    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 22, 1999]
    [Pages 994-997]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Operation Allied Force Troops at Aviano Air Base in Italy
    June 22, 1999

        Thank you very much. Well, Captain Davis, you are a pretty tough act to follow--[laughter]--
    and not short of self-confidence, either. That's good. [Laughter] I'd
    like to begin by saying that Hillary and I are delighted to be back in
    Aviano. We have been here several times to thank you, but never on an
    occasion more important than this.
        I thank the Italian Minister of Defense, Mr.
    Scognamiglio, and his government and his
    Prime Minister for their leadership, their
    strength, and their support for NATO during this operation. They have
    been terrific, and I thank them.
        I would like to also say a special word of appreciation to our NATO
    Commander, our SACEUR, General Wes Clark,
    who led this conflict to a successful conclusion. Thank you, General
    Clark.
        I want to thank Colonel Durigon, the
    Italian Base Commander; Ambassador Tom Foglietta, our Ambassador to Italy; Ambassador Lindy Boggs, our Ambassador to the Holy See. And
    General Leaf, I want to thank you for your
    leadership and your remarkable statement here today.
        We have been on a long trip to Europe. I have been, at various
    times, with not only Hillary and
    Chelsea but with Secretary of State
    Albright and National Security Adviser
    Berger, a large number of other people, on
    a long, long week very important to America. But I did not want to leave
    without having the chance to thank those of you who protect our freedom
    every single day, who fought for human dignity and won its cause in
    Kosovo. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
        Since the beginning of Operation Allied Force, I have actually
    traveled to six other bases involved in this effort: in the United
    States--Norfolk, Barksdale, and Whiteman in America; Spangdahlem,
    Ramstein, Ingleheim in Germany. But I wanted to come here to say a
    special word of thanks to the 16th Air Force, the 31st Air Expeditionary
    Wing, because of what you have done in Kosovo, because of the role this
    base played in Bosnia. You have repeatedly put

    [[Page 995]]

    your lives on the line to save the lives of innocent civilians and turn
    back the tide of ethnic cleansing. Thank you again for this noble
    endeavor.
        In 79 days, you did prove that a sustained air campaign under the
    right conditions can stop an army on the ground. The Serb forces have
    withdrawn from Kosovo; 20,000 allied KFOR troops are already in. You
    also stopped a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing and made it possible
    for us to reverse it. Protected by a peacekeeping force that includes
    NATO, Russia, and many other nations, the refugees are going back home.
    They have given new meaning, and you have given new meaning, to the
    motto of the 31st Fighter Wing. Thanks to you, they ``Return With
    Honor.''
        Now that the conflict has been won, it is imperative that we and our
    NATO Allies and the others working with us win the peace. No one thinks
    it will take hold without difficulty. As more and more light is shed on
    those burned villages and even more mass graves than we dared to
    imagine, we become more and more appalled by the dark vision of Mr.
    Milosevic and more and more certain we
    were right to stop it.
        We have to win the peace with the same qualities with which you won
    the conflict, with determination and patience, with discipline and
    precision. We learned yesterday again that this, too, is a dangerous
    mission, as we mourn the loss of two
    British soldiers who gave their lives trying to
    clear mines out of a house where they were placed solely to kill the
    returning refugees.
        But thanks to you, the worst is already over in Kosovo. And
    tomorrow's dictators in other places will have to now take a harder look
    before they try to destroy or expel an entire people simply because of
    their race or religion.
        General Leaf called you a championship
    team. Those are words well chosen. As he said, over 30,000 sorties
    flown, about 9,000 from here at Aviano, with zero combat fatalities; 2
    planes down, both from here; in each case, the pilot recovered, first in
    6 hours, the second in an hour and a half. That is a truly astonishing
    record.
        And of course, we remember our two Army
    airmen who died in a training exercise in
    Albania. But I know, and I want the American people to know, that we
    could have had many more losses but for your skill and courage, because
    I know that there were many occasions when our pilots avoided firing
    back at those who were firing on them because they were firing from
    heavily populated civilian areas. And I am grateful for that, as well.
        So many of you deserve acknowledgement. I wish I could name you all.
    I probably will miss someone, but I'm going to do this anyway, because I
    love to hear you cheer when your names are called. [Laughter] It does me
    a lot of good--you know, we've been up for a week, and we're a little
    tired, and you get my adrenaline flowing.
        So thank you to the Buzzards of the 510th Fighter Squadron--
    [applause]--the Bushmasters of the 78th--[applause]--the Black Panthers
    of the 494th--[applause]--the Triple Nickle--[applause]--the Star
    Warriors and Patriots and Yellowjackets from the Navy--[applause]--
    Playboys and Seahawks from the Marines--[applause]--the men and women
    deployed to Aviano from about 90 bases around America and Europe--
    [applause]--and the crews here from Spain, Canada, Portugal, and the
    United Kingdom. [Applause] You have to teach them to scream with the
    same fervor with which you scream. [Laughter]
        I want to thank the people on the ground, the maintenance personnel,
    the weaponeers, the air traffic controllers, and the Italian citizens
    who work on this base and make its success possible.
        I do want the American press to note that some of you have
    demonstrated abilities that will serve you well when you return to
    civilian life. The 31st Civil Engineers--[applause]--built a tent city
    here in just 4 days. And it is the envy of all the urban planners back
    home in America. There's no crime--[laughter]--decent sanitation, and
    extremely low unemployment--congratulations. [Laughter] Thank you.
        I want to again, in front of all of you, express my profound
    gratitude for our remarkable NATO Alliance of 19 nations. This was a
    difficult, difficult struggle for many of our countries. It is a tribute
    to their people and to their leaders. When I visited Spangdahlem in
    Germany in May, I spoke with pilots who told me how good it felt to look
    out of their cockpits and see aircrafts from the other NATO nations
    flying beside them.
        Now, under the leadership of General Jackson, with all 19 NATO nations working with the Russians and
    with many other countries, we are there in Kosovo to guarantee security,

