This is a long, well written, and generally accurate summary of the emergence of the GOWT. However, there is one significant problem with the presentation. The events that led up to the failed raid in Mogadischu had nothing to do with US benevolence and lots to do with UN politics. Under the first UN charter for Somalia actions (UNOSOM I) the emphasis was on establishing and protecting a famine relief and food distribution system in Somalia. This was executed in a fashion to be a text book model for such international humaitarian actions. There were some brief attempts by Clan gangs to defend their protection racket turf but these came to a very abrupt end due to US firepower.
The second UN charter for Somalia (UNOSOM II) was a very differnet matter. It directed UN forces to engage in the establishment of a new Somali government and to enforce the peace, i.e. disarm and overawe the clans being cut out of the power loop. There is god reason to believe the whole operation was carefully orchestrated by UN Sec Gen Butthead Galli to serve the interests of certain Somali groups that the Boutros family had financial and business ties to probably stretching back to when khedival Egypt attempteed to establish control of Somalia in the late 1860s.
This arrangement had US forces being used as the military strike force for the enforcement of some deeply covert corrupt bargain by a group of wealthy third world political hacks. Certain groups were designated 'enemies of peace' and the US contingent conducted a sort of long distance war on these clans in Mog by using TOW missiles fired from Blackhawks all through the May to September 1993 time frame.
The rest of the UNOSOM II force was almost all third world militaries and notable for their corruption, cowardice, and incompetence. Thier behavior towards the Somalis only confirmed Somali hatred for the UN and contempt for its forces.
The actual events that set off the Battle of Mog was a TOW bombardment of a clan jirga that was trying to come up with some offer that would satisfy the UNOSOM civilian bureacrats and preserve the economic and political position of those clans not favored by UNOSOM(and Butthead). This was followed by an attempt to do an insertion capture by Rangers of a clan leader opposed to UNOSOM. The plan for this operation was so tactically flawed that an ROTC student could have predicted that it had a high risk of not failure but disaster. Insertion by a handfull of copters and link up with a convoy of thin skinned vehicles to traverse a large maze like third world city seething with rage at UNOSOM was just an astonishingly stupid concept. It has never been clarified how much of the emphasis for this operation came from the US military command structure in Somalia and how much was a result of (a) apple polishing by several general with UNOSOM II bureaucrats and (b) pressure from the White House and the SEC Def to accede to what ever idiocy the UN pukes wanted done.
In passing in the Hall of Somalia Shame a prominent place has to be given to SEC Def ASpin and his coterie for refusing dispatch of heavy force units to Somalia as we virtually went to war with the Somalis in the summer and refusing to keep an AC-130 gunship actually deployed forward to the airbase at MOG but only keeping it back in Nairobi. The rationale for these negative decisions was that to do so would have made it appear the US was being agressive.
So there you have it. Expose lightly protected US forces to the wrath of hosts of warlike barbarians after we have engendered their wrath by a campaign of air to ground missile bombardment. And do this because of a liberal public relations oriented mindset. And do all of this order to show how willing we are to put American soldiers in harm's way for the benefit of a bunch of corrupt worthless UN politicains working their own private agenda.
No the Battle of Mog wasn't because we were the forces of virtue riding to combat some sort of awful nasty backward evil. It was because we were used by the crapulose UN to fight to sustain the hidden agenda of a corrupt man against hosts of fierce and warlike barbarians who mostly only wanted tobe fierce, warlike, and brutal among themselves in their own godforsaken country.
20 posted on 03/24/2004 9:27:31 AM EST by robowombat [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Al Gore's fraudulent dithering and dissembling in Florida in November and December of 2000 did in my mind, without a doubt, embolden the terrorists to believe that Bush was weak, and stupid, and that their attack would destroy him and this country.
Clinton deserves as much blame as the right can heap upon him, but the Florida debacle and its role in 911 is Al Gore's legacy.