    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 5, 1999]
    [Pages 688-690]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany
    May 5, 1999

        Thank you very much. Secretary Cohen,
    thank you for your remarks and your remarkable leadership. We're glad
    that you and Janet are here with us
    today and there for the men and women of America's military services
    every day.
        Secretary Albright, thank you for
    being able to redeem the lessons of your life story by standing up for
    the freedom of the people in the Balkans.
        To the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton--I was looking at General Shelton standing up
    here--you know, he's about a head taller than I am. And I thought to
    myself, he not only is good; he looks good. He looks like the Chairman
    of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But what I want you to know is, however
    good he looks, he's better than that in the job that he does.
        I thank General Clark for his
    leadership; Ambassador Kornblum; National
    Security Adviser Sandy Berger; our USAID
    Director, Brian Atwood, who is doing so much
    for the humanitarian relief. Brigadier General Scott Van Cleef, thank you. Chief Master Sergeant Daniel
    Keane, thank you for making all of us feel
    so welcome here today.
        I'd like to thank the distinguished German public officials and
    citizens who are here. And I'd like to thank the Spangdahlem oompah band
    and the gospel choir. Thank you. I thank all the men and women of Team
    Eifel and all your family members who are here. I am delighted to see so
    many children here today. And I hope this will be a day they will long
    remember.
        The 52d Air Expeditionary Wing is crucial to our mission in Europe.
    There are so many to thank: the Stingers and Hawks, the Panthers, your
    guests here, the crews of the Flying Knights, all the hundreds of base
    operations and support personnel here, working day after day and now
    night after night. We ask so much of you, and you never let us down.
        Ever since the end of the cold war, this base has been busy with the
    challenges of a new era, training new allies, planning new missions,
    helping people in need like the earthquake victims in Turkey whom the
    52d Civil Engineer Squadron assisted last summer. A few years ago, you
    helped to end the cruel war in Bosnia. And I'm sorry you have to do it
    all over again, but I'm proud of the job you're doing today in Kosovo.
        Earlier this year, some of you in the 22d Fighter Squadron flew
    support for Operation Northern Watch. Since this conflict in Kosovo
    began, we have been depending on you more than ever. It's meant more
    hardship and more hard work for you. Many of your loved ones are right
    now flying out of Italy, and of course, these F-117 stealth fighters and
    their crew are here from Holliman Air Force Base in New Mexico. And
    they're a long way from their families.
        Night after night, crews fly out to Serbia, punching through enemy
    defenses; putting ordinance on target; returning home to debrief, rest,
    and then do it all over again. That takes courage and skill and a lot of
    support that we must never take for granted: refueling in midair;
    evading antiaircraft fire; pinpointing targets; seeking, often at great
    personal risk, to avoid civilian casualties; coordinating with crews
    from other nations; rescuing a downed pilot, as one of your squadrons
    did just a few days ago; and for the base personnel and the loved ones,
    always the anxious waiting for the aircraft to return.
        One thing I have tried to make sure the American people understand
    in the years that I have been President is that your jobs have inherent
    dangers, even when not directly engaged in conflict. As many of you now
    know,

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    just yesterday we lost two brave
    Americans in a helicopter training accident
    in Albania. And today we grieve with their families and pray for them.
        I came here more than anything else to say, on behalf of your fellow
    Americans, we thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Though
    you're far from our shores, you are close to our hearts every day.
        I also would like to thank the people of Germany, who are our allies
    in this cause and who do so very much to make all of you feel at home
    here in this wonderful country.
        I just came from an operations briefing and a tour of the aircraft
    you fly from this base. I want to talk just a little bit about why
    you're flying. And I want all of you, particularly, who have children
    here, who think about the world they will live in the 21st century, to
    think about why you're flying.
        Our mission in Kosovo has nothing to do with trying to acquire
    territory or dominate others. It is about something far more important,
    creating the kind of world where an innocent people are not singled out
    for repression, for expulsion, for destruction just because of their
    religious and ethnic heritage.
        You look around today at the people we have in uniform here. We have
    people from all different racial and ethnic backgrounds. We have people
    from all different religious heritages. And I think America's military
    is stronger because we try to get everybody's talents and put
    everybody's talents to the best possible use--not weaker. And I can tell
    you for sure that our country is stronger when we reach across all the
    lines that divide us and celebrate our differences but say that what
    unites us is more important.
        All the differences that exist among people in the world, especially
    differences of religion, make life more interesting and more
    enlightening when they are limited by an understanding of our common
    humanity. But when people throw away that understanding of our common
    humanity and make differences the only thing that matter and make them
    so important they justify literally dehumanizing other people so that
    their lives, their children, their property, their history, their
    culture, even their faith in God do not matter, that makes life
    unbearable, and it makes civilization impossible.
        And that is what we are fighting against in Kosovo, the same thing
    we fought to stop in Bosnia. And if we want Europe to be undivided and
    democratic and at peace for the first time in history, and if we don't
    want your successors to have to come to this continent and fight another
    bitter war, then we must stand in Kosovo for the elemental principle of
    the common humanity of every breathing, living person in this continent.
        The Alliance in which we are privileged to serve, NATO, is comprised
    of 19 democracies with 780 million people, tied together by a respect
    for human rights and the richness of all people, tied together in a
    conviction that we will build a Europe that is for the first time in
    history undivided, peaceful, and free. Kosovo is an affront to
    everything we stand for.
        Two months ago there were 1.8 million ethnic Albanians living there;
    now nearly 1\1/2\ million have been forced from their homes, their
    villages burned, their men often separated from their families and
    killed, some of them bundled and set on fire, the records of their
    family history and property destroyed.
        The number of people dislodged there in 2 months is equivalent to
    the entire population of the State of Nebraska--kicked out of house and
    home without warning at gunpoint. It is--and those of you who were
    involved in Bosnia will remember this very well--it is the culmination
    of a deliberate, calculated, 10-year campaign by Mr.
    Milosevic to exploit the religious and
    ethnic differences in the former Yugoslavia, to preserve and enhance his
    dictatorial power.
        His so-called ethnic cleansing has
    included concentration camps, murder, rape, the destruction of priceless
    religious, cultural, and historical sites, books, and records. This is
    wrong. It is evil. NATO, after the cold war, said that we would stand
    for the freedom and unity of Europe. This is occurring in the heart of
    Europe on NATO's doorstep. We must repudiate it. We must reverse it. And
    we intend to do that.
        Now, when Mr. Milosevic started this
    campaign against unarmed people in Kosovo, with 40,000 troops and nearly
    300 tanks, he may have thought our Alliance was too divided, our people
    too impatient, our democracies too weak to stand against single-minded
    despotism. Every day, you prove him wrong.
        NATO is now more united. Our objectives are clear and firm;
    Secretary Cohen said them. I want to say them one more time. This is not
    complicated. The Kosovars must be able to go home, safe and with self-
    government. The

