[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 24 (Monday, June 21, 1999)]
[Pages 1091-1097]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Jim Lehrer of the PBS ``NewsHour''

June 11, 1999

Balkan Peace Process

    Mr. Lehrer. And now to President 
Clinton. Mr. President, welcome.
    The President. Thank you, Jim. I'm glad to be here.
    Mr. Lehrer. Is the peace process, the withdrawal of the Serb troops 
and the other matters, proceeding on schedule today?
    The President. So far it's proceeding in an orderly way. The Serb 
forces are withdrawing. They're withdrawing in a fashion that appears to 
our commanders to be consistent with their commitment to be gone in the 
11-day time period. And General Jackson is readying our forces to 
deploy.
    Mr. Lehrer. When will that happen, do you think? First, NATO 
troops--when will they go in now?
    The President. I think it will be quite soon. It's his decision, and 
they are--I think there are a number of factors that are going

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into his thinking, but they'll have to be in there pretty soon because 
they're determined not to let some big vacuum develop. But they have a 
lot of plans to make, and they're mapping them, starting with a strategy 
for demining, and then dealing with the refugees that are brought back 
and those that want to come back on their own. And they're working that. 
But I would expect it would be quite soon.

Russian Troops

    Mr. Lehrer. What's your reading of this Russian troop movement today 
that caused such a turmoil? The Russian troops came from Bosnia into 
Serbia, and there was some idea that they may go into Kosovo. What's 
going on?
    The President. Well, the last we heard was, I think, when Mr. Ivanov 
told Secretary Albright that they were just pre-positioning, but that 
they recognized that we had to work out the arrangements for their 
participation. And even as we speak, there are discussions going on 
about that.
    Mr. Lehrer. Do you foresee a major problem developing over this?
    The President. I don't really think so, but there are some factors I 
would imagine they'll have to work through. And I haven't received a 
detailed briefing. But, for example, we're going to have almost 30 
countries this time in this operation, and I would expect that in each 
one of the zones of responsibility, the areas of responsibility, there 
will be multiple countries. The Russians, I think, would like to play a 
major role, but they understand we have to have unity of command under 
General Jackson. That's the sine qua non of the whole thing.
    But we also know in every zone we have to have two things: First of 
all, there has to be the fact and the feeling of safety and security so 
the Kosovars will go home; secondly, in those sectors where there are 
Serbs, they have to know that we're committed to protecting them, too. 
And a lot of thought has been given to how that might best be done and 
how the Russians can make the strongest contribution there. So our 
commanders, their people, they're talking about it. They're talking it 
through, and I expect they'll resolve it.

Possible Scenarios in the Balkans

    Mr. Lehrer. Mr. President, were you surprised that Milosevic hung in 
there as long as he did, for 78 days?
    The President. Not after the beginning. When we started this, I 
thought there would be one of three possible scenarios. First of all, I 
absolutely reject the theory that some people have advanced that what he 
did was worse than he would have done if we hadn't bombed as early as we 
did. I just simply don't believe that. He had this plan laid out; he was 
going to carry it into effect last October. He didn't do it because of 
the threat of bombing.
    So what I knew was that if he decided to behave as he had in Bosnia, 
that there would be a day or two of bombing; then we'd make this 
agreement that we made today, or a couple of days ago, and it would be 
over, but that there was a strong chance that it would not, because in 
the mind of Mr. Milosevic there was a big difference between Bosnia and 
Kosovo. Bosnia was something that he wanted badly that he didn't have; 
Kosovo was something that he had that he wanted to take absolute control 
of by running people out of.
    So once he decided to take the bombing, I was not surprised that he 
took it for quite a long while, because he kept looking for ways to 
break the unity of NATO. He kept looking for ways to turn someone 
against what we were doing.
    Of course, the third scenario was that the bombing never worked, and 
we had to take even more aggressive measures. But I always thought there 
was a much better than 50-50 chance that this bombing campaign would 
work. And I am gratified that it has achieved our objectives.

Decision on Airstrikes

    Mr. Lehrer. What was it, or who was it, that convinced you that 
bombing alone would work?
    The President. Well, you know, when I talked to the American people 
about this in the beginning, I made it clear that there was no way that 
any bombing campaign could literally physically extract every Serbian 
soldier and paramilitary operative and put them back out of Kosovo. But 
I knew that our people had made dramatic progress in the last few

