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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JEB who wrote (43148)	8/24/2002 5:57:57 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 50167

This Somalian issue is a very pertinent point in present day politics of opportunism and appeasement in connection with intervention and defence of USA on the exterior frontiers, the policy of the nipping the enemy in the bud not until they make an attempt or are able to plan. Even liberals raise the charges that ''US military activism today is an attempt to install global hegemony.'' The insular instincts of USA are encouraged. Most Americans missed the chain of events that occurred in between the feeding of the starving Somalis and US soldiers being dragged through the streets. For them, "Black Hawk Down" became a lesson in the virtues of non-intervention. Do-goodism had never taken a heavier blow. In my opinion military activism Somalian experience taught the world is the only route to weed out terrorism!! Half hearted measures lead to disasters that encourages rouge elements. This small story will fill you in what happened then and how sincere US efforts were to help starving Somalia… A excerpt from Guardian story .... <<Somalia would be the case to disprove such charges. Responding to pleas from the UN and humanitarian agencies, Bush dispatched more than 20,000 US troops (mostly marines) to open up Somalia's ports for food shipments and deliver food to the starving nation's interior. There were no national interests at stake. Any abstract value Somalia might have had in the global chess games of the cold war had collapsed with the Berlin wall. This was a purely selfless act, one without precedent in American history, and one that saved hundreds of thousands of Somali lives. It was seen as an example of how America's unrivalled military power could be used not just for fighting wars but for performing good deeds. At that point in early 1993, with Bush leaving office and Bill Clinton moving into the White House, most Americans tuned out of Somalia. Most western reporters left the country, and Americans stopped reading about it on their front pages and seeing reports from there on the evening news. The UN began trying to end the futile civil war, pressuring the vying warlords to form a coalition government. In the spring of that year, as the marines withdrew, the long, undramatic task of peacekeeping was turned over to an international force. Mohamed Farah Aidid, the most powerful Somali warlord, began his offensive against his rivals and the UN on the day after the marines' withdrawal. In June, his militia ambushed and slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers, mutilating and displaying their bodies. The UN declared Aidid an outlaw and, using troops (and US helicopters) ill-equipped for such a mission, began trying to track him down. The UN raids resulted in many Somali deaths, which had the effect of uniting Aidid's clan behind him. So when Clinton reluctantly agreed in August to send Task Force Ranger, an elite force of commandos backed by US Army Rangers, to accomplish the job more professionally, the stage was set for "Black Hawk Down". Most Americans missed the chain of events that occurred in between the feeding of the starving Somalis and US soldiers being dragged through the streets. For them, "Black Hawk Down" became a lesson in the virtues of nonintervention. Do-goodism had never taken a heavier blow. It helped explain why the US actually lobbied against acting to end the genocide in Rwanda three years later, and why Clinton hesitated for so long before using force to end Serbian "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and Kosovo. The apparent lesson of Somalia was that tragedies in faraway places were deeply rooted in often unfathomable local politics and history. Intervention was dangerous and ultimately futile. It also helps to explain why Clinton failed to act more aggressively against Osama bin Laden and his cohorts as they preached and then mounted escalating acts of violence against Americans around the world.>> Every soldier who fought in Somalia was responsible for saving many lives from starvation and certain death. This is the best tribute to a fallen soldier to die in service of mankind for a nation the did not know, they just wanted to save Somalian from crutches of anarchy, that what makes USA so special, neither Europe nor USSR had this moral authority even if they had power..