Word: somalia
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...have dawned with the fall of the Berlin Wall? Not a perfect world by any means, but at least a world more likely to harmonize might with right. A world in which the U.S. might finally pursue good intentions abroad uncontaminated by considerations of national interest or ideology. Somalia seemed to herald the day. The Marine landing at Mogadishu last December was the most unalloyed, most unprecedented example of humanitarian intervention in memory, perhaps in history...
...much for the fantasy. We waded ashore in Somalia to feed the hungry. Now our gunships hover over Mogadishu shooting rockets into crowded villas. Blue- helmeted U.N. troops, once a symbol of ineffectiveness but at least innocuousness, now fire into a crowd of demonstrators. At least 20 women and children die. The Security Council stoutly defends the massacre...
...Somalia the paradox returns. There is no such thing as just feeding the hungry, if what's keeping them from eating is not crop failure but vandalism and thuggery. One has first to destroy the vandals and the thugs. In a country racked by civil war, what starts with feeding ends with killing. There is no immaculate intervention...
...other illusion to die in Somalia has to do with the United Nations. The U.N. has become the all-purpose ambulance service for bleeding countries. From Cambodia to Bosnia, blue hats have been sent not only to observe an already existing peace as in cold war days but also to bring peace where peace does not yet exist. In Somalia, to force peace...
Consider the current disarray of U.N. forces in Somalia. The Italians have the third largest contingent assigned to the U.N. force. But the operation in which they lost three soldiers was reportedly not authorized by, not even known to, the U.N. commander in Somalia. And when the Italian commander subsequently received an order from his ostensible U.N. superior, he refused to obey. He would take his instructions from Rome, he said. The U.N. demanded that the Italian commander be relieved. Italy refused and threatened to pull out altogether...