Dark Tide 1994 Full Movie Youtube

[Jon Levatte]

Thankyou very much, Secretary Dalton, for those fine remarks. Admiral Lynch, thank you for your comments and your leadership here at the Academy. Admiral Owens, Admiral Boorda, General Mundy, proud parents and family members, faculty and staff of the Academy, brigade of the midshipmen: It's a great honor for me to join you at this moment of celebration. I'm delighted to be back here on the eve of the Academy's 150th year.

Next week I will have the proud responsibility to represent our Nation in Europe in the ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Italy, and World War II. That war marked the turning point of our century when we joined with our allies to stem a dark tide of dictatorship, aggression, and terror and to start a flow of democracy and freedom that continues to sweep the world down to the present day.

That war also marked an era of sacrifice almost unequaled in our entire history. Some 400,000 of our fellow countrymen and women lost their lives. Over half a million more were wounded. Today we have among us many who took part at Normandy and the other great battles of World War II, such as retired Commander Alfred McKowan, Academy class of 1942, who served aboard the U.S.S. Quincy off Utah Beach on D-Day. They're a great reminder of what our armed services have done for America. And I would ask all the veterans of that war to stand now so that the rest of us might honor them. [Applause]

To the members of the class of 1994, my parents' generation and your grandparents' generation did not end their work with the liberation of Europe and victory in the Pacific. They came back to work wonders at home. They created the GI bill so that freedom's heroes could reenter civilian life and succeed and build strong families and strong communities. They built our Interstate Highway System. They turned our economy into a global wonder. They forged the tools of international security and trade that helped to rebuild our former allies and our former enemies so that we could ultimately win the cold war. It brought us decades of peace and prosperity.

Today we have come to celebrate your graduation from this Academy and your commission as officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. As we do, the question which hangs over your head is the question of what your generation will accomplish, as the generation of World War II accomplished so much.

Lately, there have been a number of books written, not about you, of course, but about your generation that says that so many people your age are afflicted with a sense of fatalism and cynicism, a sort of Generation X that believes America's greatest days are behind us and there are no great deeds left to be done. Well, this class, this very class is a rebuke to those cynics of any age.

Look at the extraordinary effort you have made to become leaders in service to America: formation at dawn, classes at 8 a.m., rigorous mandatory PT, parading on Worden Field, summers spent aboard ship or down at Quantico. Most college students never go through anything like it. It's a routine that turns young men and women into officers and that has taken your basketball team to the NCAA Tournament.

I deeply respect your decision to serve our Nation. Your service may take many forms in the years ahead: commanding ships in combat, training aviators for flight, running a business, perhaps one day even sitting in the Oval Office. Your career, regardless of its past, will require sacrifices, time away from loved ones, and potentially, service in the face of danger. But regardless of where your careers take you, you clearly understand the imperative of civic duty. There's no brighter badge of citizenship than the path you have chosen and the oath you are about to take.

You just heard Secretary Dalton speak of President Kennedy's wonderful speech here at the Naval Academy when he was here. I read that speech carefully before I came here. And among other things, President Kennedy said, along the lines that Secretary Dalton quoted, that if someone asked you what you did with your life, there's not a better answer than to say, "I served as an officer in the United States Navy."

The challenge for your generation is to remember the deeds of those who have served before you and now to build on their work in a new and very different world. The world wars are over; the cold war has been won. Now it is our job to win the peace.

For the first time in history, we have the chance to expand the reach of a democracy and economic progress across the whole of Europe and to the far reaches of the world. The first step on the mission is to keep our own Nation secure. And your very graduation today helps ensure that. Today the American people have 874 new leaders, 874 new plates of battle armor on our ship of state, 874 reasons to sleep better at night.

The past 4 years have been a time of challenge and exertion for each of you, a time of challenge and exertion, too, for the U.S. Navy and for this Academy. The Navy has had to confront the difficulty of the Tailhook scandal. And this year the Academy had to confront improper conduct regarding an academic examination. These are troubling events, to be sure, because our military rests on honor and leadership. But ultimately, the test of leadership is not constant flawlessness. Rather it is marked by a commitment to continue always to strive for the highest standards, to learn honesty when one falls short, and to do the right thing when it happens.

