    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 2, 1999]
    [Pages 867-871]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 867]]

    Commencement Address at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado
    Springs
    June 2, 1999

        Thank you very much. General Oelstrom,
    Mrs. Oelstrom; General and Mrs. Ryan; General and Mrs. Myers; General
    Lorenz, Mrs. Lorenz; General and Mrs.
    Wagie; Colonel Wilbourne; Cadet Friedman; Acting
    Secretary Peters, whom I intend to
    nominate as Secretary of the Air Force; ladies and gentlemen.
        I'd like to also acknowledge, particularly, four graduates of the
    Air Force Academy that I brought to this ceremony today because they are
    serving our country ably in the White House: Bob Bell, class of 1969, my Senior Counsel for Defense Policy and
    Arms Control, who is soon to become the Assistant Secretary General of
    NATO; Colonel Ed Rice, class of 1978; Lieutenant
    Colonel Betsy Pimentel, class of 1980; and my
    White House physician, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Tubb, class of 1981. The Air Force Academy has been good to
    our administration and to the White House.
        To the families and friends of the graduating class, and especially
    to you, the members of the class of 1999, I extend heartfelt
    congratulations. It's been a long road from Doolie Summer to graduation.
    But you have achieved, as General Oelstrom
    told me, an unparalleled record of academic achievement, athletic
    success, and excellence in your military endeavors. From here on out,
    the sky is the limit for you.
        I want to offer special congratulations to the graduates from other
    nations who are part of this class. We wish you well as you return home
    and hope you will forever cherish your bonds with the Academy and your
    classmates.
        Now, before I go any further, I want to carry out a venerable
    tradition. By the power vested in me as Commander in Chief, I hereby
    grant amnesty to cadets who are marching tours or serving restrictions
    or confinements for minor misconduct.
        One of the cadets suggested I also raise everyone's grades.
    [Laughter] But I'm told that even the Commander in Chief can't do that.
        Just a moment ago, I participated in another traditional ceremony
    I've been part of every year but one since I became President; it's now
    up there almost as routine and sacrosanct as giving the State of the
    Union Address, lighting the White House Christmas tree, or pardoning the
    Thanksgiving turkey. For the sixth time in 7 years, I presented the
    Commander in Chief's Trophy to the Air Force Academy Falcons.
        Many believe it was the best team in the Academy's history, with a
    12-1 record, a top-10 ranking, victory in the conference, in the bowl
    game, over Army and Navy. In the last two seasons, second in the Nation
    in scoring defense to Ohio State, where the linebackers are the size of
    C-130's. [Laughter] And the team did all this in spite of an incredibly
    sportsman-like decision never to deploy a ``stealth'' running back or
    throw a single laser-guided pass. I appreciate that, and I congratulate
    you.
        Ladies and gentlemen, the class of 1999 represents and today you
    rededicate yourselves to the same remarkable combination of
    accomplishment, grit, and self-sacrifice our service men and women have
    embodied for more than two centuries now. You can be reminded by that
    just by looking over at Sijan Hall, named for a Medal of Honor winner
    tortured and killed in Vietnam, to be reminded of the finest example of
    courage and honor in terrible and terrifying circumstances.
        Those qualities are on display today when Air Force men and women
    serve at home and abroad, from Iraq to Korea, to helping hurricane
    victims in Central America, and now in the historic effort to reverse
    the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and restore the people of that shattered
    land to their homes.
        A month ago I went to our airbases at Spangdahlem and Ramstein,
    Germany, to visit the pilots and support crews who are flying our
    missions over Kosovo and the young people in uniform bringing aid to the
    refugees there. I wish every American could have been with me to see the
    courage, the intensity, the skill it takes for our pilots to fly these
    aircraft at high speeds through enemy defenses, putting ordinance on
    target, putting their own lives in greater danger to avoid civilian
    casualties on the ground, coordinating with aircrews from more than a
    dozen other countries, then coming home to debrief, rest, and do it all
    over again.

