First, I have not seen where President Clinton "promised" to stay in Bosnia for only twelve months; politicians usually leave themselves a way out. Also, if the troops should not have been used in Bosnia, then why didn't President Bush withdraw the troops and stop the air strikes started under Clinton?
He promised that we would be out of Kosovo by Christmas of that year.
House Republican Policy Committee
Policy Perspective Christopher Cox, Chairman
CLINTON'S BROKEN PROMISE SIGNALS FAILURE IN BOSNIA
August 7, 1996
Introduction: Delayed Pullout
Last November, as he prepared to order American troops to the former Yugoslavia, President Clinton promised in writing to the Speaker of the House what the nation's top soldier, Gen. John Shalikashvili, had told Congress in testimony a month before: that "we have set one year as a deadline for withdrawal of these forces from Bosnia-Herzegovina."
In testimony before the House International Relations Committee on November 30, 1995, Secretary of Defense William Perry confirmed the one-year duration of the mission. He said:
"[W]e have based our planning and our scheduling of this force on it being there for 1 year ... building down the force for withdrawal at the end of about 1 year."
Not all were so sanguine that the Bosnia mission's goals, ill-defined as they were, could be accomplished within the time-frame the Administration promised. During an October 18, 1995 hearing, Tom Lantos, a senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, was justified in saying to Secretary Perry,
"I think I understand why the administration facing a hostile Congress is promising a 1-year deadline, but I think it is a dangerous course of action because I think there is a very strong possibility that at the end of the year we will find it necessary to extend the mission. I think it would be more honest to say so at the outset."
In March 1996, several months into the deployment, the administration was still publicly committed to withdrawing the troops after a year. Robert Hunter, the President's Ambassador to NATO, stated flatly, "We, as NATO, took a very careful decision about how long we were prepared to stay. We agreed on a year. We went in together, and we're going to leave together." And Richard Holbrooke, until recently Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, said, "The president has given a very clear commitment on the 12 months. That is our policy. It will remain our policy."
Not for long. By June 7, 1996, the NATO regional commander, Adm. Leighton Smith, was saying that "there will be forces here beyond a year." Defense Secretary William Perry acknowledged that the Dayton Accords,
the basis for the U.S. deployment, call for the mission to end in December, but said that he would recommend keeping U.S. troops in Bosnia next year if NATO thinks "some further action is needed" in the region.
From his speech;
President Milosevic should make no mistake: The United States takes care of its own. And President Milosevic should make no mistake: We will hold him and his Government responsible for their safety and for their well-being.
But I ask you also to resolve that we will continue to carry out our mission with determination and resolve. . . .
Altogether now more than half a million Kosovars have been pushed from their homes since the conflict began. They are arriving at the borders of the country shaken by what they have seen and been through. . . .
Had we not acted, the Serbian offensive would have been carried out with impunity. We are determined that it will carry a very high price, indeed. We also act to prevent a wider war. If you saw my address to the country the other night and the maps that I showed, you know that Kosovo is a very small place. But it sits right at the dividing line of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the dividing line between Islam and Christianity, close to our Turkish and Greek allies to the south, our new allies Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to the north, surrounded by small and struggling democracies that easily could be overwhelmed by the flood of refugees Mr. Milosevic is creating.
Already Macedonia is so threatened. Already Serbian forces have made forays into Albania, which borders Kosovo. If we were to do nothing, eventually our allies and then the United States would be drawn into a larger conflict, at far-greater risks to our people and far-greater costs.
Now, we can't respond to every tragedy in every corner of the world, but just because we can't do everything for everyone doesn't mean that, for the sake of consistency, we should do nothing for no one.