I came here today because I want America to know there remains no finer Navy in the world than the United States Navy and no finer training ground for naval leadership then the United States Naval Academy. You have my confidence. You have America's confidence.

These are challenging times to be in the Navy because it's a new era in world affairs. When this class entered the Academy in June of 1990, think of this, Israel and the PLO were sworn enemies; South Africa lived under apartheid; Moscow, Kiev, and Riga all were still part of the Soviet Union; and the United States and the Soviet Union still pointed their nuclear weapons in massive numbers at each other. But now Nelson Mandela is the President of his nation. There is genuine progress toward peace in the Middle East between Israel and the PLO and the other parties. Where the Kremlin once imposed its will, a score of new free states now grapple with the burden of freedom. And the United States and Russia at least no longer aim their nuclear weapons at each other.

These amazing transformations make our Nation more secure. They also enable us to devote more resources to the profound challenges we face here at home, from providing jobs for our people to advancing education and training for all of them, to making our streets safer, to ensuring health care for all of our citizens, and in the end building an economy that can compete and win well into the 21st century.

But the world's changes also can create uncertainty for those who have committed their careers to military service. Indeed, they create uncertainty for the United States. And in this time of uncertainty they tempt some to cut our defenses too far.

At the end of the cold war it was right to reduce our defense spending. But let us not forget that this new era has many dangers. We have replaced a cold war threat of a world of nuclear gridlock with a new world threatened with instability, even abject chaos, rooted in the economic dislocations that are inherent in the change from communism to market economics, rooted in religious and ethnic battles long covered over by authoritarian regimes now gone, rooted in tribal slaughters, aggravated by environmental disasters, by abject hunger, by mass migration across tenuous national borders. And with three of the Soviet Union's successor states now becoming nonnuclear and the tension between the U.S. and Russia over nuclear matters declining, we still must not forget that the threat of weapons of mass destruction remain in the continuing disputes we have over North Korea and elsewhere with countries who seek either to develop or to sell or to buy such weapons. So we must, we must do better. For this generation to expand freedom's reach, we must always keep America out of danger's reach.

We've known that lesson for over 200 years now, since the time Admiral John Paul Jones proclaimed, "Without a respectable Navy, alas, America." The right-size defense costs less but still costs quite a bit. That is why this year I have resisted attempts to impose further cuts on our defense budget.

I want you to understand this clearly. It is important for your generation and your children to bring down this terrible debt we accumulated in recent years. And I have asked the Congress to eliminate outright over 100 programs, to cut over 200 others. We've presented a budget that cuts discretionary domestic spending for the first time since 1969. That will give us 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President of the United States right after World War II. But we should not cut defense further. And I thank the Congress this week for resisting the calls to do so. That enables us to answer John Paul Jones' cry.

Today you can see the importance of our naval forces all around the world. Right now, at this very moment as you sit here, the U.S.S. Saratoga and her battle group are steaming in the Adriatic to help enforce the no-fly zone and to protect the safe havens in Bosnia. At this very moment, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson is in the Persian Gulf to help enforce sanctions on Iraq. Right now, the U.S.S. Independence is patrolling the waters of Northeast Asia to protect our allies and interests in Japan, Korea, and throughout the Asian-Pacific region.

As we adjust our forces to a new era, our motto should still be: "Reduce where we should, but strengthen as we must." That's why we're investing in new weapons such as the next carrier, CVN-76; our new Sea Wolf attack submarine; new AEGIS ships, like the DDG-51; new air capabilities like F-18 upgrades and the Joint Advanced Strike Technology. It's why we're improving our weapons systems and making the technology that won Operation Desert Storm even better: Tomahawk missiles with increased accuracy and target area and better night-fighting capabilities for our Harrier jump jets and other aircraft, so we can not only own the night today but dominate the night tomorrow.

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