    [[Page 868]]

        These young Americans know they're doing the right thing. They're
    determined to prevail. It is impossible to see them and talk to them and
    come away with the slightest iota of cynicism about our Nation and our
    role and responsibilities in the world.
        We are joined today here by two of these brave American airmen. I
    cannot mention their names, under our procedures, for they are still
    flying missions in Kosovo. But the first is a pilot of a B-2 bomber who
    graduated from the Academy in 1986 and who has flown his craft from
    Whiteman Air Force Base on strike missions over heavily defended areas
    in Serbia. The second graduated from the Academy in 1980 and now flies a
    C-130, ferrying lifesaving supplies to the refugees fleeing Kosovo. I
    would like to ask them to stand and ask you to recognize them for their
    courage and for their service. [Applause] I am very proud of them and
    very proud of you for following in their tradition.
        America became a great nation not just because our land was generous
    to those who settled it, not just because our forebears who came here
    were clever and worked hard, but also because whenever our beliefs and
    ideals have been threatened, Americans have always stepped forward to
    defend them.
        Kosovo is a small province in a small country, but it's a big test
    of what we believe in and stand for: our commitment to leave to our
    children a world where people are not uprooted and slaughtered en masse
    because of their racial or ethnic heritage or their religious faith; our
    fundamental interest in building a lasting peace in an undivided, free
    Europe so that young Americans never have to go there again to fight and
    perish in large numbers; our interest in preserving our Alliance for
    freedom and peace with our 19 NATO Allies.
        There are also differences, however, between this conflict and those
    we have waged in the past. Kosovo is a communications age conflict, as
    General Oelstrom and I were just discussing. It is waged at a time when
    footage of airstrikes is beamed to homes across the world even before
    our pilots have returned to their bases, a time when every accidental
    civilian casualty is highlighted, but also when the victims of terrible
    war crimes can give testimony to the whole world within days of those
    crimes being committed.
        In World War II, Americans knew they were fighting to end a great
    horror. But what news we had then about Nazi atrocities came to us
    delayed and piecemeal from the few refugees and couriers who managed to
    escape occupied Europe. It was only in victory, when our soldiers
    liberated the concentration camps, that Americans truly saw the face of
    the evil we had defeated.
        Today, our pilots over Kosovo see the smoke of burning villages
    beneath them, the tanks and artillery that set them ablaze. When they
    turn to base, they watch the news; they see the faces of the fleeing
    refugees marching so many miles over mountains with only the belongings
    they can carry on their backs, pushing their elderly along in
    wheelbarrows. They hear the voices of victims telling stories of young
    men singled out and shot along the road, young women raped, and children
    torn from their parents. They also hear the voices of those who say all
    is not lost because the nations of NATO are with us and will not let us
    down.
        Our service men and women can see today what we are fighting against
    and what we are fighting for. So can the American people and the entire
    world.
        Now, Mr. Milosevic has been indicted
    by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal, the first time a sitting leader of a
    nation has been held responsible by an international body for ordering
    war crimes and crimes against humanity.
        There are still some who assert that our bombing is somehow
    responsible for the atrocities his forces
    have committed against the Kosovar people. That reminds me of the old
    story of the young boy who came running home to his mother with a bloody
    nose. When his mother asked him what happened, he replied, ``It all
    started when the other kid hit me back.'' [Laughter]
        We know that by the time our airstrikes began, the Serb campaign of
    executions and expulsions had already started. In fact, Mr.
    Milosevic has been indicted, in part, for
    a massacre that took place in January. Tens of thousands of refugees
    already had been pushed from their homes in carefully pre-planned
    attacks. Serbian forces were already positioned for the offensive we
    have seen unfold.
        Mr. Milosevic already had unleashed
    in Kosovo the same paramilitary warlords who spent 4 years ethnically
    cleansing Bosnia and Croatia, where 2\1/2\ million people were driven
    from their homes and a quarter million were killed before NATO bombing
    and the resistance

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    of Bosnians and Croatians brought us to the Dayton peace agreement.
        Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was not a response to bombing. It is the
    10-year method of Mr. Milosevic's
    madness. Had we done nothing, the tragedy would have been permanent,
    accepted, and in effect, condoned by the world community.
        Now, Mr. Milosevic had 40,000 troops
    and nearly 300 tanks in and around Kosovo before he rejected the peace
    agreement the Kosovars accepted. He could not be prevented, therefore,
    from driving the Kosovars from their land. But he can be prevented from
    keeping them out of their land. His 10-year cleansing campaign will end
    once and for all.
        This time the world did not wait, as we did in Bosnia, for 4 more
    years of fruitless appeals to reason in the face of evil. We have acted
    quickly to end this horror, and that is exactly what we will do.
        Let me be clear about why we have done this and how we intend to
    meet our goals. As members of the United States Air Force, the members
    of this class especially are entitled to know.
        Our reasons are both moral and strategic. There is a moral
    imperative because what we're facing in Kosovo is not just ethnic and
    religious hatred, discrimination and conflict, which are, unfortunately,
    too abundant in this world. America and NATO's military power cannot be
    deployed just because people don't like each other or even because they
    fight each other.
        What is going on in Kosovo is something much worse and, thankfully,
    more rare: an effort by a political leader to systematically destroy or displace an entire
    people because of their ethnicity and their religious faith; an effort
    to erase the culture and history and presence of a people from their
    land. Where we have the ability to do so, we as a nation and our
    democratic allies must take a stand against this. We do have the ability
    to do so at NATO's doorstep in Europe.
        But there is also a clear strategic imperative. Since I took office,
    I've worked hard to build for you and your future a Europe that, for the
    first time in history, is undivided, democratic, and at peace. Because
    if there is anything we have learned from the bloody 20th century with
    its two World Wars, it is that peace and stability in Europe is vital to
    our own security and freedom.
        Now, think what the United States has helped to accomplish in the
    last few years. Many thought the NATO Alliance would wither and die
    after the cold war. But it is strong and vital, with new partnerships
    with 25 nations, stretching all the way from the Baltic Sea to central
    Asia. Three new democracies, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic,
    which spent the last half century struggling for their own freedom in
    the cold war, are now our NATO Allies defending the freedom of
    Europeans.
        We've helped Russia deal with the difficult challenges it faces on
    the road to democracy and stability, the road to being a part of and a
    partner in Europe. We also helped immeasurably to end the war in Bosnia,
    and now we're keeping the peace there with a coalition that unites every
    former adversary in all of European history: France and Germany, Germany
    and Poland, Poland and Russia, Russia and the United States.
        We have made clear that NATO membership will remain open to other
    responsible democracies from central and southeastern Europe. And
    through our efforts in the Balkans, we have also helped to bridge the
    gulf between Europe and the Islamic world, the source of so much trouble
    over the last millennium, and the source of troubling tensions still
    today.
        The killing Mr. Milosevic unleashed
    in the former Yugoslavia a decade ago is now the last major barrier to a
    Europe whole, free, and at peace, the last gasp of an aggressive
    nationalism that has shattered the lives of so many Europeans in this
    century and drawn so many Americans to fight there in wars. It threatens
    all the progress made in Europe since the end of the cold war.
        Imagine what would have happened had we let the violence in Kosovo
    escalate without taking a stand. NATO would have been discredited for
    doing nothing about ethnic conflict and cleansing on its doorstep. The
    refugees would have ended up a people without any prospect of going
    home--overwhelming, perhaps even destabilizing the new, fragile
    democracies of southeastern Europe with their permanent presence and
    bitter grievances. Tensions with Russia over the Balkans would not have
    disappeared; they would have increased. And the fighting might very well
    have spread to other countries.
