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PHOTOCOPY
PRESERVATION
�Rema~ks
on Kosovo Relief Efforts.
by First JLady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Dover Air Force Base
Dover, Delaware
April 9, 1999
Thank you very much; General McDuffie. I am honored to be here and to have a chance to see
in action just a brief snapshotof what you're doing on behalf of this mission. I'm pleased to be
joined here with those who support our military men and women and their families, and in
particular, this base. I want to thank Governor and Mrs. Carper for joining us. I want to thank
Congressman Castle. And I partic~larly want to thank Sen~tor Biden. Because what he said
today needs to be said over and over again to remind us why we're doing what we're doing and
why each of you is an integral part of fulfilling America's mission of leadership at this point in
the world's history.
I'm very grateful for all of the military personnel and the leadership who have pulled together
the humanitarian side of this mission. We know very well that there are a lot of men and women
who are supporting the bombing and are actually making those flights, and we want to think and
pause for a'minute to make sure w'e remember them and their families as well.
General McDuffie and General Handy ~ave worked very hard on the military side to make sure
the logistics are handled as well as they can be. And Brian Atwood, the Administrator of
USAID, brings his considerable experience to bear on making sure the workyou do here
actually gets delivered and makes: a difference in the lives of the men, women, and children we
are trying to help.
But none ofthis would be possible -- none of the planning, none of the effort -- ifit weren't for
the men and women on this base. So let me thank Colonel Gtieder and the entire Eagle Wing
and Liberty Wing for all you're doing to bring the food that I saw being flown in to the people
of Kosovo. Your contribution represents almost half of the 1.1 million HDR's that we are
providing now. There's no way these people we are trying to help could get a meal because
there are no cooking facilities where they're being temporarily placed, were it not for these
HDR's. So every time you pack~ge one up and load it on a pallet and put it on an aircraft, I
hope you'll have in mind the pictures and the faces that I do of the people who are going to be
on the other end and receive this ,gift ofthe American people that you're making possible.
You know, I went to Bosnia shonly after the peace accords were signed, when it was safe
enough to go to our base in Tuzla, but not very safe to go anywhere else. I couldn't get in to
Sarajevo. But I was able to fly out of Tuzla into twobase camps -- Camp Alicia and Camp
Bedrock -- to visit with the men and women who were there on the front lines of America's
peace-keeping efforts. And I also had an opportunity to visit with some of the people,
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�principally women, who had survived that first of Milosevic's attempts to bring to bear the full
weight of his dictatorial powers -- his use of propaganda, dis information , the stirring up of
ethnic and religious hatred -- for his ,own personal, political, partisan advantage. And I
remember sitting in a rooin in Tuzla talking with a group of Bosnians. There were Serbs and
Croats and Muslims. I couldn't tell who was who based on my observation of them. I listened
to them explain to me how it came to be that all of a sudden, neighbor was turned against
neighbor, and paramilitary units were given free reign to roundup men and boys and put them in
camps and summarily execute them. Or to rape women.'. Or to turn children into ·orphans. And
one of the people with whom I was, speaking said, "You know, when it stat1ed in my village, I
went to,'one of my ~eighbors and I said, 'Why is this happening? We've known each other,
we've known our famili'es so long. We've been at each other's weddings; we've attended the
funerals of our loved ones. Why is' this happening?' And the response that I was given," she
told me, "is from the voice of an old friend: 'Well, we were told that if we didn't do this to you,
you would do it to us.'" And the v.;oman said, "Well, who told you thatT' And the answer was,
" Well, we read it in a newspaper or we heard it on the radio." It was the message' of hatred, it
was the message of ethnic cleansing, that Milosevic and his allies were putting out in order to
turn Bosnia into a killing field. .
