[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 25 (Monday, June 28, 1999)]
[Pages 1171-1173]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Operation Allied Force Troops at Aviano Air Base in Italy

June 22, 1999

    Thank you very much. Well, Captain Davis, you are a pretty tough act 
to follow--[laughter]--and not short of self-confidence, either. That's 
good. [Laughter] I'd like to begin by saying that Hillary and I are 
delighted to be back in Aviano. We have been here several times to thank 
you, but never on an occasion more important than this.
    I thank the Italian Minister of Defense, Mr. Scognamiglio, and his 
government and his Prime Minister, for their leadership, their strength, 
and their support for NATO during this operation. They have been 
terrific, and I thank them.
    I would like to also say a special word of appreciation to our NATO 
Commander, our SACEUR, General Wes Clark, who led this conflict to a 
successful conclusion. Thank you, General Clark.
    I want to thank Colonel Durigon, the Italian Base Commander; 
Ambassador Tom Foglietta, our Ambassador to Italy; Ambassador Lindy 
Boggs, our Ambassador to the Holy See. And, General Leaf, I want to 
thank you for your leadership and your remarkable statement here today.
    We have been on a long trip to Europe. I have been, at various 
times, with not only Hillary and Chelsea but with Secretary of State 
Albright and National Security Adviser Berger, a large number of other 
people, on a long, long week very important to America. But I did not 
want to leave without having the chance to thank those of you who 
protect our freedom every single day, who fought for human dignity and 
won its cause in Kosovo. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
    Since the beginning of Operation Allied Force, I have actually 
traveled to six other bases involved in this effort: in the United 
States--Norfolk, Barksdale, and Whiteman in America; Spangdahlem, 
Ramstein, Ingleheim in Germany. But I wanted to come here to say a 
special word of thanks to the 16th Air Force, the 31st Air Expeditionary 
Wing, because of what you have done in Kosovo, because of the role this 
base played in Bosnia. You have repeatedly put your lives on the line to 
save the lives of innocent civilians and turn back the tide of ethnic 
cleansing. Thank you again for this noble endeavor.
    In 79 days, you did prove that a sustained air campaign under the 
right conditions can stop an army on the ground. The Serb forces have 
withdrawn from Kosovo; 20,000 allied KFOR troops are already in. You 
also stopped a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing and made it possible 
for us to reverse it. Protected by a peacekeeping force that includes 
NATO, Russia, and many other nations, the refugees are going back home. 
They have given new meaning, and you have given new meaning, to the 
motto of the 31st Fighter Wing. Thanks to you, they ``Return With 
Honor.''
    Now that the conflict has been won, it is imperative that we and our 
NATO Allies and the others working with us win the peace. No one thinks 
it will take hold without difficulty. As more and more light is shed on 
those burned villages and even more mass graves than we dared to 
imagine, we become more and more appalled by the dark vision of Mr. 
Milosevic, and more and more certain we were right to stop it.
    We have to win the peace with the same qualities with which you won 
the conflict--with determination and patience, with discipline and 
precision. We learned yesterday, again, that this, too, is a dangerous 
mission as we mourn the loss of two British soldiers who gave their 
lives trying to clear mines out of a house where they were placed solely 
to kill the returning refugees.
    But thanks to you, the worst is already over in Kosovo. And 
tomorrow's dictators in other places will have to now take a harder look 
before they try to destroy or expel an entire people simply because of 
their race or religion.
    General Leaf called you a championship team. Those are words well 
chosen. As he said, over 30,000 sorties flown, about 9,000 from here at 
Aviano, with zero combat fatalities; two planes down, both from here. In 
each case, the pilot recovered, first in 6 hours, the second in an hour 
and a half. That is a truly astonishing record.
    And of course, we remember our two Army airmen who died in a 
training exercise

[[Page 1172]]

