President Clinton Sent Troops to Which of These Countries in 1995 and Again in 1999

Transcript: Clinton addresses nation on Yugoslavia strike

March 24, 1999

PRESIDENT CLINTON: My fellow Americans, today our war machine joined our NATO allies in airstrikes against Serbian forces responsible for the brutality in Kosovo. Nosotros have acted with resolve for several reasons.

We human activity to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military machine offensive.

Nosotros act to foreclose a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe, that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results.

We human activity to stand united with our allies for peace. By acting now, we are upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace.

Tonight I want to speak with you lot about the tragedy in Kosovo and why it matters to America that we work with our allies to end it.

First, let me explicate what it is that nosotros are responding to. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, in the center of southward eastern Europe and about 160 miles east of Italy. That'south less than the distance betwixt Washington and New York, and only near 70 miles due north of Greece.

Its people are generally ethnic Albanian and mostly Muslim.

In 1989 Serbia's leader Slobodan Milosevic, the aforementioned leader who started the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and moved against Slovenia in the last decade, stripped Kosovo of the constitutional autonomy it's people enjoyed, thus denying them their right to speak their language, run their schools, shape their daily lives. For years, Kosovar'due south struggled peacefully to get their rights back. When President Milosevic sent his troops and police to crush them, the struggle grew violent.

Last fall, our diplomacy, backed by the threat of force from our NATO alliance, stopped the fighting for awhile, and rescued tens of thousands of people from freezing and starvation in the hills where they had fled to save their lives. And last calendar month, with our allies and Russia, we proposed a peace understanding to terminate the fighting for good. The Kosovar leaders signed that agreement last week.

Fifty-fifty though it does not requite them all they want, even though their people were notwithstanding existence savaged, they saw that a only peace is better than a long and unwinable war.

The Serbian leaders, on the other hand, refused fifty-fifty to talk over cardinal elements of the peace agreement. Equally the Kosovars were saying yes to peace, Serbia stationed xl,000 troops in and around Kosovo in preparation for a major offensive and in articulate violation of the commitments they had made.

Now they've started moving from hamlet to village, shelling civilians and torching their houses. Nosotros've seen innocent people taken from their homes, forced to kneel in the dirt and sprayed with bullets. Kosovar men dragged from their families, fathers and sons together, lined upwardly, and shot in cold claret. This is not war in the traditional sense. It is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people, whose leaders already have agreed to peace.

Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative. It is also of import to America's national interests. Have a look at this map. Kosovo is a small place, but it sits on a major fault line betwixt Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, at the meeting place of Islam and both the Western and Orthodox branches of Christianity.

To the south are our allies, Greece and Turkey. To the north, our new democratic allies in Central Europe. And all around Kosovo, at that place are other pocket-sized countries, struggling with their own economical and political challenges, countries that could exist overthrown by a large new wave of refugees from Kosovo.

All the ingredients for a major war are there. Ancient grievances, struggling democracies and in the eye of information technology all, a dictator in Serbia who has done aught since the Cold War concluded, but starting time new wars and pour gasoline on the flames of ethnic and religious division.

Sarajevo, the capital of neighboring Bosnia, is where Earth State of war I began. World War 2 and the Holocaust engulfed this region. In both wars Europe was ho-hum to recognize the dangers, and the United States waited even longer to enter the conflicts. Just imagine if leaders dorsum then had acted wisely and early on enough, how many lives could have been saved? How many Americans would non accept had to die?

Nosotros learned some of the same lessons in Bosnia just a few years ago. The globe did not human activity early enough to stop that war either. And let'south non forget what happened. Innocent people herded into concentration camps, children gunned down by snipers on their way to school, soccer fields and parks turned into cemeteries. A quarter of a million people killed, not considering of annihilation they had done, but considering of who they were. Ii million Bosnians became refugees.

This was genocide in the heart of Europe, not in 1945, but in 1995. Not in some grainy newsreel from our parents' and grandparents' time, only in our own time, testing our humanity and our resolve.

At the time, many people believed nothing could exist done to terminate the bloodshed in Bosnia. They said, "Well, that's just the way those people in the Balkans are." But when we and our allies joined with mettlesome Bosnians to stand upwardly to the aggressors, we helped to stop the war. We learned that in the Balkans, inaction in the face of brutality, simply invites brutality. Merely firmness tin terminate armies and save lives.

We must apply that lesson in Kosovo, before what happened in Bosnia, happens there, too.

