[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 45 (Monday, November 15, 1999)]
[Pages 2353-2356]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Veterans Day Ceremony in Arlington, Virginia

November 11, 1999

    Thank you very much, Secretary West, for your eloquent remarks and 
your leadership and your many years of devotion to our country. 
Commander Smart, thank you for your leadership this year. Chaplain 
Cooke, Lee Thornton, thank you for always being here for our veterans.
    The leaders of our veterans' organizations; Members of Congress 
here; Deputy Secretary Gober and members of the Cabinet; General Ross 
and members of the Joint Chiefs; General Davis and other Medal of Honor 
recipients. To the former POW's, the families of those still missing in 
action, to our veterans and their families.
    Let me begin by offering a special word of appreciation to the Army 
Band and Chorus for their magnificent music today and for making us feel 
so important. And I want to say a special welcome today to a person you 
may have read about in the morning papers--Capt. Earl Fox is the Senior 
Medical Officer at the Coast Guard Personnel Command here in Washington. 
He also happens to be the last World War II veteran still on active 
military duty. Now, next week he will

[[Page 2354]]

retire at the tender young age of 80. I think he has earned his 
retirement. But Captain, on behalf of a grateful nation, we say thank 
you for your service. Thank you.
    My fellow Americans, as we all know, we celebrate Veterans Day on 
the anniversary of the armistice ending World War I, on the 11th hour of 
the 11th day of the 11th month. Eighty years ago today, President 
Woodrow Wilson proclaimed this a day of solemn pride in the heroism of 
those who died in the country's service. For 2 full minutes in the 
middle of that day, all traffic and business across our Nation stopped, 
as Americans took time to remember family and friends who fought and 
those who never came home from the ``war to end all wars.'' I don't 
believe those men and women who were our forebears could ever have 
imagined that so many other times in this century young Americans would 
be asked again and again to fight and die for freedom in foreign lands.
    When the 20th century began, the headstones that stand in silent 
formation on these beautiful hills covered fewer than 200 acres. Today, 
at century's end, they cover more than 600 acres. Hundreds of millions 
of people in the United States and around the world sleep in peace 
because more than a million Americans rest in peace, here and in graves 
marked and unmarked all across the world. Today we come again to say we 
owe them a debt we can never repay.
    In a way, the young men and women who have died in defense of our 
country gave up not only the life they were living but also the life 
they would have lived, their chance to be parents, their chance to grow 
old with their grandchildren. Too often when we speak of sacrifice, we 
speak in generalities about the larger sweep of history, and the sum 
total of our Nation's experience. But it is very important to remember 
that every single veteran's life we honor today was just that, a life, 
just like yours and mine. A life with family and friends and love and 
hopes and dreams and ups and downs, a life that should have been able to 
play its full course.
    Fifty-seven years ago this week, the eyes of America were focused on 
a small, sweltering island in the South Pacific. Pearl Harbor had been 
bombed the year before, and Japanese forces in the Pacific were 
capturing one island after another. The task of stopping them fell to a 
group of young marines in an operation called Project Watchtower, in a 
place called Guadalcanal. The battle was expected to last 6 weeks. It 
took 6 months. The jungle was so thick soldiers could hardly walk; 
fighting so fierce and rations so thin that the average marine lost 25 
pounds. Every night shells fell from the sky, and enemy soldiers charged 
up the hills. The only weapons marines had to defend themselves were 
Springfield rifles left over from World War I. But with the strength 
forged in factories and fields back home, they turned back wave after 
wave of hand-to-hand fighting, until at last, the Navy was able to help 
the marines turn the tide in the naval battle that began 57 years ago 
tomorrow.
    That turned the tide of battle in the whole Pacific and with it the 
tide of American history. On that small island, in the Battle of 
Guadalcanal, Americans proved that our Nation would never again be an 
island, but rather allied with freedom and peace-loving people 
everywhere, as the greatest force for peace and freedom the world has 
ever known.
    In the days and years that have followed, men and women, forged from 
the same mettle, in every branch of our military have built on those 
sacrifices and stood for the cause of freedom, from World War II to 
Korea, to Vietnam, to Kuwait City, to Kosovo.
    On the beach at Guadalcanal is a monument to those who fought on the 
island. In the hills that surround us, some of the 1,500 marines and 
sailors who lost their lives in that battle are laid to rest. They are 
some of the greatest of the greatest generation.
    One of those who served at Guadalcanal was a 19-year-old marine 
lieutenant named John Chafee. He went on to fight in Okinawa, to lead 
troops in Korea, to serve as Governor of Rhode Island and Secretary of 
the Navy, and then, for more than 20 years, as a United States Senator. 
He helped write the law that keeps our air clean. His fights for health 
care helped millions of veterans live better lives. Yet he was so humble 
that when he received a distinguished award from the Marine Corps 
Foundation last year, he hardly spoke about his wartime service. Two 
weeks ago, this remarkable man passed away