        Letting Mr. Milosevic succeed would
    have sent a clear message to other unscrupulous leaders: If you have
    ethnic or religious problems,

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    just kill the minorities or drive them out. No one will stop you; you
    won't pay a significant price. In a way, the world will make your job
    easier by feeding the refugees and finding them permanent homes without
    pressing for their return.
        Slobodan Milosevic would then have
    become a model of success for 21st century rulers trying to obliterate
    multiethnic societies, instead of the symbol of the bankrupt policies
    based on hate that we want to confine to the dustbin of history.
        Our strategy for reversing Mr. Milosevic's ethnic cleansing begins with clarity about the goals
    we are fighting to achieve. The refugees must be able to go home with
    security and self-government. For that to happen, Serbian forces must
    leave Kosovo. An international security force with NATO at its core must
    deploy to protect all the people of Kosovo, including the Serb minority
    there. Our diplomatic effort supports these goals. They will continue to
    make clear to Mr. Milosevic exactly what he must do to end the conflict.
    And our military campaign will continue until it does.
        We cannot grow weary of this campaign because Mr.
    Milosevic didn't capitulate when the
    first bombs fell. We cannot abandon a just cause because an adversary
    holds out for more than a few news cycles. I reject that. Our Allies
    reject that. I know the vast majority of Americans reject that. We must
    be willing to pay the price of time and effort to reverse the course of
    ethnic cleansing. The benefits will be far greater and last much longer
    than the costs.
        And day by day, night by night, our air campaign is succeeding. The
    pilots are doing a magnificent job. Mr. Milosevic is systematically losing his armed forces. NATO
    airstrikes are destroying ever-increasing numbers of tanks, armored
    vehicles, and artillery. We have eliminated 80 percent of Serbia's
    modern fighters, most of its ability to produce ammunition, all its
    capacity to refine fuel, much of the rest of its military economy.
        Mr. Milosevic, in turn, has not
    eliminated the insurgent Kosovar Liberation Army. Their ranks are
    growing, and the longer he holds out, the more vulnerable he leaves his
    forces to the KLA's growing attacks.
        Meanwhile, there are growing signs of disaffection in Serbia:
    soldiers abandoning their posts, civilians protesting, young men
    avoiding conscription, prominent citizens calling on
    Milosevic to accept NATO's conditions.
    There is a clear choice before the Serbian leader. He can cut his losses
    now and accept the basic requirements of a just peace, or he can
    continue to force military failure and economic ruin on his people. In
    the end, the outcome will be the same.
        This week we are deploying an additional 68 F-16's and F-15's to
    join the mission. We now have planes flying at all hours from every
    direction, from bases in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, the United
    States, and from carriers at sea. If we have the patience and
    determination to match the courage and skill of our men and women in
    uniform, we will achieve our goals.
        A second reason we have pursued this strategy is that it enables us
    to pursue our goal in a way that preserves the unity of NATO's 19
    democracies. We must maintain the solidarity between the United States,
    Canada, and Europe that has been vital to our past and is vital to our
    future security. And I am confident we will.
        A third important reason is to meet our goals in a way that
    strengthens, not weakens, our fundamental interest in a long-term
    positive relationship with Russia. Russia is now working with us on a
    solution that meets our requirements. We hope Russian troops will
    participate in the force that keeps the peace in Kosovo, just as they
    have done so well in our joint efforts in Bosnia.
        A fourth element is to prepare now for the difficult task of
    returning refugees to Kosovo and implementing the peace there. Yesterday
    NATO approved the outlines of KFOR, the force that will deploy to Kosovo
    once the conditions are met. Approximately 50,000 troops will take part
    in this effort. Our European allies will provide the vast bulk of them,
    but America will also contribute, and we should.
        Today I am announcing my decision to provide about 7,000 of these
    troops for Kosovo, about 15 percent of the total force. The leading
    elements and headquarters are already in Albania and Macedonia, ready to
    deploy to Kosovo within a few hours to oversee the safe return of the
    refugees. The additional NATO forces required are beginning to move to
    the region.
