“Our troops created a secure environment so that food and medicine could get through. We saved close to one million lives. And throughout most of Somalia, life began returning to normal. Nearly a million Somalis still depend completely on relief supplies, but at least the starvation is gone. And none of this would have happened without American leadership and America's troops.

“Let us demonstrate to the world, as generations of Americans have done before us, that when Americans take on a challenge, they do the job right.”

But members of Congress demanded a withdrawal. A few days after the battle, President Clinton ordered American troops to leave Somalia within six months.

(MUSIC)

In nineteen ninety-four, President Clinton sent troops to Haiti to return that country's first democratically elected leader to office. Military officers had overthrown President Jean-Bertrand Aristide three years earlier. That crisis led thousands of Haitian refugees to try to flee to the United States by boat.

(MUSIC)

In nineteen ninety-five, American diplomatic efforts -- as well as NATO airstrikes -- helped produce a peace agreement to end the long and bloody civil war in Bosnia. President Clinton sent American peacekeeping troops to the former Yugoslav republic.

In November of nineteen ninety-three, Congress approved NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement ended most import taxes between the United States, Canada and Mexico. It lowered barriers to the flow of goods, services and investments.