[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[July 5, 2000]
[Pages 1385-1386]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Military Salute Week Dinner in New York City
July 5, 2000

    Please be seated. Let me say, first of all, I'm delighted to be here 
at Boomer Esiason's podium. [Laughter] When 
he was up here talking about being President, it was all I could do to 
avoid screaming, ``Throw long, throw long!'' [Laughter]
    I want to also thank my good friend Lieutenant General Marty 
Steele, who is the president of the 
Intrepid Museum. It's a big step forward for him. He, like me, he was 
born and grew up in Arkansas, and he never saw a ship this big in his 
life until he was too old to figure out how to run one. [Laughter] So I 
appreciate your broadening his experience in life.
    I'd like to thank the Members of Congress who are here, and 
General and Mrs. Shelton, I thank you for being here. And to all the executives 
who have worked so hard with Tony and the 
Fisher family to advance the cause of the Intrepid Museum and 
Foundation, I thank you.
    I'd like to say a special word of thanks to Dick Grasso. He is the only person in New York who 
would give me any credit for the growth of the stock market in this last 
7 years. [Laughter] There's ol' Mac saying he's wrong about that. It 
just shows you how confident Mr. Grasso is in his own leadership. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say I am delighted to be here. Hillary and I were here 
yesterday with Chelsea for the tall ships and the review of the military 
ships. It was a magnificent day. I know many of you were here, and it's 
a Fourth of July that I think all of us who were here will never, ever 
forget.
    We are now at a place which, in some sense, makes every day the 
Fourth of July, for the Intrepid is a monument to the heroism of our 
Armed Forces. It is a place where young people come to learn about our 
history and our values and exactly how we went about defending them. It 
is a testament to the extraordinary generosity and vision of Zachary and 
Elizabeth Fisher.
    We all miss Zach tonight. I will never forget his devotion to our 
troops and to their families. His pride in them and their service and 
his sensibility to their hardship led him and Elizabeth to reach out to them in ways that were profoundly 
moving and genuinely life-changing for many of them. He gave a college 
scholarship or a place to stay near a hospitalized loved one or a 
program for a disabled child over and over and over again.
    By their acts of generosity, the Fishers made our Armed Forces 
stronger, and therefore, they made our Nation stronger. And I hope they 
made all the rest of us more sensitive to the sacrifices of military 
service and the continuing needs of our military families. All Americans 
owe them a debt of gratitude.
    Now the Fisher family and those of you who support their work carry 
on this important legacy, a legacy embodied by this magnificent ship. 
But we all must carry on their legacy as citizens. Our remarkable 
economic prosperity, to which Mr. Grasso 
referred, has made this not only a time of opportunity but a time of 
profound responsibility as well.
    I have been saying over and over again like a broken record--so much 
that even my fans are getting tired of it--but I'm going to say one more 
time tonight, how a nation handles its prosperity is as stern a test of 
its judgment, its values, and its character as how a nation handles 
adversity, and in some ways, it is more difficult. There's not a person 
in this audience tonight, over the age of 30 anyway, who can't remember 
at least one time in your life when you made a serious mistake, not 
because things were so bad but because things were so good you thought 
there was no penalty to the failure to concentrate. And so it is that 
our Nation today is confronted with the chance of a lifetime to shape 
the future of our dreams for our children and, with wise leadership, to 
shape the first several decades of the 21st century world, because of 
the gift of our prosperity.
    A big part of that will depend upon whether we're prepared to give 
wise and generous leadership to the rest of the world for peace and 
freedom, for security and prosperity. And that will depend in no small 
measure on whether we do the right things in meeting the military 
challenges of the 21st century.
    The Congress this year is passing a defense budget that I believe 
will meet those challenges--to modernize our forces, to strengthen our 
readiness, to give our men and women in uniform the training they need, 
the equipment they need, and even more than we have done

[[Page 1386]]

in the past to give them the quality of life they deserve. A strong 
defense, no less than in the past, is still a force for peace and 
stability in the world.
    I also hope the Congress will support a strong diplomacy as a part 
of that defense. Congress recently approved our package for aid to 
Colombia, which I know has been somewhat controversial, but I believe it 
is profoundly important. Colombia is the oldest democracy in all Latin 
America. About a third of her land today is besieged by drug traffickers 
and guerrillas. There are people there every day who put on military 
uniforms and police uniforms and put their lives at risk simply by doing 
their jobs, in a way that is almost inconceivable for an American to 
imagine in this year. And so we are going to help them, and in so doing, 
we hope they'll keep more drugs out of the bodies of our own children.
    I hope we will continue to support peace in the Balkans. Our 
military won a war in Kosovo and ended another one in Bosnia and stood 
up for the proposition that people in Europe in the 21st century will 
not be murdered because of their religion or their ethnic background. We 
saw it happen before--it led to the Holocaust in World War II--and the 
United States will not let it happen again in this new century.
    We are doing our best to free the poorest countries of the world 
from the burdens of crushing debt and disease, to support peacekeeping 
in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to support peace from Northern Ireland to 
the Middle East.
    I announced today that early next week the peace talks will resume 
between the Israelis and the Palestinians in Washington with the Prime 
Minister and Chairman Arafat. I ask for your prayers and support for these brave 
people as they come here to try to end an old conflict. But if they are 
willing to make a sacrifice for peace, then the United States must lead 
the way in helping to make the investments necessary to ensure that the 
peace has a positive impact in ordinary people's lives.
    The challenge of securing peace did not go away with the end of the 
cold war; it only became more complex. It still requires our leadership, 
not just from the White House and from Congress and our military 
leadership but also from our scholars, our scientists, our engineers, 
our business leaders, and from ordinary citizens.
    The reason there was a man like Zach Fisher is that America is a 
place of shining opportunity. The reason that our military families 
needed his help is that we need so many people to serve, and they have 
needs that, even with all the generosity of Congress, we have not fully 
met while we continue to try to lead the world toward peace and to avoid 
war. His example, if nothing else, should convince every American that 
we should support our military, and even more important, we should 
support our mission, because when citizens do that, in ways large and 
small, America is stronger, and the world is a safer and more decent 
place.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:10 p.m. in Technologies Hall at the 
Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. In his remarks, he referred to sports 
announcer and former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason, who was the master 
of ceremonies for the program; Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum President 
and Chief Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Martin R. Steele, USMC (Ret.); 
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton, USA, and his wife, 
Carolyn; Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum founder Zachary Fisher's nephew 
Anthony Fisher and widow, Elizabeth Fisher; New York Stock Exchange 
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Grasso, who introduced the 
President; Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel; and Chairman Yasser 
Arafat of the Palestinian Authority.