[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
            THE MEANING OF THE UNITED STATES ROLE IN SOMALIA

                                 ______


                          HON. JAMES V. HANSEN

                                of utah

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 24, 1994

  Mr. HANSEN. Mr. Speaker, in just over 1 week, the last of the 
American contingent in Somalia will leave that troubled land. It is a 
deployment that, in my judgment, should never have been made.
  The initial policy of the Bush administration to halt the starvation 
of the Somali people eventually led to the nation-building policy of 
the United Nations which was sanctioned by the Clinton administration. 
For a time, the military excesses of rival warlords, which were 
responsible for the depth of the starvation of the Somali people, were 
tempered. Now, with the withdrawal of American and other forces, the 
chance of a return to the chaotic desperation which led to the 
intervention is rated a mere tossup.
  Fritz Wirth, writing in the March 17 edition of Die Welt, has 
summarized the disaster of United States policy in Somalia from a 
German perspective. A translated copy of his article follows my 
remarks. Wirth notes two major effects of our policy in Somalia. First, 
the United States experience in Somalia has made the Nation even more 
reluctant to commit United States forces abroad for an uncertain 
purpose. Second, Somalia exposed the inadequacies of the United Nations 
in dealing with complicated peacekeeping operations.
  Wirth asserts that this has ramifications for United States policy in 
Bosnia. I agree. The Nation is hesitant and ambivalent about the 
President's policy in Bosnia and his willingness to commit thousands of 
United States troops to enforce what is likely to be a tenuous peace. 
The existing U.N. peacekeeping effort in Bosnia, if the March 13 
incident at Bihac is any indication, is far from being an effective 
deterrent to breaches of the peace.
  Mr. Speaker, there are lessons to be learned from the experience in 
Somalia. The question is whether the President is attentive to them.

                   [From the Die Welt, Mar. 17, 1994]

         Daily Discusses Somalia Disaster, United States Policy

                            (By Fritz Wirth)

       Bertrand Russell once wrote that ``extreme hopes are 
     children of extreme misery.'' For George Bush, this statement 
     turned into an order 15 months ago. He sent 26,000 U.S. 
     troops to Somalia for Operation Restore Hope to stop one of 
     the world's most terrible famines. More than 2,000 people 
     used to die each day under the eyes of a world that had 
     basically been standing idly by until then.
       Hunger has been defeated. These days, the last U.S. troops 
     are leaving the country. Still, what remains is not 
     gratitude, hope, and relief, but a question mark, fear, and 
     foreboding. These troops are leaving as the refugees of an 
     ``impossible mission.'' Nothing shows the dubious and 
     problematic nature of their withdrawal more clearly than the 
     recent hasty Somalia mission by Chief of Staff Shalikashvili. 
     It was a psychological morale-boosting trip, intended to 
     dispel the feeling among the withdrawing soldiers that they 
     are pulling out as losers.
       Nevertheless, it remains a withdrawal without a victory 
     parade and the most dismal, most dubious, and most 
     dissatisfying U.S. military disengagement since the pullout 
     of Beirut 11 years ago. The tragic price of the Operation 
     Restore Hope are 37 dead and 181 wounded U.S. Soldiers. It 
     was this price and not the fulfillment of the high hopes that 
     dictated the order to end Operation Restore Hope.
       As noble and urgent the motives for this operation have 
     been--it was an operation of aberrations from the very 
     beginning. It started with George Bush's extreme hopes that 
     he could successfully end the operation even before the end 
     of his presidency, that is to say within six weeks. It 
     reveals that these 26,000 troops were sent to Somalia on the 
     basis of a most deficient appreciation of the situation. 
     Officials in Washington saw the hungry people, but not the 
     political reasons behind them.
       When, after a few months, the insufficient limits of the 
     mission were recognized, the new administration under Clinton 
     made the second embarrassing mistake. It handed over the U.S. 
     Troops to the military and political incompetence of the UN 
     bureaucracy. The United Nation's hunt for clan leader Aidid 
     turned into a farce and finally a tragedy, when the dead 
     bodies of U.S. troops were dragged through the streets of 
     Mogadishu. The resulting order for the withdrawal of the U.S. 
     forces was not determined by strategic and political 
     considerations, but exclusively by emotions that were fueled 
     by these grueling scenes.
       It was a fatal and far-reaching decision. All European 
     nations immediately followed with the withdrawal of their UN 
     peace corps members. What remains are 20,000 UN soldiers, 
     whose main contingent is provided by Pakistan, badly equipped 
     and incompetently led. They will be at the mercy of a new 
     looming civil war. And this new civil war also threatens to 
     bring back starvation. In other words: Operation Restore Hope 
     was in great probability not a mission of salvation but one 
     of suspended chaos. The self-complacent tribute Bill Clinton 
     paid yesterday to the returning U.S. troops describing them 
     as great winners had a rather embarrassing touch.
       After all, the real tragedy in Somalia is that the clan 
     leaders are now stronger than before this folded 
     intervention. They have become legends as a result of their 
     resistance to the powerful United States. This is also why 
     they saw no reason to make any concessions in the efforts to 
     achieve political and diplomatic solutions for the Somalia 
     conflict in Nairobi and Cairo in the past few months. Thus, 
     in Somalia, the signals continue point to confrontation.
       However, the consequences of this operation go far beyond 
     Somalia. They became visible over the past few months in 
     places as far away as Haiti and Bosnia. Somalia defined the 
     limits of U.S. military commitment of ground operations and 
     direct enemy contact. The readiness to take risks in such 
     operations has further decreased as a result of Somalia. At 
     the same time, it exposed the limits to military leadership 
     and strategy at the level of the highly overtaxed United 
     Nations. What remains in Somalia is a minimum of hope and the 
     distressing danger of new extreme misery.

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