With exits to the city blocked, and an increasing number of killed and wounded, American soldiers were forced to hunker down and await reinforcements.
In the end, eighteen U. America was left with horrific images of soldiers' bodies being dragged through the streets and angry questions of how and why such a disaster occurred. Then-President George H. Nevertheless, the operation became more complex than anyone imagined. Leaders at the United Nations became convinced that Aidid, who had resisted political reform both prior to and following the recent introduction of UN personnel, was largely responsible for the harassment and killing of peacekeeping forces and humanitarian workers.
In the end, they sought to remove him from power. When President Bill Clinton came into office, his administrative team sought to scale back the venture in Somalia. Defense Secretary Les Aspin rejected requests from local commanders for more troops and vehicles, confident that U. Clinton's actions generated criticism from those who believed he should have carried through and captured Aidid- that in not doing so, he had simultaneously dishonored the soldiers' deaths and harmed American military credibility.
The affair contributed to the perception that the President lacked foreign affairs expertise. Many became skeptical of the idea that the United States could or should serve as a post-Cold War, peacekeeping nation-builder, particularly under the direction of the United Nations.
Regardless, the Battle of Mogadishu- both its causes and its effects -highlighted the complexities of the post-Cold War American military mission. An elite American special forces unit searching for Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu is ambushed by Aidid's forces, leaving eighteen Americans dead.
Three days later, President Clinton announces that all American military personnel in Somalia will be home by March 31, President Clinton signs the Brady Act, which requires a potential handgun purchaser to wait five days while a background check is performed by law enforcement officers. Remarkably the agreement's supporters included Republicans and only Democrats.
That unusual combination reflected the challenges President Clinton faced in convincing Congress that the controversial piece of legislation would truly benefit all Americans. President George H. The trade agreement ended tariffs between Mexico, Canada, and the United States, and set a year timetable for the elimination of most other impediments to international investment and commerce between the three nations.
Like many Republicans, President Bush believed that open economic borders between nations would benefit all concerned.
Ideally, as production rose to meet the new demand for American exports, jobs, wages, and the economy as a whole would improve. However, securing Congressional approval fell to the newly elected President Bill Clinton. It was not an easy task. They believed that American corporations would flee the United States in order to profit from much lower Mexican labor costs and the new absence of tariffs.
The fears of labor—traditionally one of the strongest components of the Democratic coalition—helped explain why passage of NAFTA proved so difficult. President Clinton and key members of his administration worked tirelessly to assuage the fears of key House Democrats.
The President inserted limits on agricultural imports to minimize the negative effects of competition on produce. He also created a North American Development Bank in order to assist development along the Mexican border and show sympathy with the concerns of Hispanic Representatives.
Clinton was willing to risk alienating American labor to some degree because he was convinced that long-term prosperity depended on free trade between nations, and because he felt that his administration needed an important, visible early win to generate momentum and credibility. NAFTA amounted to an administration victory, but many still regarded it as a net loss for American labor and the environment, which they claimed suffered in the absence of adequate Mexican regulations.
President Clinton ends the nineteen-year old trade embargo against Vietnam, noting that Vietnam is indeed trying to locate 2, Americans listed as missing in action since the Vietnam War. President Clinton renews China's Most Favored Nation trade status, even though China has not made as much progress on human rights issues as he had hoped.
President Clinton unveils his welfare reform initiatives. The talks result in Israel and Jordan agreeing in principle to end nearly fifty years of official antagonism. Clinton's initiatives fail to find support in Congress.
President Clinton signs into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that includes provisions providing for the hiring of , more policemen, and the expansion of the death penalty to cover more than 50 federal crimes.
After a tense stand-off with the Clinton administration, Haiti's military government, led by General Raoul Cedras, agrees to cede power. The administration, along with the United Nations, had tried for over a year to restore the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been overthrown in a coup on September 30, The Clinton administration announces plans to send more than 35, troops to the Persian Gulf to deter an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Less than three days after the announcement, Iraqi troops pull back from the Iraq-Kuwait border. In mid-term congressional elections, the Republican Party wins control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than 40 years. It now holds a 53 to 47 advantage in the Senate and a to to 1 lead in the House. The agreement cuts tariffs by more than a third on a wide-range of products and creates a freer international market for goods.
