Speech to Dover Air Force Base Personnel
Hillary, thank you for being here today. Your presence here is a big deal. Not merely, because I’m sure everyone here at the base physically appreciates your physical presence, the fact that you’d take your time to be here. You have been for the last six years known around the world for your concern about the plight of people, particularly women and children who are in desperate circumstances.
And you know better than any of us here just how desperate the circumstances are for tens of thousands of innocent civilians. These are not military casualties, these are innocent civilians who are a product of the butchery of a man that I think should be tried as a war criminal.
I know some of you Delawarians are not happy with me because I have been so outspoken in my request for the US being involved and using air power and I believe if need be, ground forces, to deal with this cancer in the middle of Europe. This is a humanitarian crisis but first and foremost, the crisis that created the humanitarian crisis is an international crisis that threatens our long term security, and that is the idea that one man in the heart of Europe could recreate for Europe what we committed as a people we would never again allow to happen.
The human crisis you see today will pale by comparison to what will happen if we allow Slobodan Milosevic to continue in power unabated. Some of you thought we were exaggerating when we said what he was about, what he was doing.
None of you should be surprised, past is prologue, this is a man who helped set up rape camps in Bosnia, this is a man who because of his inflamatory, nationalist rhetoric caused those things we observed, those mass graves, people executed in Bosnia and now in Kosovo.
I’d like to take this opportunity to commend all of you here at the base for the tremendous job you have done and doing in alleviating the plight of so many refugees. I said to some of the folks out on the line, if any of you ever wonder whether or not what you do for a living matters, I guarantee you, I guarantee you do not have to think about it after today because what you are doing matters. It literally is going to be the decision between whether or not someone lives or dies. That’s not hyperbole. That’s literally what you’re doing.
The opstempo at this base has been incredibly high for a long time. A lot of you have been under a whole lot of strain and sometimes you may wonder whether or not what we’re doing really is worth all the effort. But I guarantee having been there, this is worth the effort.
Since the Serbian atrocities began and they stepped up their terror campaign against the Ethnic Albanians, 41,000 people a day have flooded across the borders of neighboring countries seeking respite from the brutality of the police. You hear them refer to as ‘the mop.’ The police and the military of Slobodan Milosevic’s storm troopers. In the past two and a half weeks, innocent civilians, women and children, young and old, have been forced to flee their homes, mostly at gunpoint, after having yielded their worldly possessions in terms of cash to the people who are escorting them out of their homes, stuck in box cars.
Like you saw in Sophie’s Choice, like you saw in Schindler’s List, it’s happening again. Now, 1999. They’re being sent and shipped away, and mark my words, when this is over we’re going to be able to determine and find that tens of thousands of people are missing. And thousands, I predict you will learn, have been summarily executed.
So some say, “why are we doing this?” My response is: If not us, who? If not now, when? And if we allow it to continue, what will we leave for our children? This is not a U.S. effort alone. Every major European nation, 18 NATO countries, are in unison. This is not some idea we thought up. This is about the very stability of Europe.
The Kosovar refugees are tired and they’re hungry. And because of what you’ve been doing, there are mothers who will go to bed tonight in tents and tomorrow and the next day and the next day, teaching their children the same thing that their grandmothers taught them: “Thank God for the Americans. Thank God for what they did.”
So I say to you, if you wonder whether it’s worth it, I promise you, I promise you. I guarantee you, you could not be doing anything more worthwhile today with your life than loading that food on those planes for the people that you’re trying to save. Our Vice Wing Commander Gary Coy is over there right now on the ground helping coordinate this effort.
And the man who runs the entire effort to the United States of America, pulling together all these agencies, is a man who has a heart and brain as big as his body. His name is Brian Atwood and I’m about to introduce him to you. He’s the head of AID, he’s the guy that’s been given the task to put it all together. He’s been a public servant his whole life.
We go back a long time together. I got to the Senate in 1972, and he was there too working for a guy named Tom Eagleton. But like you, he believes he has a responsibility bigger than the one which is just providing for the needs of his family. He’s a patriotic American like all of you. And like all of you, what he’s doing today is among one of the most important things he’ll ever be able to do with his entire life. He’s going to help you to help us save tens of thousands of lives of non-combatants, women and children, loaded into box cars, left on the side of mountains. You’re doing a good thing. I’m proud of you. I am truly, truly proud of you. And I’m proud of Brian Atwood. Brian, welcome to Delaware.