Over the terminal few months, we have done everything we possibly could to solve this trouble peacefully. Secretary Albright has worked tirelessly for a negotiated agreement. Mr. Milosevic has refused.

On Sunday, I sent Ambassador Dick Holbrooke to Serbia to make clear to him again on behalf of the The states and our NATO allies that he must honour his own commitments and finish his repression or face armed forces activeness. Again, he refused.

Today, nosotros and our eighteen NATO allies agreed to exercise what we said we would do, what we must do to restore the peace. Our mission is clear -- to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose then that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course, to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo.

In short, if President Milosevic will not make peace, we volition limit his ability to make state of war.

Now I want to exist clear with you, there are risks in this armed forces action -- risk to our pilots and the people on the ground. Serbia's air defenses are strong. It could decide to intensify its attack on Kosovo, or to seek to harm the states or our allies elsewhere. If it does, we will deliver a forceful response.

Hopefully, Mr. Milosevic volition realize his present class is self-destructive and unsustainable. If he decides to have the peace agreement and demilitarize Kosovo, NATO has agreed to assist to implement it with a peacekeeping force.

If NATO's invited to do so, our troops should take part in that mission to proceed the peace, merely I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war.

Do our interests in Kosovo justify the dangers to our war machine? I idea long and hard nearly that question. I am convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers of not interim -- dangerous to defenseless people and to our national interests.

If we and our allies were to allow this state of war to continue with no response, President Milosevic would read our hesitation as a license to kill. There would be many massacres, tens of thousands refugees, victims crying our for revenge. Correct now, our compactness is the only hope the people of Kosovo have to be able to alive in their own country, without having to fear for their own lives.

Remember, we asked them to accept peace and they did. We asked them to promise to lay downwards their arms and they agreed. Nosotros pledged that we, the U.s.a. and the other 18 nations of NATO would stick by them if they did the right matter. We cannot let them down now.

Imagine what would happen if we and our allies instead decided but to look the other way as these people were massacred on NATO'southward doorstep. That would discredit NATO, the cornerstone on which our security has rested for fifty years now.

We must too remember that this is a conflict with no natural national boundaries. Permit me ask you to await again at a map. The red dots are towns the Serbs have attacked. The arrows show the movement of refugees n, east and south. Already, this movement is threatening the young democracy in Republic of macedonia, which has its own Albanian minority and a Turkish minority.

Already, Serbian forces accept made forays into Albania from which Kosovars have drawn support. Albania has a Greek minority. Allow a fire burn down here in this surface area, and the flames will spread.

Eventually, key U.S. allies could exist drawn into a wider disharmonize -- a state of war we would be forced to confront afterward, only at far greater chance and greater cost.

I take a responsibility every bit president to deal with problems such as this earlier they exercise permanent harm to our national interests. America has a responsibility to stand with our allies when they are trying to save innocent lives and preserve peace, freedom and stability in Europe. That is what we are doing in Kosovo.

If we've learned anything from the century drawing to a close, it is that if America is going to exist prosperous and secure, nosotros need a Europe that is prosperous, secure, undivided and costless.

We demand a Europe that is coming together, not falling apart. A Europe that shares our values, and shares the burdens of leadership. That is the foundation on which the security of our children volition depend. That is why I accept supported the political and economic unification of Europe. That is why we brought Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO, and redefined its mission. And reached out to Russian federation and Ukraine for new partnerships.

Now what are the challenges to that vision of a peaceful, secure, united, stable Europe? The challenge of strengthening a partnership with a autonomous Russia, that despite our disagreements, is a effective partner in the work of building peace. The challenge of resolving the tensions between Hellenic republic and Turkey, and building bridges with the Islamic globe.

And finally, the claiming of ending instability in the Balkans, and then that these bitter, ethnic problems in Europe are resolved by the forcefulness of statement, not the force of bombs. And so that futurity generations of Americans practise non accept to cross the Atlantic to fight another terrible war. Information technology is this claiming that nosotros and our allies are facing in Kosovo.

That is why we have acted now -- because we intendance almost saving innocent lives, considering we have an interest in fugitive an even crueler and costlier war and considering our children need and deserve a peaceful, stable, free Europe.

Our thoughts and prayers tonight must be with the men and women of our armed forces, who are undertaking this mission for the sake of our values and our children'southward future.

May God bless them, and may God anoint America.

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/25/clinton.transcript/