President Bush's decision to intervene in Somalia during his final months in office was both noble and prudent. The pictures of American troops feeding starving Somali children in refugee camps made us all proud to be citizens of this great country. And our narrowly defined mission, to prevent the mass starvation of millions of Somalis, allowed the military an opportunity for a quick withdrawal from this chaotic nation.
Quite simply put, as a general rule the international community should not sit idly by while leaders of nations are directly or indirectly pursuing a policy of genocide against their own people. The United States, whenever possible, should organize and lead multilateral efforts to enforce minimum standards of international conduct. Bush's rationale for the Somali intervention fit this principle quite nicely.
Unfortunately, President Clinton's Somali policy, to the extent he has had one, has neither been as clear nor as successful as his predecessor's. No longer is our sole mission to establish a safe environment for the distribution of food in Somalia. Now, it is the job of the United States, following orders from United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to organize the political reconstruction of the country and apprehend the now infamous fugitive warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
While President Bush originally set Inauguration Day as a target date for ending U.S. involvement in Somalia, the United Nations last week decided for U.S. that March 1995 would be the deadline for our withdrawal.
Every week we read of more Marines and Army Rangers being killed or wounded in Somalia. Just last Saturday, Somali militiamen shot down a U.S. helicopter with a rocket-launched grenade, killing three of our soldiers.
When we first arrived, grateful crowds in the city of Mogadishu gave American troops a hero's welcome. Last week, when our helicopter was destroyed, celebratory Somalis surrounded the wreckage and tore off pieces of our dead men's flesh in their excitement.
One can only ask, how could our mission have possibly gone so seriously off course? Unfortunately, the nation of Somalia has been in a state of anarchy for quite some time and any attempt to impose a political order on the country will be doomed to failure. There are no effective civil or political institutions upon which to reconstruct the nation's foundations.
As our mission gradually evolved from a humanitarian one to a political one due to Boutros-Ghali's delusions of grandeur, the Somali people began to rebel against foreign intervention into their political affairs. When warlord Aidid refused to cooperate with the United Nations effort to disarm the various Somali factions, Aidid's troops began to sporadically attack U.N. forces.
Instead of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Somalia and urging the U.N. to do the same, the Clinton administration, at this point, responded to a request from Boutros-Ghali and sent Army Rangers back into the Somali quagmire to arrest Aidid.
The operation to find Aidid has not been the U.S. military's finest hour. First, while eluding U.S. and U.N. forces, the fugitive Aidid has managed to give interviews to various news organizations including The New York Times and ABC's Nightline.
Second, our troops have actually pinpointed Aidid's location several times, but let him get away. One time, we knew that he was in a particular square in Mogadishu, but couldn't find him because all the Somalis supposedly looked alike dressed in their white robes.
And finally, a couple of weeks ago, U.S. Army Rangers mistakenly occupied the U.N.'s headquarters in Mogadishu under the cover of darkness, binding and gagging several U.N. relief workers under the false assumption that Aidid was in the building.
By unnecessarily broadening the scope of our intervention, Boutros-Ghali and his lackey Bill Clinton have doomed our Somali policy to failure. The continued presence of U.S. troops in Somalia to heal the nation's internal wounds is an exercise in futility. And while Aidid is an unsavory character who has committed serious crimes, his arrest is not an important enough matter to justify any further U.S. military involvement in Somalia. A free Aidid is certainly not a threat to our national interests and not much more of a danger to the Somali people than the other warlords in the country.
It is time that we cut our losses and immediately withdraw from Somalia. While we could have left months ago with our heads held high for a job well done, the U.S. will now have to shoulder its burden of the blame for following Boutros-Ghali's disastrous escalation of our involvement. But far better to suffer some embarrassment now than to watch the situation deteriorate, more of our men die, and our predicament become even more hopeless.
