The making of a quagmire - Bill Clinton's foreign policy concerning Somalia

National Review, Nov 1, 1993 by Brit Hume

During the closing weeks of the Bush Administration, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger quietly flew to New York to confer with UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali. Eagleburger had to make two trips before Boutros-Ghali got the message, which was that the 28,000 U.S. troops Mr. Bush was sending to Somalia would be there only as long as it took to get relief supplies flowing to starving Somalis. The Secretary General had a more ambitious mission in mind. He wanted the U.S., as one senior Bush aide recalls, "to stick around until the UN had the whole thing stabilized." Mr. Bush, however, was keen to have the U.S. forces out by inauguration day. While Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell had warned him that might be impossible, Mr. Bush was very clear about keeping the mission focused and brief. "The point is," said the Bush aide, "we knew what we were not going to do." As things have turned out, what the Bush Administration knew it was not going to do is precisely what the Clinton Administration was gradually lured into doing. It is what led to the disastrous October 3 raid in which 17 Americans were killed or fatally wounded and which turned public opinion against Mr. Clinton more emphatically than anything else in his Presidency.

It was typical of Mr. Bush that he had sent a broad force to accomplish a narrow mission in a short time. His experience under a series of Republican Presidents had left him with strong views about the use of military force. The central conviction of his Presidency was that American power was a force for good in the world and that a President should not shrink from applying it. However, Mr. Bush agreed with General Powell that the amount of force used should be not merely adequate, but overwhelming. That, he believed, made for short missions with success guaranteed and casualties minimized. It is a lesson that Mr. Clinton only now seems to be learning. The day after the debacle in Mogadishu, he said ruefully, "None of this happened when we had 28,000 people there."

Mr. Bush also believed in defining missions clearly, and narrowly. Nobody in the Bush Administration had forgotten the 1983 Marine-barracks bombing in Beirut, after which the Reagan Administration had difficulty explaining what the Marines had been doing there. Thus Mr. Bush's determination during the Gulf War to go only as far as the UN resolutions authorized. Mr. Bush had also tried to keep the focus of his earlier Panama invasion narrow, insisting that catching Manuel Noriega was secondary to liberating the country. But the Noriega manhunt turned out to be enough of a cliffhanger that Mr. Bush and General Powell considered it proof of the danger of having U.S. forces play sheriff, the very thing that Mr. Clinton's shrunken U.S. force in Somalia ended up doing in trying to capture the elusive General Aidid.

The failure to apply the military doctrines of his predecessor only partly explains how Mr. Clinton came to grief in Somalia. Equally important was his Administration's enchantment with the do-good potential of the United Nations. On May 5, Mr. Clinton held a White House welcome-home ceremony for U.S. forces who, the day before, had turned the Somalia operation over to UN command. In one of the most spectacular photo-ops of his Presidency, Mr. Clinton, surrounded by a large contingent of U.S. soldiers in their desert fatigues, walked the length of the South Lawn toward the waiting cameras and microphones. "You have proved again," he told the troops, "that our involvement in multilateral efforts need not be open-ended nor ill-defined, that we can go abroad and accomplish some distinct objectives and then come home again when the mission is accomplished." Mr. Bush could not have said it better. But Mr. Clinton also said, "One can now envision a day when Somalia will be reconstructed as a functioning civil society." That, of course, was the nation-building cause for which Mr. Boutros-Ghali had failed six months earlier to enlist the United States. Eventually he would succeed.

Mr. Bush had agreed to support the continuing UN mission with non-combat logistical and communications units and to keep a rapid-response combat unit offshore for a while as back-up protection for UN forces. In early June, the warlord Aidid launched a series of bloody attacks on UN forces, including the killing of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers. The Administration had thought that by this time the UN force totaling more than 20,000 troops would be able to handle Aidid and the other warlords. But, as one senior Clinton aide explained, "A number of the UN contingents were sort of hunkered down." The U.S. rapid-response force was soon deeply involved. "You had to use them," said the same official, "in order to get anything done." After the U.S. force led a raid on Aidid's headquarters, Mr. Clinton, in his first prime-time news conference on June 17, announced proudly, "The military back of Aidid has been broken. A warrant has been issued for his arrest." Mr. Clinton said that if Aidid were caught, "The United Nations will have to determine what appropriate action to take." The U.S. not the UN, however, would lead the posse, and four hundred elite Army Rangers were dispatched to assist in the hunt.