        Finally, this strategy will enable us to put in place a plan for
    lasting peace and stability in the Balkans, when Mr.
    Milosevic is stopped and the ethnic
    cleansing is reversed. For that to happen, the European Union and the
    United

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    States must be farsighted. We must do for southeastern Europe what we
    did for Western Europe after World War II, for central Europe, for
    Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and others after the cold war. We
    must give them a positive path to a prosperous, shared future, a
    unifying magnet more powerful than the pull of hatred and destruction
    which threatens to tear them apart.
        It is simply not true, as some have alleged, that the Balkan region
    has always been and always will be torn apart by ethnic and religious
    strife and violence, that they are somehow genetically predisposed to
    that. It isn't true. History does not support that conclusion. And
    today, the efforts of Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia to resolve their
    minority problems peacefully show that if leaders are responsible and if
    people have a positive future to work for, then they can live together
    and resolve their differences.
        Europe and the United States can and should support efforts to
    increase economic growth, trade, and investment, to strengthen
    democratic governments and institutions, to help the nations of the
    region join the European Union and NATO. We should also include Serbia
    in this effort if--but only if--it practices democracy, respects human
    rights, and has leaders who uphold the basic standards of human conduct.
        So I say again, why are we in Kosovo? Because we have a moral
    responsibility to oppose crimes against humanity and mass ethnic and
    religious killing and cleansing where we can. Because we have a security
    responsibility to prevent a wider war in Europe, which we know from our
    two World Wars would eventually draw America in at far greater cost in
    lives, time, and treasure.
        Why are we pursuing this particular strategy of massive bombing and
    diplomacy? Because it gives us the best chance of achieving all our
    objectives in Kosovo: first, the return of Kosovars with security and
    self-government, withdrawal of Serb forces, and the deployment of the
    international security force with NATO at its core; second, to maintain
    Allied unity; third, to continue cooperation with Russia; fourth, to
    maximize our capacity after the conflict is over to build a progressive,
    democratic, multiethnic Balkans region that will contribute to our
    economic growth as a world society and our security progress, not be a
    constant drain on our economy and a constant threat to our security.
        Why have we refused to close other doors and other options? Because
    we are determined to prevail. We are in Kosovo for the same reason you
    are here. Some things are worth fighting for: a future with the great
    alliance between the United States and Europe standing strong; a future
    not dominated by massive killing of innocent civilians because of the
    ethnic or racial heritage they were born with, or the way they worship
    God; a future in which leaders cannot keep, gain or increase their power
    by teaching their young people to hate or kill others simply because of
    their faith or heritage; a future in which young Americans who set out
    from this academy to serve our country will not have to fight in yet
    another major European conflict.
        That is the future we want you to have. That is the future we want
    your children to inherit. I thank you for your willingness to contribute
    to that future. I thank you for your dedication to your country.
        Good luck to you all, and Godspeed.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:28 a.m. in Falcon Stadium at the United
    States Air Force Academy. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. Tad J.
    Oelstrom, USAF, Superintendent, United States Air Force Academy (USAFA),
    and his wife, Sandra; Gen. Michael E. Ryan, USAF, Air Force Chief of
    Staff, and his wife, Jane; Gen. Richard B. Myers, USAF, Commander in
    Chief, U.S. Space Command, and his wife, Mary Jo; Brig. Gen. Stephen R.
    Lorenz, USAF, Commandant of Cadets, USAFA, and his wife, Leslie; Brig.
    Gen. David A. Wagie, USAF, Dean of the Faculty, USAFA, and his wife,
    Sue; Col. Henry B. Wilbourne, USAF, Command Chaplain, USAFA; Cadet Chief
    Master Sergeant Jon R. Friedman, USAF, Cadet Wing Superintendent, USAFA;
    F. Whitten Peters, Acting Secretary of the Air Force and nominee to be
    Secretary of the Air Force; and President Slobodan Milosevic of the
    Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The President
    also referred to the Kosovo International Security Force (KFOR).