As President Biden visits Israel Wednesday, here’s a tour through the history of presidential visits to war zones—some of them covert, rash and even life-threatening.
President Abraham Lincoln visits the battlefield in Antietam, Md., with Allan Pinkerton, left, and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand on Oct. 3, 1862. on Wednesday as the Israeli military ramps up its response to the recent Hamas terrorist attack. It will be Biden’s second visit as president to an active war zone not under U.S. military control; heAs commander in chief of the U.S. military, presidents have always had a role to fill in wartime.
Lincoln made numerous battlefield visits during the Civil War, though the only time he ventured close enough to come under enemy fire was during his visit to Fort Stevens, on the northern side of the District of Columbia, on July 12, 1864.
Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to fly on an airplane during his secret 1943 trip to North Africa as World War II raged. While the media thought he was vacationing at his home in New York’s Hudson Valley, Roosevelt traveled by train to Miami, where he took a plane to Trinidad and Tobago, then to Brazil and Gambia before finally landing in Casablanca, Morocco, five days later.
In October 1966, as American support for the war in Vietnam began to wane, Lyndon B. Johnson made a surprise visit to U.S. forces at Cam Ranh Bay. Like Lincoln, Johnson was a tall guy and made himself a pretty easy target by getting close to the action,, even standing up in a Jeep to address the troops. Unlike Lincoln, he did not come under fire. Johnson made a second visit to Cam Ranh Bay the next year.Every president since Johnson has visited U.S. troops posted in conflict zones overseas.
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