The treaty eliminates more than 9, warheads. President Clinton signs the Congressional Accountability Act, requiring Congress to abide by the same anti-discrimination workplace rules that apply throughout the rest of the country. President Clinton authorizes the U. In an act of domestic terrorism, a bomb planted in a truck parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, kills people and causes massive structural damage. In the days following the tragedy, Clinton, in widely-praised efforts, speaks with victims and to the country about how to recover physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the attack.
The United States extended full diplomatic recognition of Vietnam, twenty-two years after the United States withdrew military forces from that country.
NATO, with a strong contingent of American forces, begins two weeks of air attacks on Serbian positions. President Clinton and Russian president Yeltsin meet in Hyde Park, New York, and continue to discuss ways to improve relations between their two nations, especially with regard to the issue of nuclear arms. In Dayton, Ohio, the representatives of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia agree in principle to a peace agreement, brokered by American Richard Holbrooke, to end three years of war in Bosnia.
The agreement establishes a unitary Bosnian state and allows refugees to return home. The agreement was reached between the warring nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.
It sought to end one of the worst European conflicts since World War II, a four-year struggle of hardship and atrocities that had claimed the lives of more than , people, and made refugees of more than two million.
The details of the accords were cast in seductively simple and hopeful terms. Bosnia would remain a single state and would be granted international recognition.
While its capital of Sarajevo avoided partitioning, the nation now consisted of two divided segments: the Bosnian Croat Federation, inhabiting 51 percent of the territory, and the Bosnian Serb Republic, occupying the remaining 49 percent.
The accords also sought to create within Bosnia the institutions of a modern liberal democracy, including a central government composed of a constitutional court, a national parliament, and a presidency, with the latter two being filled by internationally supervised free elections. Military forces were to be substantially restrained, with protections for human rights coming from an independent body and an internationally-trained civilian police.
President Clinton sent a peacekeeping force of 20, American troops part of a larger NATO deployment into the region to enforce a cease-fire that was to be followed by free elections. While few would say that the Dayton Accords were not an important step toward peace in the former Yugoslavia, violence continued to haunt the region, especially in the neighboring province of Kosovo.
Domestically, Republicans attacked President Clinton for keeping U. Some fellow Democrats also attacked Clinton for failing to act with similar decisiveness and sympathy in the even more deadly conflict in the African nation of Rwanda. During a tour of Europe, President Clinton urges the continuation of peace efforts in Northern Ireland where longstanding conflict between Irish Protestants and Catholics escalated to violence over issues of economic and political autonomy.
Failure to reach an agreement leads to the shut-down of certain parts of the federal government, furloughing more than a quarter of a million government workers.
With this new power, Clinton can veto specific items in spending and tax bills without vetoing the entire measure. President Clinton vetoes a bill that would have outlawed certain types of late-term abortions, namely the partial birth abortion.
The Clinton administration comes under increasing criticism in its second term for these alleged violations. President Clinton announces that American troops will likely remain in Bosnia as the major component of an international peacekeeping force for an additional eighteen months. In the first trial to result from the Whitewater investigation, Jim and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker--Clinton's friends and former business partners in the Whitewater affair--are convicted of fraud.
President Clinton signs a health care reform bill that he expects to expand coverage for many Americans. The measure specifically allows workers who change or lose their jobs to keep their health insurance coverage. President Clinton signs a welfare reform bill that radically restructures the American welfare system. The act contained several provisions expressing the necessity of work, the primacy of states, and, ultimately, limited government provision.
No longer entitled to cash assistance, families could only receive federal aid for a total of five years. States now would receive fixed block grants each year with substantial discretion over how to distribute them. The act also made many legal immigrants ineligible to receive public benefits and reduced spending on the Food Stamp Program and disability benefits for children.
To make it easier for needy parents to work, the act increased funding for child-care. During the campaign, Bill Clinton had campaigned with a promise to reform welfare. He believed that the support stemming from housing subsidies, food stamps, and cash grants to needy families had served to erode the values of independence and hard work. The government bore a dual responsibility, Clinton argued, to assist the truly needy while at the same time being frugal; moreover, he believed, it should help foster such positive character traits as thrift, autonomy, and self-respect.
Republicans were pleased with the spirit and letter of the act, although presidential candidate Senator Bob Dole thought GOP congressional support for any Clinton-approved measure might aid his opponent in the upcoming election.