[[Page 2355]]

at the age of 77. At his funeral, Hillary and I spent time with his 5 
children and his 12 grandchildren. And I was proud to announce on that 
day that the Navy will be naming one of its most modern and capable 
destroyers after John Chafee.
    Now, that was the measure of one man's life who fought in 
Guadalcanal and survived. Today, in our imaginations, we must try to 
imagine the measure of all the lives that might have been, had they not 
been laid down in service to our Nation. What about the more than one 
million men and women who have given their lives so that we could be 
free? What would have been the measure of their lives? What else would 
they have accomplished for their families and their country, if only 
they had had the chance?
    Of course we don't have any of those answers. But because we have 
the question, we clearly have a responsibility to stand in the breach 
for them. We are not just the beneficiaries of their bravery; we are the 
stewards of their sacrifice. Thanks to their valor, today, for the very 
first time in all of human history, more than half of the nations of the 
world live under governments of their own choosing. Our prosperity and 
power are greater than they have ever been. It is, therefore, our solemn 
obligation to preserve the peace and to make the most of this moment for 
our children and the children of the world, so that those who sacrificed 
so much to bring us to this moment will be redeemed in the lives they 
could have lived by the lives that we do live.
    How shall we do this? It means at least that we must continue to be 
the world's leading force for peace and freedom, against terrorism and 
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It means we must keep 
the commitment I have had since the moment I took the oath of office, 
that our men and women in uniform will remain the best trained, best 
equipped, best prepared in the world.
    In Kosovo, we had zero combat fatalities, and only two planes shot 
down, though our pilots took heavy enemy fire every single day and put 
their lives repeatedly at greater risks to avoid hitting civilians on 
the ground. That is a tribute to the professionalism we see every day 
from our military forces all around the world.
    Last month I was proud to sign a bill that will keep us moving in 
that direction, with the start of the first sustained increase in 
military spending in a decade and the biggest pay increase for our 
troops in a generation. It means we must also do more to be faithful to 
our veterans when their service is over. President Theodore Roosevelt 
once said, ``Anyone good enough to shed his blood for his country is 
good enough to be given a square deal afterward.''
    Over the past 7 years we have opened more than 600 veterans' out-
patient clinics across America. This year we expect to treat 400,000 
more veterans than last year, including more disabled veterans than ever 
before. We will continue to make sure that all veterans receive the care 
they deserve. And we must continue to make a special effort to end 
something that must be intolerable to all of us, the tragedy of homeless 
veterans.
    I want to commend the reigning Miss America, Heather Renee French, 
who is with us today, along with her family, her father--a disabled 
Vietnam veteran--her mother, her brother, and her sister, for all the 
work she is doing in her position finally to bring proper national 
attention to the plight of homeless veterans. We thank you for what 
you're doing. Thank you. We must not rest until we have done everything 
we possibly can to bring them back into the society they so willingly 
defended.
    And we must bear in mind the special sacrifice of the more than 
140,000 veterans who were held in prison camps or interned during this 
century. I want to commend the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund for 
completing a project they launched a year ago today to create a special 
curriculum on the Vietnam war and send a copy to every single high 
school across America. Part of that curriculum focuses on the men and 
women who never came home. We must not forget them.
    I am very proud to announce today that we have successfully 
recovered the remains of three more United States servicemen lost during 
the Korean war. They're coming home tonight. But we must not waver in 
our common efforts to make the fullest possible

[[Page 2356]]

accounting for all our MIA's, for all their families to have their 
questions answered.
    Finally, fulfilling our responsibility to lead for peace and freedom 
and to be faithful not only to our service personnel but our veterans, 
requires us to do more than prepare people to fight wars and take care 
of them when they come home. We must work with greater determination to 
prevent wars. Every American who gave his or her life for our country 
was, in one way or another, a victim of a peace that faltered, of 
diplomacy that failed, of the absence of adequate preventive strength. 
We know that if diplomacy is not backed by real and credible threats of 
force, it can be empty and even dangerous. But if we don't use diplomacy 
first, then our military will become our only line of defense.
    Of course, it also costs money to help struggling young democracies 
to stand on their feet as friends and partners of the United States, as 
we've tried to do from Poland to Russia to Nigeria to Indonesia. It 
costs money to make sure nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union are 
secure, for the terrorists and leaders who wish us harm do not acquire 
the means to kill on a more massive scale. It costs money to support the 
peacemakers in places like the Middle East and the Balkans and Africa, 
so that regional conflicts do not explode and spread.
    But all of you know, better than most, that freedom is not free. And 
all of you know, far better than most, that the costliest peace is far 
cheaper than the cheapest war.
    I am pleased to report to you today that the Democrats and 
Republicans in Congress are working together on a strong compromise that 
will allow us to meet some of our most urgent needs in foreign affairs, 
to prevent war. We're not finished yet, but there is a bipartisan center 
like that which has carried America for 50 years at this hopeful moment 
now at work in the Congress. I am grateful for it, and our children will 
be safer for it.
    In less than 2 months, we'll be able to say the conflict and 
bloodshed that took so many American lives came from another century. So 
we gather today for the last time in this century to dedicate ourselves 
to being good stewards of the sacrifice of the veterans of our country.
    As we look ahead to the large challenges and the grand opportunities 
of the new century and a new millennium, when our country has more 
prosperity than ever before, and for the first time in my lifetime has 
the ability to meet those challenges and to dream dreams and live them 
because we are unthreatened by serious crisis at home and security 
threats abroad, let us resolve to honor those veterans, to redeem their 
sacrifice, to be stewards of the lives they never got to live by doing 
all we can to see that the horrors of the 20th century's wars are not 
visited upon 21st century Americans. That is the true way to honor the 
people we come here today to thank God for.
    Thank you very much, and God bless America.

Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. in the Amphitheater at Arlington 
National Cemetery. In his remarks, he referred to John W. Smart, 
commander in chief, Veterans of Foreign Wars; Jeni Cooke, Chaplain, 
Department of Veterans Affairs; Lee Thornton, master of ceremonies; and 
Gen. Raymond G. Davis, USMC (Ret.), Congressional Medal of Honor 
recipient.