Video: Olby plays softball with Hillary

Dear Ms. Clinton;

The following is the official U.S. Army analysis of the military mission in Somalia during your husbands administration;

The United States entered Somalia in December 1992 to stop the imminent starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. Although it succeeded in this mission, the chaotic political situation of that unhappy land bogged down U.S. and allied forces in what became, in effect, a poorly organized United Nations nation-building operation. In a country where the United States, perhaps naively, expected some measure of gratitude for its help, its forces received increasing hostility as they became more deeply embroiled into trying to establish a stable government. The military and diplomatic effort to bring together all the clans and political entities was doomed to failure as each subelement continued to attempt to out-jockey the others for supreme power. The Somali people were the main victims of their own leaders, but forty-two Americans died and dozens more were wounded before the United States and the United Nations capitulated to events and withdrew. American military power had established the conditions for peace in the midst of a famine and civil war, but, unlike later in Bosnia, the factions were not exhausted from the fighting and were not yet willing to stop killing each other and anyone caught in the middle. There was no peace to keep. The American soldier had, as always, done his best under difficult circumstances to perform a complex and often confusing mission. But the best soldiers in the world can only lay the foundation for peace; they cannot create peace itself.

Doesn’t your ‘new way forward’ in Iraq spell the same end for the Iraqi people as happened to the Somali people if we withdraw from Iraq?

Sincerely,
K.Oblypundit

http://www.army.mil/cmh/brochures/Somalia/Somalia.htm#p26

Limerick on January 25, 2007 at 12:34 AM