    Franklin Roosevelt's last words that he never got to deliver: ``We as
    Americans do not choose to deny our responsibilities. Nor do we intend
    to abandon our determination that within the lives of our children and
    our children's children, there will not be a third world war. We seek
    peace, enduring peace. More than an end to war, we want an end to the
    beginnings of all wars.''
        That is what we are trying to achieve in Kosovo. That is what many
    of you in this room, perhaps, and your colleagues, did achieve in
    Bosnia. We want to end a war that has begun in Europe and prevent a
    larger war. And we want to alleviate the burdens and the killing of
    defenseless people. Let us heed President Roosevelt's last words.
        Let me say again, for those of you who serve and for those of you
    who serve as family members and who sacrifice as wives and husbands and
    children: I thank you for your service and your sacrifice, and America
    thanks you.
        God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:17 p.m. in Hangar SP2. In his remarks, he
    referred to Adm. Harold W. Gehman, Jr., USN, Supreme Allied Commander
    Atlantic; Adm. J. Paul Reason, USN, Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic
    Fleet; Lt. Gen. Peter Pace, USMC, Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces,
    Europe; Lt. Gen. Thomas Keck, USAF, Vice Commander, Air Combat Command;
    Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf of Virginia Beach; President Slobodan
    Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro);
    and Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez, USA, Staff Sgt. Christopher J. Stone,
    USA, and Specialist Steven M. Gonzales, USA, infantrymen in custody in
    Serbia.