in Albania. But I know, and I want the American people to know, that we 
could have had many more losses but for your skill and courage. Because 
I know that there were many occasions when our pilots avoided firing 
back at those who were firing on them because they were firing from 
heavily populated civilian areas. And I am grateful for that, as well.
    So many of you deserve acknowledgement. I wish I could name you all. 
I probably will miss someone, but I'm going to do this anyway, because I 
love to hear you cheer when your names are called. [Laughter] It does me 
a lot of good--you know, we've been up for a week and we're a little 
tired and you get my adrenaline flowing.
    So thank you to the Buzzards of the 510th Fighter Squadron--
[applause]--the Bushmasters of the 78th--[applause]--the Black Panthers 
of the 494th--[applause]--the Triple Nickle--[applause]--the Star 
Warriors and Patriots and Yellowjackets from the Navy--[applause]--
Playboys and Seahawks from the Marines--[applause]--the men and women 
deployed to Aviano from about 90 bases around America and Europe--
[applause]--and the crews here from Spain, Canada, Portugal, and the 
United Kingdom. [Applause] You have to teach them to scream with the 
same fervor with which you scream. [Laughter]
    I want to thank the people on the ground, the maintenance personnel, 
the weaponeers, the air traffic controllers, and the Italian citizens 
who work on this base and make its success possible.
    I do want the American press to note that some of you have 
demonstrated abilities that will serve you well when you return to 
civilian life. The 31st Civil Engineers--[applause]--built a tent city 
here in just 4 days. And it is the envy of all the urban planners back 
home in America. There's no crime--[laughter]--decent sanitation, and 
extremely low unemployment--congratulations. [Laughter] Thank you.
    I want to again, in front of all of you, express my profound 
gratitude for our remarkable NATO Alliance of 19 nations. This was a 
difficult, difficult struggle for many of our countries. It is a tribute 
to their people and to their leaders. When I visited Spangdahlem in 
Germany in May, I spoke with pilots who told me how good it felt to look 
out of their cockpits and see aircraft from the other NATO nations lying 
beside them.
    Now, under the leadership of General Jackson, with all 19 NATO 
nations working with the Russians and with many other countries, we are 
there in Kosovo to guarantee security, self-government, and a chance for 
all the people to rebuild.
    Again, I want to say I am particularly grateful to Prime Minister 
D'Alema and the Italian people for giving us the chance to call Aviano 
home and for their solidarity throughout this operation. All of you know 
that Kosovo was not a distant crisis for the people of Italy; it was an 
immediate threat and a difficult one, indeed. The threat is now receding 
before a new vision of southeastern Europe, one in which the pull of our 
common humanity and the promise of shared prosperity are more powerful 
than the old forces of hatred and division.
    I want to say a special word of appreciation to all of you in our 
Armed Forces for just being here. If you think about--I want you to 
really think about it--you think about what Kosovo was all about. People 
were taught to hate people who were from a different ethnic group than 
they were, who worshiped God in a different way. They started out by 
being afraid of them and misunderstanding them. Then, they came to hate 
them. And then after hating them for a good while, they came to 
dehumanize them. And once you decide that someone you're looking at is 
no longer a human being, it's not so hard to justify killing them, or 
burning them out of house and home, or torturing their children, or 
doing all the other things you have heard. It all starts--it all starts 
with the inability to recognize the inherent dignity and equality of 
someone who is different from ourselves.
    The composition of our Armed Forces, with people from every race, 
every ethnic group, every religious persuasion, from all walks of life, 
that make up American society--the fact that our military has all of you 
in it is the most stunning rebuke to the claims of ethnic cleansing.
    Now, we're going home. [Applause] I hope it's home you're cheering 
for and not the fact that I'm about to quit speaking. [Laughter]

[[Page 1173]]

But I just want to say to you, you make possible, by defending our 
interests and advancing them, the work of the United States at the end 
of the cold war, at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium. That 
is profoundly important.
    Just think of what your country has been doing in the last week. I 
went to Cologne, Germany, to meet with the other large industrial powers 
of the world to plan for the new century; to change the financial rules 
so that we don't have other financial crises like the one we've had in 
Asia which causes big problems back in America, as well as for the 
people who are caught up in it; to provide dramatic increases in debt 
relief to the poorest countries of the world, to lift the burden of debt 
off their backs they can't pay anyway, as long as they'll put the 
savings into keeping their children alive and educating them and giving 
them good health care and ending the scourge of poverty in their 
country; to planning for the future of Kosovo and all of southeastern 
Europe.
    Yesterday I went to Slovenia, where I saw what we can build here--a 
thriving nation which embraces democracy, rejects bigotry, and looks 
toward the future together. That's what we can do for all the Balkans, 
for all of southeastern Europe.
    And I have just come from Macedonia, from the refugee camps, from 
the children singing and chanting ``U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!,'' knowing they 
are going to go home, knowing they don't have to go to bed at night 
afraid, knowing you have given them a chance to reclaim their lives in 
their native land.
    And I met with our KFOR forces from the United States and Spain and 
France and Great Britain and Portugal. And they are very proud to be 
succeeding you to make sure that this mission is finally won.
    Now, I know this has been difficult for many of you--to sleep 10 to 
a tent, work 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week; hard for a young pilot to 
leave a wife and two young children, going off into uncertain skies; 
hard for some of you to spend last Father's Day alone, waiting to hear 
your child's small voice a long way away on a telephone.
    I want you to know that I am absolutely certain that you are 
building a better world for your children and that they will come to 
know that--if not now, then someday--they will understand what their 
fathers and their mothers who wore our uniform have done in the last 
year of the 20th century to save the people of Kosovo, to defeat ethnic 
cleansing, to start the new millennium in the right way--as a time of 
human rights and human dignity and allied confidence that together we 
can build a future worthy of our dreams for our children.
    You have done that. I want you to know that your children will know 
it. And I, personally, am profoundly grateful.
    Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Note: The President spoke at 9:26 p.m. in Hangar 1A. In his remarks, he 
referred to Capt. Charles E. (Digger) Davis, USAF, 510th Fighter 
Squadron; Minister of Defense Carlo Scognamiglio and Prime Minister 
Massimo D'Alema of Italy; Gen. Wesley K. Clark, USA, Supreme Allied 
Commander Europe (SACEUR); Col. Orfeo Durigon, Italian Air Force, 
Italian Base Commander; Brig. Gen. Daniel P. Leaf, USAF, Commander, 31st 
Air Expeditionary Wing; U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Corinne 
Claiborne (Lindy) Boggs; President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal 
Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); Lt. Gareth Evans and 
Sgt. Balaram Rai, British Royal Army personnel killed in an explosion in 
Negrovce, Kosovo, on June 21; Apache helicopter pilots CW3 David A. 
Gibbs, USA, and CW2 Kevin L. Reichert, USA, who were killed in a 
training accident in Albania on May 5; and Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, 
British Royal Army, Commander, Kosovo International Security Force.