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years, even since Desert Storm, in precision-guided weapons and in the 
capacity of our planes to deliver them and to avoid even fairly 
sophisticated anti-aircraft operations. And I just felt that if we 
worked at it and we could hold the coalition together, that we'd be able 
to do enough damage that we could do it. And Secretary Cohen and General 
Shelton felt there was a better than 50-50 chance we could do it; Mr. 
Berger did.
    Mr. Lehrer. Better than 50-50 was as good----
    The President. Yes--Secretary Albright did. And I just--I've been 
dealing with Mr. Milosevic now a long time, you know, more than 6 years, 
and I think I have some understanding of the politics and the 
environment in Serbia. And I just felt if we kept pounding away that we 
could raise the price to a point where it would no longer make any sense 
for him to go on and where he could no longer maintain his position if 
he did.
    And I regret that he required his people to go through what they 
have gone through, to lower their incomes as much as they've been 
lowered and to erode their quality of life as much as it's been eroded 
and even to have the civilian casualties which have been sustained, 
although they're far, far less than they were in Desert Storm after the 
bombing, for example. Still, I hate it. But what we did miraculously 
resulted in no combat air losses to our people--we did lose two fine 
Army airmen in training--and minimized the losses to their people, to 
their civilians. But it did a terrible amount of damage. And finally, 
they couldn't go on, it didn't make any sense.
    Mr. Lehrer. Mr. President, as I'm sure you're aware, the fact of no 
casualties by NATO has been used as a criticism of the whole approach 
here, that: yes, ethnic cleansing was bad in Kosovo; yes, we needed to 
do something; but it wasn't worth risking any American lives to do so.
    The President. Well, now, first of all, I never said that--that it 
wasn't worth risking any lives. We did risk lives. And I think the 
American people should know that. Our pilots, particularly the pilots in 
our A-10's, they were quite frequently fired upon by people holding 
these shoulder missiles, and they would deliberately position themselves 
in populated areas where there were civilians living. And over and over 
again, our pilots risked their lives by avoiding firing back, when they 
could easily have taken those people out who were firing at them. But to 
do so would have killed civilians. So there was risk to the lives. I 
remind you, we lost two airplanes and had to go in there and rescue two 
pilots. So that's not true.
    Secondly, if we had put a ground force in for an invasion, it still 
wouldn't be done today. That is, all this bombing we did, we would have 
had to do anyway. Let me take you back to Operation Desert Storm, where 
we deployed a half-million people in the theater, took, as I remember, 
4\1/2\ or 5 months to do it, bombed for 44 days there, but because of 
the terrain and the weather, they dropped more ordnance in 44 days than 
we did in our 79-day campaign.
    So we would have had to do everything we have done to do this. I 
told the American people at the time that we could not have mounted and 
executed an invasion that would have stopped this ethnic cleansing, 
because at the time the Rambouillet talks broke down, when the Kosovars 
accepted it and the Serbs didn't, keep in mind, he already had 40,000 
troops in and around Kosovo, and nearly 300 tanks. So no force--there 
was no way to mobilize and implant a force quick enough to turn it back.
    And somehow the suggestion that our moral position would have been 
improved if only a few more Americans had died, I think is wrong. 
Believe me, fewer Serbs died than would die if we had had to invade. We 
would have had to deploy a force of about 200,000. We would have put 
them at great risk just getting them into the country. That was actually 
the biggest risk. I don't think the combat, once in the country, was 
nearly as big a risk as the problems of deploying into Kosovo.
    But I just don't accept that. I don't think that--we moved 
aggressively. We were criticized by some people in the Congress and 
elsewhere for starting the bombing too soon. And those who say that we 
should have used ground forces, even if we had announced on day one we 
were going to use ground forces, it would have taken as long as this 
bombing campaign went on to deploy them, probably longer.

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Ground Forces

    Mr. Lehrer. What about just the threat of ground forces? You were 
criticized--you and your fellow NATO leaders were criticized for taking 
it off the table at the very beginning, telling Milosevic all he had to 
do was hunker down.
    The President. I was afraid that I had done that when I said to the 
American people that I did not intend to use ground forces. And shortly 
thereafter in an interview, I made it clear that I did not do that. And 
then repeatedly I said that, and I said I thought we ought to be 
planning for ground forces.
    So I think the differences, for example, between the British 
position and ours and others were somewhat overstated, because we had 
done quite a lot of planning for a ground force, and we had made it 
explicit that we weren't taking the option off the table. And Chancellor 
Schroeder from Germany was reported as having done so. When I talked to 
him and examined the German text of what he'd said, it was obvious that 
there had been a little bit overstatement there.
    So I don't think--I think that the NATO--my own view is if this had 
not worked, NATO would have put ground forces in there and that we were 
determined not to lose this thing, that we were determined to reverse 
the ethnic cleansing. I think the Europeans were especially sensitive, 
as I was, to the fact that it took 4 years to mobilize an action against 
Bosnia and that there were all kinds of arguments used about it, 
including the fact that U.N. peacekeepers were there, diplomacy was 
going on, any action would have upset all that, and they didn't want 
that to happen this time.
    So the truth is that this action against ethnic cleansing was hugely 
more rapid and more responsive than what was done in Bosnia. And that's 
why there won't be nearly as many lost lives.

