Word: aidid
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Seven months later Clinton stunned some of the victims' families when he told them during an Oval Office meeting that he was surprised the soldiers were trying to apprehend warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. By then, he said, the U.S. was supposed to be emphasizing diplomacy over confrontation. "When the President has troops in combat, that must be his No. 1 priority, and he must be fully aware of what they're doing," Larry Joyce, whose son died in the fire fight, told TIME recently...
...troops invariably became the main targets. In Somalia, as the best- trained and -equipped contingent, the Americans tended to get the toughest missions: they were the ones ordered into risky ventures like nabbing Aidid. "When the U.S. commits significant numbers of troops to an operation," Flournoy says, "it must be prepared to play more than a supporting role and to be held accountable for the results." In Haiti, officials insist, U.S. troops will play a minimal role after the invasion -- but Americans could make up as much as half of that postinvasion force...
Some, no doubt, will be relieved to see a new hesitance on the part of the U.S. The credibility and competence of the world body has been found lacking in several ongoing operations. Serb forces have made a mockery of the U.N. in Bosnia, and General Aidid essentially forced the collapse of the U.N. mission in Somalia. For many, U.S. disattachment from the walking calamity that seems to be the U.N. can be nothing but good...
SOMALIA. When the U.N. branded warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid a criminal it intended to arrest, American troops spearheaded the effort to seize him. But then his forces killed 18 U.S. service members last October, prompting Clinton to announce that all American troops would go home within six months. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. provided a jet to fly Aidid to a meeting of clan chiefs trying to cobble together a new regime. The flip-flops angered Italy, which also had troops in Somalia. "The U.S. didn't know how to calibrate the use of force," says Italian Defense Minister Fabio Fabbri...
Determinedly immersed in domestic issues, the White House frequently displays a don't-bother-me attitude toward foreign affairs. Clinton was not even aware that the U.N. had decided to issue what amounted to a warrant for Aidid's arrest, for example. And the President, says a Washington official, "doesn't have any instinct about what plays abroad." Relations between the U.S. and India are normally prickly, but there was no need to irritate them further by letting more than a year go by without sending a U.S. ambassador to New Delhi (even now the expected choice, Under Secretary...