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That was Clinton who screwed that up, not our military.
Actually, it was Clinton's SecDef, Les Aspin, who didn't allow our troops to have armored vehicles, and that resulted in disaster. At least Aspin had the decency to die of a heart attack shortly afterwards.
You cannot help a country that will not help itself... you help them for a day, a week, a year and they will be right back to tribal warfare and waste all that you have done....
Unfortunately we have been trying to help countries that won't help themselves for years, but you are right,
The on-scene commander repeatedly requested armor and AC-130 gunship support be available. Clinton turned him down every time.
Please see post #52...
In September, General Powell asked Aspin to approve the request of the U.S. commander in Somalia for tanks, armored vehicles and AC-130 Spectre gunships for his forces. Aspin turned down the request. Shortly thereafter Aidid's forces in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 75 in attacks that also resulted in the shooting down of three U.S. helicopters and the capture of one pilot (see the Battle of Mogadishu). In the face of severe congressional criticism, Aspin admitted that in view of what had happened he had made a mistake
Since you're clueless, let me spell it out for you. Rich nations want to protect their primary economic sector (like agriculture) from collapsing, so they throw money at subsidizing it, the unintended consequences of this action is oversupply and that eventually price-dump local farmers in poorer nations into cash crops instead, when there's a drought and the food stop coming, boom, people starve to death.
Speaking of clueless, most rational nations will do everything they can to protect their own agriculture sector - not out of financial greed but due to national security interests. In uncertain times, a rational nation would not want to be dependent on others to obtain food for its starving masses. It could be blackmailed by an enemy over it.
Second, the people who should be helping the somalians are the ones who helped put them in this situation - the EUROPEANS, who spent years dumping nuclear wastes into the somali waters, as well as the chinese and others, who overfished their waters until they practically exhausted their fish supply. Since somali had no functional government, it had no coast guard to protect its waters, and was completely screwed over by the euros, amongst others. So now, somali fishermen who supported their families can no longer do so since their fish supply has been exhausted, and somali kids are suffering from radioactive poisoning due to barrels of nuclear waste washing up on somali beaches.
Still think its the US owes them anything, superstar?
Is Somolia sitting on a big pool of oil? If so the wesrern petroleum companies will have us there ASAP. If not the poor buggars will be left to starve or be enslaved by the Arabs. Or both.
You really have no clue, and the far left reflexive anti-western / anti-corporate nonsense you spew is getting more than a bit exhausted:
"Myth #10. This was a war for Libya’s oil.
That is daft. Libya was already integrated into the international oil markets, and had done billions of deals with BP, ENI, etc., etc. None of those companies would have wanted to endanger their contracts by getting rid of the ruler who had signed them. They had often already had the trauma of having to compete for post-war Iraqi contracts, a process in which many did less well than they would have liked. ENI’s profits were hurt by the Libyan revolution, as were those of Total SA and Repsol.
Moreover, taking Libyan oil off the market through a NATO military intervention could have been foreseen to put up oil prices, which no Western elected leader would have wanted to see, especially Barack Obama, with the danger that a spike in energy prices could prolong the economic doldrums. An economic argument for imperialism is fine if it makes sense, but this one does not, and there is no good evidence for it (that Gadhafi was erratic is not enough), and is therefore just a conspiracy theory."
To help with the crisis over there? I mean, we did it for Libya to "protect our interests," Obama said. Aren't the lives of thousands of starving kids important?
The difference between Libya and Somalia is the Libyan people already created a real force and were already fighting for their freedom. We only played a support role.
Somalia is just chaos. We tried it before and they are animals.
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