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President Clinton also had to deal with foreign and humanitarian crises.

BILL CLINTON: “A year ago, we all watched with horror as Somali children and their families lay dying by the tens of thousands, dying the slow, agonizing death of starvation, a starvation brought on not only by drought, but also by the anarchy that then prevailed in that country.”

President Bush had sent American troops to Somalia in nineteen ninety-two to assist the United Nations in feeding starving Somalis. Civil war was preventing the people from receiving aid during a drought.

U.S. Marines in Mogadishu, Somalia, in February 1993

In October of nineteen ninety-three, eighteen American soldiers were killed in a battle in Mogadishu. It happened during a failed raid on a hotel to search for a militia leader.

BILL CLINTON: “This past weekend we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of our American soldiers and displayed a captured American pilot, all of them soldiers who were taking part in an international effort to end the starvation of the Somali people themselves.

“These tragic events raise hard questions about our effort in Somalia. Why are we still there? What are we trying to accomplish? How did a humanitarian mission turn violent? And when will our people come home?

“These questions deserve straight answers. Let's start by remembering why our troops went into Somalia in the first place. We went because only the United States could help stop one of the great human tragedies of this time. A third of a million people had died of starvation and disease. Twice that many more were at risk of dying. Meanwhile, tons of relief supplies piled up in the capital of Mogadishu because a small number of Somalis stopped food from reaching their own countrymen.