President's Moral Authority

    Mr. Lehrer. On a more personal basis, Mr. President, some suggest 
when this operation began that the Lewinsky impeachment matter had 
weakened your moral authority to lead the country in a difficult 
situation like this. Were they wrong?
    The President. Oh, I think so. I think the American people have been 
very good to me, and my family's been very good to me. And we went 
through a process which resulted in a decision by the public and by the 
Congress that I should serve. No one--no thinking American wants to have 
a President of either party and any philosophy who cannot fully serve 
and does not fully do his job or her job. And so I did what I was hired 
to do by the American people. And I believe, as strongly as I can say, 
it was the right thing to do. It was the moral thing to do. And our 
children will have a better world because we have now stood against 
ethnic cleansing, and not only that, in this case, we're going to be 
able to reverse it and let those people go home.

Congressional Support for Airstrikes

    Mr. Lehrer. What is your analysis of why, for instance, the 
overwhelming majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives 
did not vote to support this air war in the beginning?
    The President. Oh, I don't know. I prefer to be grateful for those 
who did support it. And quite a number did. And we had very good 
support, a minority of Republicans in the Senate, but a substantial 
number supported us in a very vocal and effective way and were prepared 
to go even further to ground forces, as you know.
    So I'm grateful for the support that we did have. A lot of very 
serious, thoughtful Republicans said they thought we were doing the 
right thing. Speaker Hastert voted with us, and I would remind you that 
we got a very good vote early on, with the help of the Speaker, for the 
deployment of American forces in a peacekeeping operation. And then they 
voted to support the troops and to fund the air war. So I'm grateful for 
that, and I leave it to others to interpret why they did what they did.

Criticism of President

    Mr. Lehrer. Senator Hagel, Republican from Nebraska, who voted for--
--
    The President. He did.
    Mr. Lehrer. ----when it was in the Senate, was asked why there were 
so many Republicans who were not supporting this, and

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he said it had to do with trust. And he said, quote, ``this President 
has debased the one currency we each have in this business, and that's 
trust, and he'll never get it back,'' end quote. That's what--his 
explanation as to why Congress didn't support you any more than they 
did.
    The President. I think that's pretty self-serving: I'm not going to 
do what's right for my country because I don't like Bill Clinton. You 
know, that's--I think that's pretty self-serving.
    You know, I was gratified when, a few years ago, a historian of the 
Presidency said that I had kept a higher percentage of my commitments to 
the American people than any of the last five Presidents who preceded 
me--an academic man at the time I'd never even met. And so I think that 
that element of the party devoted the better part of 7, 8 years almost--
now 7 years, more than 7 years--to attacking me personally because they 
knew the American people agree with my ideas and the direction in which 
I was taking the country. And on one occasion, much to my eternal 
regret, I gave them a little ammunition. But I have been trustworthy in 
my public obligations to the American people, and I have been 
trustworthy in my dealings with them.
    I have--I don't agree with them, and when I don't, I tell them. But 
you know, we've gotten quite a lot done when they have put aside their 
personal frustration in not owning the White House. The truth is, those 
folks ought to lighten up. They believe they had--they say--a lot of my 
Republican friends, you know, they rail against the entitlement 
programs. They don't like the entitlement programs. But the truth is, 
for a long time they thought the White House was an entitlement program. 
They never thought there would be another Democratic President in their 
lifetime. And they're all gearing up again because they think they're 
entitled to the parking spaces outside here and to the office space and 
all.
    And this job here and this house, it doesn't belong to the 
Republican Party or to the Democratic Party. The American people own 
this place. And we're all just here for a little while. And they ought 
to just relax and realize I'm a temporary tenant and that we're all 
hired hands, and we ought to work for the American people, do our best, 
have the elections, and then let the people make their decision and go 
on again.
    I think--that's what a lot of this is. They were--they've just been 
mad ever since I won because a lot of them really never believed there 
would be another Democrat in their lifetime. And attacking--if you can't 
beat somebody on the ideas and the issues and the philosophy and the 
direction of the country and if the country is doing very well, so you 
just get madder and madder when the country does well. Then all you have 
left is a personal attack and say, ``Oh, I just don't trust the guy.''
    But that's not good for America. And you know, I don't attack them 
personally. I'm not going to get into it. My door is always open; my 
phone is always open; and I'm going to keep working with them in every 
way I can.
    Mr. Lehrer. Since, just in the last 24 hours, since this thing has 
come to this critical concluding point, people who were criticizing this 
action, not just Republicans but pundits and people in foreign policy 
establishment, they're still criticizing you. They--does that surprise 
you?
    The President. Gosh, no. I find that in Washington, in this sort of, 
what Professor Deborah Tannen has called this culture of critique, if I 
make a mistake, people want me to admit that I made a mistake. And I 
have tried to do that. I think it's quite therapeutic. It's hard to do, 
and I had to get hit upside the head to do it. But I did it, and it was 
good for me. But if they turn out to be wrong, they just change the 
subject or just keep insisting that it was, you know, just a fluke.
    I think the most important thing is, were we right to take a stand 
in Kosovo against ethnic cleansing? Were we right to do it more quickly 
that we did in Bosnia? Should we set up--have a principle that guides us 
which says: Okay, in a world where people are fighting all the time over 
racial or ethnic or religious problems, we can't tell everybody they've 
got to get along; we can't stop every fight, like the fight between 
Eritrea and Ethiopia, or the struggles in Chechnya; but where we can, at 
an acceptable cost--that is, without risking nuclear war or some other 
terrible