Now what we saw happen in Bosn,ia was part of a larger plan on the part of Milosevic: And this
is a continuation of the plan. It didn't just start a few weeks ago. And these refugees, although
they are now coming out in the te-q.s of thousands, they were coming out in smaller numbers on a
regular basis over the last year. Last Spring, I met in the White House with a woman who is a
pediatrician from Pristina, the caphal of Kosova. And she sat and detailed to me what if meant
for her to be taking care of the women and children who are being driven into the mountains,
who are fleeing before the Serb paramilitary units. She didn't have the medicine to take cat"e"of
them. They were dehydrated. They were contracting diseases. She came to me to tell me what
was going on firsthand, and this was a yeat· ago. And so diplomacy was tried; interventions were
tried; common sense, appeals to humanity were tried. In every way we knew how to try to talk
to a person who wasn't interested in hearing about the suffering of women and children, but only
interested in his own perverted view of what was a political strategy to keep himself and his
allies in power.
So the peace efforts were not sufficient. And you know, you learn early enough in life that
sometimes after you try everything you know, whether you like it or not, you have to use force
to try to bring across a message, and to try to make it cleat" that you will not tolerate
, unacceptable behavior and actio~s that strike at the very core of what it means to be a human
being.
So I wanted to come to thank those Of you who are on the front lines of fulfilling the need that
we as Americans (Uld as members of the NATO alliance feel to send that message as forcefully
as we possibly can, but to fulfill also, because of our values, the role of providing humanitat"ian
relief to those who have been driven out of their homes. I know that this has been added to your
other regular duties. Many ofy6u have put in enormous extra hours of work "in order to make
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sure that this mission can be accomplished. Many of you even gave up your Easter weekend to
come in and do the work that needed to be done. A couple of the people I spoke with earlier
told me that it wasn't even hard to get you to do that. It just took a phone call and you were on
your way.
When you think about it, there would hardly be a more relevant way of fulfilling the meaning of
Easter than trying to tum darkness. and despair into hope and renewal. And that is what you are
making possible.
I sometimes try -- when I visit places where terrible atrocities have occurred, where people have
. seemed to have lost all sense of empathy or compassion with their fellow human beings -- I by
. to imagine, as hard as it is for Americans to do that, I try to imagine what it would be like if
something this terrible were to happen here. Instead of the people I don't know whose faces I
see on the television screen, I try to superimpose the faces of people I .do know and love, and
imagine them being forced out of their homes and villages. Imagine them being pushed at
gunpoint to walk into the hills without their belongings or their identity papers. Imagine
children that I love and spend time' with having to endure sub-freezing temperatures, rain, and
even snow. And then I think about all of my friends huddled together in a no man's land, unable
to go back.home and unable to go forward into a plaGe of refug.e and safety.
If you think about it that way, then it's easier to understand that, .as blessed as we are here in our
country, there are countless people who don't share those blessings and look to us for the velY
simplest gift, right now, of survival. And when I met the men and women that I shook hands
with and thanked, who were loading the HDRs and securing the pallets and getting them on the
tonners and getting them into the bellies and I was able to say thank you, I could imagine this
human chain from hand.to hand to hand here at Dover to our personnel who will be unloading
and then distributing this food. And it is such a strong statement against whatwe are standing
up to fight.
You are also representing countless other Americans -- the reliefworkers, other members ofthe .
military, ordinary citizens -- who·want to lend a helping hand as welL The United States has
already committed $i50 million ~o this humanitarian operation, and we will standby the
Kosovar refugees until they can qnce again rebuild their own lives in security. Just this morning
the President reiterated that the United States will not accept as pelmanent the results of this
ethnic cleansing, not when a quruter of Kosovo's people are living in refugee camps beyond
Kosovo's borders. And not when hundreds of thousands more are trapped inside, afraid to go
home but unable to' leave. This gift from the people of the United States of America, which is
emblazoned on the side of every box and on every HDR, is the way we can fulfill our own
values and reach out across this vast clcean to try to alleviate the plight 6ftheserefugees.
.e
I know that many Americans are responding. I've been checking on the results of the contacts
. that have been made at the white House. We've received countless calls, letters and e-mails
from people who want to know how they. can help. A woman from Indiana wrote the White
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House saying, "I've watched the re~gees on television all evening and I'm deeply concerned.
