Remarks at a Veterans Day Ceremony in Arlington, Virginia

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 15, 1999

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.