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thing--we ought to prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians and the 
wholesale uprooting of them because of their race, their ethnic 
background, or the way they worship God?
    I think that's an important principle, myself. I think it's a noble 
thing. I think the United States did a good thing. Now, they may argue 
that I did it--went about it in the wrong way. They may--I've answered 
that, I hope. At least I'm confident that I did the right thing in the 
right way. And that's what--historians can judge that based on the long-
term consequences of this. But I believe what we did was a good and 
decent thing. And I believe that it will give courage to people 
throughout the world, and I think it will give pause to people who might 
do what Mr. Milosevic has done throughout the world.
    I feel awful that we were not equipped and able and on the job to 
stop what happened in Rwanda. And since then, I have done everything I 
could to train this Africa Crisis Response team--military from different 
countries in Africa--so that if that starts again--God forbid--
somewhere, they can move in and stop it.
    I think the world, the freedom-loving nations of the world need to 
be organized to try to stop this sort of thing. I mean, don't you think 
it's interesting that we're on the verge of a new century, and you're 
going to have all these millennial celebrations, and we're all going to 
talk about how 100,000 websites get added to the Internet every day, and 
we're going to unlock the mysteries of the human gene and what a modern, 
rapid world we're going to be living in, and here we are bogged down 
everywhere in the world by the oldest problems of human society: We fear 
people who are different from us; pretty soon we hate them; once we 
start hating them, we dehumanize them; then it's easy to kill them.
    Now, it seems to me if we're going to reap the promise of the 21st 
century, if we don't want to go to Europe or some other place and have a 
bunch of Americans die in a bloody war, where we can nip this stuff in 
the bud, we ought to do it. And that's what I've tried to do. And I 
think it was the right thing to do.

President's Accomplishments

    Mr. Lehrer. As we sit here right now, Mr. President, is this the 
best moment of your Presidency?
    The President. Oh, no, I wouldn't say that. I don't know--you know, 
there's so many things that have happened here at home that have been 
important to me, passing the economic plan, passing the Brady bill and 
the assault weapons ban. So many things have happened internationally, 
the role that I was fortunate to be able to play in the peace process in 
the Middle East and in Ireland. But this could have the biggest long-
term positive consequences if we do it right.
    But frankly, I haven't--sometimes people say, ``Well, do you feel 
vindicated.'' The answer is, no; I think America has been vindicated. I 
think what we stand for has been vindicated. But keep in mind, there 
have been lots of times in the past where people win a conflict and then 
squander the peace. So a lot of our work is still ahead of us. We've got 
to get those folks home. We've got to get those landmines up. We've got 
to work out these details on who's going to be involved in this 
peacekeeping mission. We then have to get this--we've got to organize 
police forces and a civil government for the Kosovars.
    And then the really big thing over the long run--our European 
friends want to take the lead in this, but we ought to help them--we've 
got to get the World Bank and all these other people involved in a 
development plan for the Balkans that involves not just Kosovo but 
Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and, I hope some day, Serbia, if 
they have a government that respects freedom and democracy and human 
rights, so that these people have something pulling them together 
instead of these ancient ethnic troubles pulling them apart.
    Now, if we get all that done, it might be perhaps the most 
satisfying thing because it might prove that people can lay down their 
hatreds of people who are different.
    I, basically, think free people will figure out a way to make the 
most of their lives and work out their problems if they can get the 
rules of engagement right. That's why I gave somewhat of an extended 
answer to

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what you said about the Republicans. Because I think--you know, 
differences are good. Nobody's got the whole truth. But you've got to 
get the rules of engagement right. And I think what we did in Kosovo was 
profoundly important.
    Mr. Lehrer. Mr. President, thank you very much.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview began at approximately 6 p.m. in the Oval Office at 
the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, 
British Royal Army, Commander, Kosovo International Security Force; 
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of Russia; Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of 
Germany; Deborah Tannen, professor, Georgetown University; and President 
Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and 
Montenegro). This item was not received in time for publication in the 
appropriate issue.