[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 19 (Monday, May 17, 1999)]
[Pages 833-836]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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, is doing so much for the humanitarian relief. Brigadier 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 oom-pah 
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 Expedition 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--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, just yesterday we lost two brave Americans in a helicopter 
training accident

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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 1.5 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

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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 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 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 Hanger One. In his remarks, he 
referred to Janet Langhart Cohen, wife of Secretary of Defense William 
S. Cohen; General Wesley K. Clark, USA,

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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; and President Slobodan Milosevic, Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The President also referred to the 
Team Eifel Amateur Radio Society. This item was not received in time for 
publication in the appropriate issue. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.