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    Serbian troops must be withdrawn, and instead there must be an
    international force with NATO at its core, but hopefully with many other
    nations participating, to keep the peace and protect all the people of
    Kosovo, Albanians and Serbs alike.
        We have no quarrel with the Serb people. I say that again. We do not
    want to be guilty of the sin we are standing and speaking against. We
    have no quarrel with the Serb people. America has many great Serbian-
    Americans. They were our allies in war. Our quarrel is with ethnic
    cleansing and systematic killing and uprooting and the bigotry and death
    brought on by religious hatred. That is what we stand against and what
    we seek to reverse.
        But for that to happen and for those people to go home and have
    self-government, there has to be an international security force with
    NATO at its core that will protect everybody there. We will continue to
    pursue this campaign in which we are now engaged. We will intensify it
    in an unrelenting way until these objectives are met.
        You know, the gentle hills of this region, the Eifel region and the
    Mosel Valley, are peaceful today, thanks in no small measure to 50 years
    of alliance and commitment, of which you are the most recent
    manifestation. But we mustn't forget that here, where we now are, there
    was a landscape of violence for thousands of years, from the time Trier
    served as a Roman capital just south of here. For two millennia,
    Europeans fought each other in the contested terrain around this base--
    two millennia.
        Now, when you drive across these beautiful hills and you see these
    beautiful fields, war is unthinkable here and in most of Europe because
    of what your forebears did. And you can now look forward to a day not
    long from now when, in the Balkans and throughout southeastern Europe,
    human rights are respected and the men and women of Spang are honored
    for doing your part to turn the dream of peace and human rights into an
    everyday reality.
        This base was built in the aftermath of the Second World War, at the
    dawn of the cold war. Because of Allied vigilance, the war we then
    feared would occur never happened. Now, planes are actually flying into
    combat from this base for the very first time to protect the future your
    forebears worked so hard to build.
        I know this is hard. I know too many of these pilots are flying long
    hours with too little rest. I know the stress and anxiety must be
    unbearable. But when you wonder what it is like, next time you're in a
    meeting of American service personnel, look around at your differences,
    at your racial differences, the differences of background, the men and
    women together, the differences of religious faith, and thank God you
    live in a society that honors that, because we are united by things that
    are more important. And look at these little children here and think how
    terrible it would be for them to live in a world where a person could
    gain, increase, and keep political power by teaching young people like
    them to kill other young people because of their religious faith or
    their ethnic background. That has no place in Europe or any other
    civilized society.
        And you have a chance to prove the dreams of the people that fought
    World War II and that held together during the long cold war--to prove
    those dreams can be realized in Europe in your lifetime. And if you do,
    the people who wear the uniform of the United States military 10 or 20
    or 30 years from now will not be called upon to spill their blood in
    another war because of some dictator's mad schemes to dehumanize a whole
    people. That is what you're fighting for, and that is what you will be
    grateful that you did for your children and the children of this
    continent.
        Thank you so much, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:36 p.m. in Hangar One. In his remarks, he
    referred to Janet Langhart Cohen, wife of Secretary of Defense William
    S. Cohen; General Wesley K. Clark, USA, Supreme Allied Commander Europe;
    John C. Kornblum, U.S. Ambassador to Germany; Brig. Gen. Scott Van
    Cleef, USAF, Commander, 52d Air Expeditionary Wing; Chief Master
    Sergeant Daniel M. Keane, USAF, 52d Fighter Wing; Apache helicopter
    pilots CW3 David A. Gibbs, USA, and CW2 Kevin L. Reichert, USA; and
    President Slobodan Milosevic, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and
    Montenegro). The President also referred to the Team Eifel Amateur Radio
    Society.