Clinton has also touted her March 1996 visit to
war-torn Bosnia as evidence of her foreign policy experience, and her
campaign has made references
to a Washington Post article that described the visit as
"the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to
a potential combat zone." In a December campaign stop, Clinton
recounted a harrowing trip, with her aircraft engaging in a tight
corkscrew landing to avoid potential sniper fire. As Clinton
explained, the unofficial White House policy was, “If it's too
dangerous, too small and too poor, send the first lady.”
We can’t speak to what may or may not have happened
on the military transport that delivered Clinton to Bosnia. She is
right, though, that she visited a potential combat zone. But
what she fails to mention is that the Dayton Peace Accords – which
officially ended a year-and-a-half of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina
– had been signed in December 1995. So by the time of Clinton’s
March 1996 visit, the war itself had been over for three months.
Indeed, the accords were so successful that by June 1996 Anthony Lake,
a member of President Clinton's national security team, could say
with confidence that predictions of "renewed fighting" in
Bosnia had turned out to be unfounded. Clinton also correctly quotes
the Post. But she leaves out the part of the article that
discusses Pat Nixon's visit to a Saigon field hospital in 1969 and
Barbara Bush's Thanksgiving celebration with American troops in Saudi
Arabia during Desert Storm.
Moreover, Clinton’s visit was part of what the New
York Timesdescribed
as a "good-will tour." Other stops included a meeting at
Baumholder Army Base in Germany with the families of military
personnel who were deployed to Bosnia and meetings in Turkey and
Greece to promote women’s rights. Chelsea Clinton, then 16,
accompanied her mother on all the stops; on the Bosnian leg of the
tour, they were joined by singer Sheryl Crow and the comedian Sinbad,
who came with a host of donated items, including a big screen TV and
candy bars, designed to boost the troops’ morale.
