[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[November 11, 2000]
[Pages 2523-2525]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
[[Page 2523]]
Remarks at a Veterans Day Ceremony in Arlington, Virginia
November 11, 2000
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you, Secretary
Gober, for your many, many years of
friendship and your service to our country. Thank you, Mr.
Duggins, for the remarks you made today
and your leadership of the Vietnam veterans. General Jackson, Superintendent Metzler, Chaplain Cooke. I think we ought
to give a special applause to Lee Thornton for
being with us all these years and all the work he's done. [Applause]
Thank you so much. Thank you. What a faithful friend to America's
veterans you have been.
I thank our Defense Secretary, Bill Cohen, and his wife, Janet, for
being here. And Secretary Slater, General
McCaffrey, the service Secretaries, other
members of the Cabinet and the administration, and former Cabinet
members who are here, General Myers and
other members of the Joint Chiefs. To the Medal of Honor recipients, the
leaders of our veterans organizations who have been introduced and who
do such a fine job. To the veterans and family members, members of the
Armed Services, my fellow Americans.
I welcome you all to this sacred place as we again pay tribute to
the men and women who have stood at the barricades so that we may enjoy
the blessings of liberty. Here we are, surrounded by the white markers
that measure the last full measure of their devotion.
Many veterans died in now-historic places: the Battle of the
Wilderness, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Vietnam, Kuwait.
Many others fought bravely and, thankfully, returned home to live out
happy, accomplished lives among friends, families, and loved ones. Still
others remind us that even when America is not at war, the men and women
of our military risk and sometimes give their lives for peace.
Three such heroes were interred here just in the past few weeks.
They were members of the United States Ship Cole, working to preserve
peace and stability in a region vital to our interests, their lives
taken on October 12th by a brutal act of terrorism. They are: Hull
Maintenance Technician Second Class Kenneth Clodfelter, Electronics
Technician Chief Petty Officer Richard Costelow, and Signalman Seaman
Cheron Gunn.
Let us say to their families and to all the families who lost their
loved ones on the Cole, we are grateful for the quiet, heroic service of
your loved ones. Now they are in God's care. We mourn their loss, and we
shall not rest until those who carried out this cruel act are held to
account.
We all saw the TV images of the Cole and the massive hole in its
side right at the waterline. But what many Americans still don't know
about is the heroism that took place after the attack. What we couldn't
see was that entire compartments were flooded, hatches blown open,
doorways bent, parts of the top deck buckled. So, in addition to finding
and bringing home the dead and the wounded, the surviving crew had to
save their ship.
They worked around the clock, some in 22-hour shifts, amid smoke,
seawater, and twisted steel, with no respite from the desert heat. They
used their ingenuity to restore the ship's electrical power so they
would no longer have to bail water by hand, bucket by bucket. Some even
slept on the deck because the air below was too foul.
In these incredibly difficult circumstances, one helicopter pilot
from a ship assisting the Cole wrote these words home: ``I wish I had
the power to relay what I have seen,'' he said, ``but words just won't
do it. I do want to tell you the first thing that jumped out at me--the
Stars and Stripes flying. Our flag was more beautiful than words can
describe. I have never been so proud of what I do or of the men and
women I serve with.''
Soon the Cole will be back home in America for repairs, and soon
thereafter, she will be back on the seas, serving America--those Stars
and Stripes still flying. We are greatly honored to be joined here today
by the commander of the Cole--the captain of the Cole, Commander Kirk
Lippold; his executive officer, Lieutenant
Commander Chris Peterschmidt; the Command
Master Chief, James Parlier; and some 20
members of their crew. I was honored to welcome them at the White House
this morning. I would like
[[Page 2524]]
to ask them now to stand and have you welcome them. [Applause]
There are many appropriate ways to honor not just the crew of the
Cole but all the men and women who have defended liberty in our military
service. We honor them first of all, of course, by remembering them and
their accomplishments, as we do here. Later today I will go to the
groundbreaking of the World War II memorial to honor the service and
sacrifice of the greatest generation, those who fought and died to free
the world from tyranny, totalitarianism, and hate. And we will pledge
there never to stop trying to build the world for which they sacrificed
so much.
We also honor our veterans by cherishing with all our hearts the
freedoms they paid such a price to defend. If ever there was a doubt
about the value of citizenship and each individual's exercise of the
freedom of citizenship to vote, this week's election certainly put it to
rest. [Laughter] And if ever there was a question about the strength of
our democratic institutions in the face of healthy and natural political
argument, it has been answered by the measured response of the American
people to these extraordinary events.
We have a Constitution. We have a rule of law. We voted, and now the
system is trying to figure out exactly what we said. [Laughter]
Eventually, they will--the system will do that, according to the
Constitution and laws, and America will be just fine.
We honor Vice President Gore and
Governor Bush. We honor all those who
participated and all those who voted. And I hope they will remind us
that the next time the polls are open, without regard to our party, our
philosophy, we should show up because we certainly do count.
We honor our veterans as well, in Abraham Lincoln's words, by caring
for him who should have borne the battle and for his widow and orphans.
Just a few days ago I proudly signed legislation increasing funding for
the Department of Veterans Affairs by $1.5 billion. These additional
resources will help our Nation's 24 million veterans, serving more
patients, ensuring high quality and timely medical care, improving the
delivery of benefit payments for veterans, increasing compensation for
disabilities, meeting our national shrine commitment to veteran
cemeteries.
