Remarks at an Armed Forces Tribute to the President in Arlington, Virginia

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 15, 2001

January 5,2001

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. First, I would like to thank Secretary Cohen for his kind and generous remarks and even more for his outstanding leadership of the Department of Defense.

I must say, Bill, when I asked you to become Secretary of Defense, in an attempt to strengthen the bipartisan or, indeed, nonpartisan support for the Defense Department among the American people and the Congress, I didn't know that I was the first President in history to ask an elected official of the opposite party to hold that job. Shoot, I might not have done it if I had known that. [Laughter]

It's one of those occasions where ignorance was wisdom, because you brought to the challenge a sharp mind, a fierce integrity, a loving heart for the men and women in uniform. Your wife, Janet, touched people who serve in our military forces all around the world in a unique and special way. And I'm glad that you believe this is the most important service of your 31-year career. But on this, sir, you gave as good as you got, and we thank you.

And General Shelton, I want to thank you. I will never forget the day when General Shelton, in his previous command post, stepped out of the boat, into the water, onto the beach in Haiti in his boots and his beret. I think he could have gone alone and prevailed just as well as he did with the help of the others who went with him.

I'll never forget the time I came to your office, sir, in your previous job, and I looked on the wall and there was a picture of Stonewall Jackson. And I said to myself, "I wonder if Stonewall Jackson would be a Democrat or a Republican if he were alive today." I've often commented to General Shelton that we have made--he, Secretary Cohen, and I--an unpredictable but, I think, quite a successful team. And you have been a great Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sir--a great Chairman, and we thank you. And we thank Carolyn for her leadership, as well.

I thank Deputy Secretary Rudy de Leon, for the many capacities in which he has served since the first days of this administration. Thank you, Secretary Slater, today, for what you have done as Secretary of Transportation with the Coast Guard. I thank the Service Secretaries, General Myers, the Service Chiefs, the other officers here, and enlisted personnel.

I thank especially the members of the White House, my Chief of Staff, John Podesta, my National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, for the work that they have done with me on issues relating to the Armed Forces.

And I thank you for the medals you gave to Hilary and me. We were honored to receive them, but far more honored to spend the last 8 years in contact with the 1.4 million men and women on active duty, the more than 850,000 men and women serving in the Guard and Reserves--those who keep us secure and advance the cause of peace and freedom.

There is no greater honor in being President than to be Commander in Chief of these magnificent people, so many of them so very young. They are at the disposal of the President to defend our interests, to advance our values, to realize our vision. Most of the time, they do it with all the gusto and fervor of youth, all the discipline that long training brings. But on occasion, they do it at the cost of their all too young lives. We saw it most recently in the U.S.S. Cole, but every year, in ways that don't make the headlines, about 200 of these young people give their lives just doing their jobs.

No one who has not held this job can possibly understand the awesome sense of humility and honor and the sense of strength and capacity it brings to any President, to know that there are people like these who have sworn their lives and fortunes in sacred honor for the United States.

In July of 1776 our first Commander in Chief, George Washington, ordered American troops to assemble on Manhattan Island in New York, to hear the Declaration of Independence read aloud--in full view, I might add, of the British forces then landing in Staten Island. He did it because he knew how important it was that our troops understand that the survival of our new Nation depended upon their success. For over 220 years now, the survival of our Nation has depended upon the military's success, and for over 220 years, our military has succeeded.

For these last 8 years, as Secretary Cohen chronicled, in a very different time, in a world after the cold war more interdependent than ever before, with new conflicts and old demons, the American military has again succeeded and succeeded brilliantly.

Thanks to you, the world is safer, and America stands taller. Thanks to you, working with our Korean allies, there is peace in the Korean Peninsula and new hope for reconciliation across the last dividing line in the cold war.

Thanks to you, arm in arm with an expanded NATO, ethnic cleansing and slaughter in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, and Kosovo has ended. Refugees have returned to their homes. Freedom has a chance to flower.

Thanks to you, we are closer than ever before to building a Europe for the first time in history as peaceful, undivided, and democratic, a Europe where it is far less likely that young Americans will have to fight and die in this new century.