[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
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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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