Is there anything the mothers of this country can do to assist the mothers who have been
displaced?" A veteran from Ohio wrote, "I spent 25 years helping to defeat the Soviet Union.
What can I do now to help the suffering of the refugees?" And a group ofjunior high students
from Minnesota wrote," We all'feel' it is horrible what is going onin Kosovo and we want to
help the people who have no food apd made it past the border:" But I especially like what a
woman from Florida wrote when she said, "Tonight I will close my eyes haunted by the image
of the refugees fleeing, the looks in the eyes of the children and the elderly. We are so blessed
in our beloved country and I really believe the majority of American folks would like to help
these folks in some way but really clon't know how."
Well, I want Americans to know that you are helping .. The reliefefforts that our military and
relief agencies are doing is an extension of all of us as Americans. But there are ways that
individuals, ~ho aren't members of our Armed Forces or aren't a member of a relief agency, can
help as well. There's a toll free number that you can call: 1-800-USAID-RELIEF. Already
more than 22,000 people have called. And right after this I will be filming a PSA to give more
Americans this number so that they can callas well. That is the way to not only help the
Kosovar ~efugees, but to thank the men and women of this Dover team for what you are doing.
You know, I mentioned being in Bosnia and talking to the victims 'of Milosevic's initial effort to
dominate other people and to ethn,cally cleanse land that he believes should be off limits to
them. That made a very big impression on me, but probably an even bigger impression carrie
when I looked into the faces of the men and women in our military who are on the front lines
keeping the peace there in Bosnia. I had the same feeling today when I met the members of the
Dover team. You know, you go d~wn a line of Americans and you shake hands and somebody
says, "I'm from Pennsylvania;" and somebody else says, "I'm from Oklahoma;" and somebody
else says, "I'm from Hawaii." And youlook into faces that are every shape and color from the
whitest white to the darkest black and everything in· between, and you hear different accents of
,people who grew up in the city an:d grew up in the'country, gre~ up in the north, grew up in the
·south. And they're all Am~ricans, and they're allpart of this Dover team, and they're all Palt of
the United States military.
When I was shaking hands today, just like when I was shaking hands in Bosnia, I couldn't tell
.you who among those I shook 11artds with was a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew: I couldn't tell
you what tl).eir political beliefs were, what their personal experiences were, because' that's what
we've worked so hard to overcome in our country. 'We've made a lot of progress. We have
some problems; but year after year, decade after decade,.we've tried to fulfill our ideals and .
values. And here at the end of thIS century we are the only rema.ining superpower. And we are
not just because of our military n;Iind,and not just because of the stock market going over
lO,OOO. As important as those are, we are because of what we are inside and what we believe.
And so every day when you come to work here~ you're not only doing what's important to be
done on this mission and all the others you are assigned, you are in small ways and large
repres~nting what is best in this country. And you are also representing what we al'e fighting to
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�make possible for other people: that :every man; woman, and child can live up to their own God
given dreams and potential, Thank you for making' it possible for these desperate people to have
a belief that there is a tomorrow and'that they will be able to see once again their owndl-eams,
Thank you very much,
v
, 5
�
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Lissa Muscatine - Press Office
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Lissa Muscatine
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1993 - 1997
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<p>Lissa Muscatine first served in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter. Within the First Lady’s Office, she served as Communications Director to the First Lady.</p>
<p>Lissa Muscatine’s records consist of materials from First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Press Office, highlighting topics such as health care, women’s rights, the Millennium Council, Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and deal extensively with press interviews given by the First Lady; her domestic and foreign travel; and speeches and remarks, on a wide variety of topics, given by her before and during her time as First Lady. The records include interview transcripts, press releases, speeches and speech transcripts.</p>
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FLOTUS Statements and Speeches 12/1/98 - 4/30/99 [Binder]: [Dover Air Force Base - 4/9/1999]
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Box 23
<a href="http://clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/Systematic/2011-0415-S-Muscatine.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="http://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431941" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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Lissa Muscatine
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2011-0415-S
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