    [[Page 996]]

    self-government, and a chance for all the people to rebuild.
        Again, I want to say I am particularly grateful to Prime Minister
    D'Alema and the Italian people for giving us
    the chance to call Aviano home and for their solidarity throughout this
    operation. All of you know that Kosovo was not a distant crisis for the
    people of Italy; it was an immediate threat and a difficult one, indeed.
    The threat is now receding before a new vision of southeastern Europe,
    one in which the pull of our common humanity and the promise of shared
    prosperity are more powerful than the old forces of hatred and division.
        I want to say a special word of appreciation to all of you in our
    Armed Forces for just being here. If you think about--I want you to
    really think about it--you think about what Kosovo was all about. People
    were taught to hate people who were from a different ethnic group than
    they were, who worshiped God in a different way. They started out by
    being afraid of them and misunderstanding them. Then, they came to hate
    them. And then after hating them for a good while, they came to
    dehumanize them. And once you decide that someone you're looking at is
    no longer a human being, it's not so hard to justify killing them, or
    burning them out of house and home, or torturing their children, or
    doing all the other things you have heard. It all starts--it all starts
    with the inability to recognize the inherent dignity and equality of
    someone who is different from ourselves.
        The composition of our Armed Forces, with people from every race,
    every ethnic group, every religious persuasion, from all walks of life,
    that make up American society--the fact that our military has all of you
    in it is the most stunning rebuke to the claims of ethnic cleansing.
        Now, we're going home. [Applause] I hope it's home you're cheering
    for and not the fact that I'm about to quit speaking. [Laughter] But I
    just want to say to you, you make possible, by defending our interests
    and advancing them, the work of the United States at the end of the cold
    war, at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium. That is
    profoundly important.
        Just think of what your country has been doing in the last week. I
    went to Cologne, Germany, to meet with the other large industrial powers
    of the world to plan for the new century; to change the financial rules
    so that we don't have other financial crises like the one we've had in
    Asia which causes big problems back in America, as well as for the
    people who are caught up in it; to provide dramatic increases in debt
    relief to the poorest countries of the world, to lift the burden of debt
    off their backs they can't pay anyway, as long as they'll put the
    savings into keeping their children alive and educating them and giving
    them good health care and ending the scourge of poverty in their
    country; to planning for the future of Kosovo and all of southeastern
    Europe.
        Yesterday I went to Slovenia, where I saw what we can build here, a
    thriving nation which embraces democracy, rejects bigotry, and looks
    toward the future together. That's what we can do for all the Balkans,
    for all of southeastern Europe.
        And I have just come from Macedonia, from the refugee camps, from
    the children singing and chanting ``U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!,'' knowing they
    are going to go home, knowing they don't have to go to bed at night
    afraid, knowing you have given them a chance to reclaim their lives in
    their native land.
        And I met with our KFOR forces from the United States and Spain and
    France and Great Britain and Portugal. And they are very proud to be
    succeeding you to make sure that this mission is finally won.
        Now, I know this has been difficult for many of you--to sleep 10 to
    a tent, work 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week; hard for a young pilot to
    leave a wife and two young children, going off into uncertain skies;
    hard for some of you to spend last Father's Day alone, waiting to hear
    your child's small voice a long way away on a telephone.
        I want you to know that I am absolutely certain that you are
    building a better world for your children and that they will come to
    know that--if not now, then someday--they will understand what their
    fathers and their mothers who wore our uniform have done in the last
    year of the 20th century to save the people of Kosovo, to defeat ethnic
    cleansing, to start the new millennium in the right way, as a time of
    human rights and human dignity and allied confidence that together we
    can build a future worthy of our dreams for our children.
        You have done that. I want you to know that your children will know
    it. And I, personally, am profoundly grateful.

    [[Page 997]]

        Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:26 p.m. in Hangar 1A. In his remarks, he
    referred to Capt. Charles E. (Digger) Davis, USAF, 510th Fighter
    Squadron; Minister of Defense Carlo Scognamiglio and Prime Minister
    Massimo D'Alema of Italy; Gen. Wesley K. Clark, USA, Supreme Allied
    Commander Europe (SACEUR); Col. Orfeo Durigon, Italian Air Force,
    Italian Base Commander; Brig. Gen. Daniel P. Leaf, USAF, Commander, 31st
    Air Expeditionary Wing; U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Corinne
    Claiborne (Lindy) Boggs; President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal
    Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); Lt. Gareth Evans and
    Sgt. Balaram Rai, British Royal Army personnel who were killed in an
    explosion in Negrovce, Kosovo, on June 21; Apache helicopter pilots CW3
    David A. Gibbs, USA, and CW2 Kevin L. Reichert, USA, who were killed in
    a training accident in Albania on May 5; and Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson,
    British Royal Army, Commander, Kosovo International Security Force.