its course of rhetoric and apathy. Why did the Clinton administration choose to abandon such an aggressive posture? Again, the answer is political. As Zimmerman agues in his piece, Bill Clinton could not disagree with the Pentagon for various reasons. He had no military record and was seen as a draft dodger to most of the brass at the Department of Defense who had more than likely served in Viet Nam. Second, he took on the military establishment by trying to get homosexuals into the military. Finally, the Clinton administrations position with all matters of international conflict for the next two years seemed to be rather distasteful of using the military to s!Solve the problem. Clintons approach was to negotiate a peace... not enforce it.The Clinton administration as well as the Congress and American press clearly identified the Serbs as the aggressors and the Bosnians as the victims. After all, it was the Bosnian Serbs lead by Faradic who claimed sections of Bosnia to be Serb territory and to withdraw Serb members of the Bosnian government and form a new government. Additionally, it was the Serbs who began the ethnic cleansing of the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia. The Serbs were the ones supplying the Bosnian Serb army and the Yugoslav army, which was beating the Bosnian army into the ground. Still, the use of force was not a serious option.The goal of the international community, the EC. And the United States was to solve the conflicts in the Balkans through peaceful means yet everything that they did seemed to cause more conflict. One plan that was does canonize the various regions in Bosnia along ethnic lines. However, the EC insisted that whatever plan was reached had to be put on the ballot for a referendum. The Serbs argued that the Croats and Muslims would naturally outvote the Serbs in favor of a unified, independent Bosnia. In February of 1992, the EC and United States sponsored a summit in Lisbon where the par...
