Word: somalia
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Clinton's confident morning-after quarterbacking masked the fact that the raid was an effort to bolster a seriously flagging U.N. effort. The U.S., when it dominated the Somalia operation, had done little to squelch the warlords permanently, and the U.N.'s subsequent buildup had proceeded slowly. A promised contingent of 7,000 troops, including 4,000 from India, never arrived. As the weeks gave way to months, says Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy during the opening phases of Operation Restore Hope, "we kept telling Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali we were leaving, but he wouldn't take it seriously...
...military operations go, the air attacks proved relatively painless. They were fast, accurate, and there were no allied casualties. But beyond venting anger at the U.N. killings, it was hard to see that Washington had moved much closer to cleaning up Somalia. Pentagon officials told TIME that a follow-up % attack on Aidid's stronghold in the city of Galkaio will soon follow. Until and unless the warlord is captured, Clinton will be unable to call it a mission accomplished...
...Somalia is not the only country to which U.S. forces are being dispatched -- President Clinton also announced last week that he would send 300 soldiers to precariously positioned Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic, to serve as a deterrent against a Serbian invasion. While the small contingent seemed trivial, Secretary of State Warren Christopher insisted the deployment of troops to Macedonia showed that "our moral authority is intact...
...struck back at the forces of General Mohammed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The raids, the first of which began shortly before dawn on Saturday, were in retaliation for a series of attacks on June 5, in which 23 U.N. peacekeepers were killed. In his regular Saturday-morning radio broadcast, President Clinton said that the action was "essential to send a clear message to the armed gangs." That message was pounded home shortly after midnight on Sunday when a second air assault fired on an area near Aidid's private compound...
...choice. Perhaps the most divisive question about the use of military force is the concept of the "moral war," where the use of the military is constructed as a force of compassion. The "moral war" has coaxed typically liberal and anti-interventionist people into advocating militarism, most recently in Somalia and Bosnia. However dire the situations may be in these two countries, even a cursory examination in each case reveals that the moral high ground the United States takes is inconsistent with its policy. The United States went into Somalia to help starving people, yet the United States...