At the same time, some Republicans found expansion of the day-care credit hard to accept. Even among adamant liberals, the themes underpinning the act-work and responsibility-were largely uncontroversial. Still critics found the treatment of legal immigrants repugnant and the absolute five-year time limit unreflective of an often complex reality.
Most of all, they faulted Clinton for failing to explain how a population with so much relative job inexperience, mental and physical disabilities, and poor educational training could find good jobs. President Clinton orders a cruise missile strike against Iraq after Saddam Hussein leads a siege against the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq.
An overwhelming majority of United Nations members, including the United States, agree to a treaty banning all nuclear weapons testing.
Clinton becomes the first Democratic President since Franklin Roosevelt to win reelection to a second term. After winning Senate confirmation, Albright is sworn in on January 23, , becoming the first women to hold the position. Allegations by Republicans and some Democrats of illegal fund raising by the Clinton White House spur the investigation.
The Senate ratifies the Chemical Weapons Convention, making illegal the production, acquisition, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons. It is one of the most ambitious arms agreements in history. The international treaty was originally signed at the United Nations in January , and it went into effect on April 29, Since the use of mustard gas in the trenches of World War I, chemical weaponry has held great potential for military scientists and posed a terrifying threat to troops and ordinary citizens.
The fall of the Soviet Union in the late s and early s led the United States to reduce nuclear stockpiles; but the deadly reality of chemical weapons took a back seat in the American public consciousness. A series of frightening events turned the public's attention back to chemical weapons. The release of poisonous gas into the Tokyo subway in left eleven people dead and more than five thousand injured, creating strong Japanese and international support for ratification of the CWC.
Disturbing reports that thousands of American veterans were suffering from painful and inexplicable illnesses suggested that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi military had used chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War. Finally, the new reality of terrorism-seen in the destruction of the Oklahoma City federal building and in the bombing of the World Trade Center-brought the potentially catastrophic danger of chemical weapons uncomfortably closer to home.
When the Senate finally ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention on April 25, , it endorsed what had truly been a bipartisan effort. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush first negotiated and signed the convention, but President Clinton had struggled to secure its ratification, which bogged down in the Senate. His difficulty arose, in part, because many feared the United States would put itself at a comparative disadvantage in relation to its adversaries.
Troubles also stemmed from the Democrats loss of control over both the House and the Senate in As the deadline for pre-approval approached, President Bill Clinton increased his avid support of the treaty, going before Congress and addressing the American people directly to garner sufficient backing. The Clinton administration and Republican congressional leaders agree on principle to a five-year budget plan to eliminate the budget deficit. That goal would be accomplished, largely due to the strong economy of recent years.
In a decision affecting both the scope of presidential power and the immediate future of the Clinton presidency, the Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton, even while he is in office.
President Clinton signs legislation providing for a balanced budget by , ending years of partisan wrangling between Clinton and Republican leaders. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in following the revelation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but was acquitted by the Senate in Since leaving office, Clinton has worked with the Clinton Foundation and campaigned for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton , in the and presidential elections.
To provide for her son, Virginia moved to New Orleans, Louisiana to study anesthesiology, while Clinton stayed with his grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy. While opposites in many ways — Eldridge was easygoing and Edith the disciplinarian — both lavished attention on the young boy, instilling in him the importance of a good education. I was reading little books when I was 3. Clinton's mother returned to Arkansas with her nursing degree in Later that year she married an automobile salesman named Roger Clinton, who soon moved the family back to his hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Clinton then took the last name of his stepfather. Although neither his parents nor his grandparents were religious, Clinton became a devoted Baptist from a very young age. On Sunday mornings, he woke himself up, put on his best dress clothes and walked the mile to Park Place Baptist Church to attend services alone.
Throughout his childhood, Clinton grew increasingly disturbed by his stepfather's drinking and abusive behavior toward his mother and younger half-brother. At the age of 14, already standing more than 6 feet tall, Clinton finally snapped. He told his stepfather, "If you want them, you'll have to go through me. Clinton attended Hot Springs High School, a segregated all-white school, where he was a stellar student and a star saxophonist for the school band.
