The peace crusade Peace is a hard sell, especially in Bosnia, especially to U S troops, especially by Bill Clinton Our correspondent reports the worries of army men and women as they depart Germany for a year in war-torn Bosnia The troops gave their biggest cheer to Mr Clinton's promise of robust rules of engagement
Kelly, Mary Pat
Mary Pat Kelly THE PEACE CRUSADE On the road with Clinton On a cold and foggy December 2,1995, President Bill Clinton told the 4,000 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division lined up in military...
...troops to Bosnia...
...An ugly iron bridge has replaced it [see cover...
...Risk-taking for peace is harder to sell...
...Smith ordered the rescue in which sixty men put themselves at risk to bring one home...
...Boutros Boutros-Ghali, head of the UN, invoked the "commonweal" three times...
...Later conversations with some of the soldiers made clear that they did not cheer heavy weapons out of a surging militarism, but because they had feared they would be asked to forgo self-protection in favor of the politically motivated restraint many imagined had hamstrung the UN peacekeepers...
...I followed the story of that little girl [Zlata Filopvic] from Sarejevo who wrote the diary...
...It is dusk and the winter darkness blurs the ruins...
...Start out on the autobahn in the morning and you can be in Sarajevo by night...
...With his back to the iron bridge, he paints the old bridge from memory...
...One twenty-year-old soldier welcomed the chance to go to the aid of Bosnian children...
...Smith will be in charge of the largest ground force sent into action in Europe since World War II...
...Calling them "iron soldiers," Clinton evoked the division's nickname, Old Ironside, and the generations who served on World War II battlefields in North Africa and Italy, on the front line of the cold war, and more recently in Desert Storm...
...More than 250,000 killed and 2 million displaced, in just three years...
...Twenty-five nations, including the Russians, are sending troops for the 60,000-member force united under one command...
...Speaking in Paris, President Clinton wondered why skeptics were so sure "that Balkan hearts were too hard for peace...
...What they really want to talk about is the unprecedented military task about to be undertaken...
...Behind the troops in more random formations stood families...
...As eloquently as the president spoke of peace, he got cheers only when he promised that the force would be heavily armed, and have "robust" rules of engagement...
...He is serving the commonweal...
...This time America summoned them "not with a call to war but a call to peace...
...A Navy jet pilot himself, he is the man who refused to give up on finding Captain Scott Grady, shot down by the Serbs in June 1995...
...But," he went on, "I do want you to go there on a mission of peace...
...Admiral Leighton W. Smith, the NATO commander, will take over command from General Bernard Janiver, who headed the UN peacekeeping forces...
...He pounded the podium as he extolled the Irish for never refusing peacekeeping duties because their national interest was not at stake...
...For many, the army was a job-more opportunity than the depressed economies of their hometowns or the mean streets of the city offered...
...Bosnia-Herzegovina may sound more exotic than Rome or Athens, but it is closer to Baumholder than either city...
...Alternating with reports on the pageantry and speeches there were reports on the lukewarm support represented by the votes of Senate and House in Washington...
...A good offense still seemed the best defense...
...Here gathered under NATO command were countries who had long been enemies now working together for peace...
...Do Americans hesitate to back the president because the call to peace is more elusive than the call to war...
...They were sending their babies home to their parents for the duration...
...They would help implement a peace accord signed by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia...
...They need that help," the president explained, "because after nearly four years of terrible brutality, trust is in short supply in Bosnia, and they will trust you to do the job right...
...the soldiers of the 1st Armored Division are on their way to help him in this endeavor...
...Raise such situations with their officers and they are impatient to assure reporters that they are working on the child-care situation...
...Indeed, the very fact of this coalition might itself be the best deterrent against future conflicts...
...National interest measured in dollars or oil could not be the only motivation for sending U.S...
...The word peace echoed through this small part of America set up like a toy town under the Christmas trees of the German forest...
...Women jiggled strollers, little boys played tag, and, because this is the new army, husbands held babies who, after the speech, would be nursed by their corporal and sergeant mothers...
...He had met her at Dublin airport after two days in Northern Ireland where the crowds in Belfast and Derry celebrated the crucial role he played in a peace many imagined never could come "in our lifetime...
...He won't even know me," one said sadly...
...It's historic...
...At Baumholder, the soldiers accepted this, if they could shoot when threatened...
...army base in Baumholder, Germany: "For three years, I refused to send our American forces into Bosnia where they could have been pulled into war...
...The trip from Baumholder to Mostar in Western Bosnia takes less than a day...
...War raging in the heart of Europe" could not be tolerated...
...Did they ever expect to go into a combat situation...
...On December 14, the peace accord was signed in Paris...
...Nobody walks through the once-teeming streets...
...The kind of thugs who wreaked havoc in Bosnia, in what a worker with the International Rescue Committee called "a war of opportunity," cannot be allowed to kill and rape with impunity...
...Clinton had mentioned Zlata in his speech...
...No one wanted to be killed, that was not what they'd signed up for...
...In Dublin, as if refuting his critics back home, Clinton had departed from his prepared remarks at a press conference with Prime Minister John Bruton...
...No," said three young mothers, part of a support unit heading to Tuzla for a year...
...In South Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland, he said, people are "turning from hatred to hope...
...Through the door a man is working at an easel...
...Clinton asked for God's grace...
...he assured the troops that "when America comes to help make the peace, America will look after its own...
...Traditionally, nations have set armies marching by screaming for the blood of their enemies...
...Yet within weeks, these mothers and fathers would kiss their children good-by and go to the worst killing fields in Europe since World War II...
...The glass front of one small shop has been replaced...
...Mary Pat Kelly, writer and filmmaker, traveled with the press corps covering President Clinton's visits to Ireland and Germany, from where she traveled to Croatia and Bosnia...
...The sixteenth-century Mostar bridge, along with the old town's unique Turkish architecture, was shelled and destroyed during the fighting...
...He has already made his mark with the troops...
...Kids shouldn't have to face stuff like that...
...Mary Pat Kelly THE PEACE CRUSADE On the road with Clinton On a cold and foggy December 2,1995, President Bill Clinton told the 4,000 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division lined up in military order on the parade ground of the U.S...
...We are all servants of the commonweal," he said...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 1
