Word: somalia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...errant NATO bomb. That is a rerun of the scene from Mogadishu in 1993, when Somalis dragged a G.I.'s body through the streets of their capital. The searing footage, the result of a helicopter assault gone awry, turned Capitol Hill and the American public against the humanitarian Somalia mission overnight. That's what haunts the Clinton team as it struggles to attain victory in Kosovo. "Downed helicopters and dead pilots," an Army officer said last week, "scare this Administration to death...
...believe anyone is crazy enough to advocate the use of NATO ground troops to push the Serb military out of Kosovo. This sort of thinking demonstrates that we haven't learned a thing from Vietnam, Somalia and a hundred other similar situations. Superior firepower has created an illusion in the American mind that warfare can be swift, efficient and relatively bloodless. Fighting the Serbs on the terrain of Kosovo will be bloody, ugly and long lasting. If the politicians are so gung-ho to sacrifice our sons and daughters, let them be the first ones on the battlefield. GREG SAMSON...
Tactically, the U.S. military is at a disadvantage when an enemy won't fight on its terms. Iraq, with its tanks and warplanes, was probably the last foe to make that mistake. The death of 18 U.S. Army troops in Somalia in 1993 showed the perils of fighting a primitive foe. Even though some 500 Somalis died in the battle, the fight was seen as a defeat for the U.S., which withdrew shortly thereafter. Milosevic was the first test case following the Gulf War in which an enemy could choose, more or less, to try to engage...
...SOMALIA...
...there you have it, finally, a concise summation of the Clinton foreign policy of the '90s: the Clinton Doctrine. From the President's "nation building" escalation in Somalia to the invasion of Haiti, to the diplomatic capital spent on the Irish and Middle East peace processes, to the occupation of Bosnia and now fatefully to the bombing of Serbia in defense of Kosovo, we have the core of how the Clinton Administration sees the world and what the U.S. should be doing...