We also recently provided a 3.7 across-the-board increase in basic
pay for the members of our Armed Forces; provided military retirees
access to prescription drugs with low out-of-pocket costs; and provided
lifetime health care coverage that will allow military retirees over 65
to receive affordable, high-quality health care across our Nation.
Finally, we honor our veterans by meeting our part of the solemn
compact we have with each and every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, and
coastguardsman, regardless of the conflict in which they fought, that we
will do all in our power to find them and bring them home if they are
captured, missing in action, or fallen on the battlefield.
Today I am proud to announce that we are bringing home another 15
sets of remains, heroes from the Korean war. They are en route right now
from Pyongyang to Hawaii for identification, and we praise God for this
event.
Tomorrow I will begin a trip to Asia that will end in Vietnam, and I
will be the first President to visit that country since 1969. Over the
past decade we have moved, step by step, toward normalized relations
with Vietnam, based on one central priority: gaining the fullest
possible accounting of American prisoners of war and Americans missing
in action in Southeast Asia. Continuing cooperation on these issues is
on the top of my agenda for this trip, even as we open a new chapter in
our relations with Vietnam.
Our Nation has sought to move forward in developing those relations
in a way that both honors those who fought and suffered there and does
right by the missing and their families. We have done so with the
constant involvement and support of Members of Congress who served in
Vietnam, America's Vietnam veterans, and their families.
The result has been tremendous progress, and today, full cooperation
from the Vietnamese in repatriating remains, accounting for missing
Americans, obtaining documents, and conducting over 60 joint field
activities with the Vietnamese to search for our MIA's. As a result of
that increased cooperation, the remains of 283 Americans have been
repatriated since 1993.
On my second day in Vietnam, I will visit a site where Americans and
Vietnamese have been searching for the remains of an American
serviceman. We believe it to be the place where Air Force Captain
Lawrence Evert was downed on November 8, 1967. I am pleased that I will
[[Page 2525]]
be joined at the site by two of Captain Evert's sons, Dan and David. We are honored to have
them and their sisters, Elizabeth and
Tamra, with us here today. We thank them, the
members of the Evert family, for their devotion.
When Captain Evert's plane was shot down 33 years ago, an airman on
another flight heard a voice on a radio transmission calling out, ``I'm
hit hard.'' That hit his loved ones' lives just as hard. Again I say, we
thank them for their sacrifice, and we thank them for joining us here
today. Where are the Everts? Would you ask them to stand, please? There
they are. [Applause] Thank you very much. Bless you.
The presence of these two fine men on our trip will help us all to make it clear, in
Vietnam, that our work is not yet finished and that progress in our
relations depends upon continued cooperation. We will always keep faith
with these families and do our duty to the past, for we must never
forget.
In our national memory, Vietnam was a war. But Vietnam is also a
country--a country emerging from almost 50 years of conflict, upheaval,
and isolation, and turning its face to a very different world, a country
that can succeed in this new global age only if it becomes more
interdependent and open to the world. This is something we should
encourage. We should always remember something a great American Vietnam
veteran and former POW, Pete Peterson, said when he went to Vietnam as
our Ambassador: ``We cannot change the past. What we can change is the
future.''
The future belongs to veterans and their families who deserve all
the support and answers a grateful nation can provide. It belongs to the
thousands of ordinary Vietnamese citizens who have helped them in this
process. It belongs to the Vietnamese-Americans who have come to live
among us, including right here in Arlington, and who now can finally
travel home to reunite with their families. It belongs to all the good
people who have gone to Vietnam to help clear landmines and aid the
victims of flooding. It belongs to the next generation of Vietnamese who
want to live in a normal, prosperous country, and to be free to shape
their destinies and live their faith. It belongs to all those Americans
and Vietnamese who want to build a common future.
On this first Veterans Day of the 21st century, the eighth and last
in which I will have the honor to address you and the people of our
Nation as President in this sacred place, let us resolve never to stop
trying to build that better world for which our veterans have
sacrificed. Let us all draw strength from the long legacy of service.
When history looks back upon the records of our age and our Nation
centuries from now, I believe it will be written that once there was a
great nation of free people who sent their very best young men and women
out to serve on the frontiers of freedom in uniform. They went forth to
defend their Nation and its ideals, giving up the comforts and
conveniences of home. Too many never returned to their families, but
none who served ever sacrificed in vain. They led lives of great
consequence, for they kept the torch of liberty burning in the oldest
democracy on Earth. Each and every one of them were heroes and gave to
every child born thereafter a precious and irreplaceable gift. And their
Nation remained eternally grateful.
Thank you, and God bless America.
Note: The President spoke at 11:45 a.m. in the Amphitheater at Arlington
National Cemetery. In his remarks, he referred to George C. Duggins,
national president, Vietnam Veterans of America; Maj. Gen. James T.
Jackson, USA, Commanding General, Military District of Washington; John
C. (Jack) Metzler, Jr., superintendent, Arlington National Cemetery;
Chaplain Jeni Cooke, Director, Chaplain Service, Department of Veterans
Affairs; Lee Thornton, master of ceremonies; Republican Presidential
candidate Gov. George W. Bush; and Dan Evert, David Evert, Elizabeth
Dempsey, and Tamra Brown, children of missing U.S. serviceman Capt.
Lawrence Evert. A portion of these remarks could not be verified because
the tape was incomplete. The Veterans Day proclamation of November 10 is
listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.