The principal of Hot Springs High, Johnnie Mae Mackey, placed a special emphasis on producing students devoted to public service, and she developed a strong bond with the smart and politically-inclined Clinton. In late spring , Clinton attended Boys State, an American Legion program designed to introduce students to government service.
Kennedy at the White House Rose Garden. A photograph of the young Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy has become an iconic image symbolizing a passing of the baton between generations of modern Democratic leadership. William Fulbright. Upon graduating from high school in , Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University to study international affairs.
He immediately thrust himself into university politics, serving as the president of his freshman and sophomore classes, though he lost the election for student body president as a junior. The political hopeful also began working as a clerk for the Foreign Relations Committee under Senator Fulbright, one of Congress' most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War.
Clinton came to share Fulbright's view that the war was both immoral and contrary to the country's best interests. Before graduating from Georgetown in , Clinton won a highly prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study for two years at Oxford University.
However, in the spring of , Clinton received his draft notice and was forced to return to Arkansas. Clinton avoided military service by enrolling in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School, but instead of attending law school that fall, he returned to Oxford and later claimed he had permission to do so. Feeling guilty about his decision to avoid the draft, Clinton resubmitted his name to the draft board, but he received a high enough lottery number to assure that he would not have to serve in Vietnam.
Clinton returned to the U. After graduating from Yale, the Clintons moved to Arkansas. Clinton began teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville and thrust himself into politics. House of Representatives. Clinton lost the race, but it was closer than expected, and the campaign marked him as a rising star of the Arkansas Democratic Party.
Two years later, Clinton was elected state attorney general. Two years later, he was elected governor. In , at the age of 32, Clinton easily defeated Republican Lynn Lowe in the Arkansas gubernatorial race to become the youngest governor in the country. He served one term before he was defeated by the incumbent; he was voted again to the governorship in and served for four consecutive terms.
Working closely with his wife, Hillary, in his first term as governor Clinton set out on an ambitious agenda to reform the state's education and health care systems. However, hampered by his youth and political inexperience, he made several blunders as governor. Clinton mishandled the riots by Cuban refugees interned at Fort Chaffee and instituted a highly unpopular fee hike on auto licenses. At the time, Arkansas governors served only two-year terms, and at the conclusion of Clinton's term in a little-known Republican challenger named Frank White shockingly knocked him out of office.
Although the loss devastated Clinton, he refused to let it put an end to his promising political career. Freely admitting his past mistakes and beseeching voters to give him a second chance, Clinton swept back into office, this time for four consecutive terms. As governor, Clinton took a centrist approach, championing a mix of traditionally liberal and conservative causes. Appointing Hillary to head a committee on education reform, he instituted more rigorous educational standards and established competence tests for teachers.
Clinton also championed affirmative action, appointing record numbers of African Americans to key government positions. That fall, Clinton lost his bid for re-election as governor. Afterward, he joined a Little Rock law firm. In , he won the governorship again, and would remain in that office through After winning the Democratic presidential nomination in , Clinton, along with vice-presidential nominee Al Gore , a U.
A third-party candidate, Ross Perot , captured almost 19 percent of the popular vote. Clinton was inaugurated in January at age 46, making him the third-youngest president in history up to that time. During his first term, Clinton enacted a variety of pieces of domestic legislation, including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Violence Against Women Act, along with key bills pertaining to crime and gun violence, education, the environment and welfare reform.
He put forth measures to reduce the federal budget deficit and also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated trade barriers between the United States, Canada and Mexico. He attempted to enact universal health insurance for all Americans, and appointed first lady Hillary Clinton to head the committee charged with creating the plan. Clinton appointed a number of women and minorities to key government posts, including Janet Reno , who became the first female U.
In , the administration brokered the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. Clinton ran for re-election in and defeated U. Senator Bob Dole of Kansas by a margin of electoral votes and with Third-party candidate Ross Perot garnered 8. In , the president signed legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations with China. Additionally, the Clinton administration helped broker a peace accord in Northern Ireland in On December 19, , the U.
House of Representatives impeached him for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a sexual relationship he had with White House intern Monica Lewinsky between late and early On February 12, , the U. Senate acquitted the president of the charges and he remained in office.
Clinton was the second American president to be impeached. The first, Andrew Johnson , was impeached in and also later acquitted. Clinton Foundation to combat poverty, disease and other global issues. The William J.
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