Kagan Conjures An Insipid Somalia Slam

(And I also posted here.)

Fred Kagan decided to give us his idea of a history lesson today on Bill Clinton’s 1993 foray into Somalia here (as in, gee, Obama had better go “all in” in Afghanistan lest he repeat Number 42’s mistake)…

When it became clear that the situation on the ground (in Somalia) was deteriorating, however, the local military commander asked for reinforcements. President Clinton was reluctant to send them, and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin refused to provide Gen. Thomas Montgomery with the armored vehicles and air support he had requested. On Oct. 3, 1993, a team of Rangers and Special Forces troops were caught in an ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia. Without armor or adequate air support, they lost 18 dead and 77 wounded. The images of dead American soldiers being dragged through Somali streets continued to haunt the United States for more than a decade.

Yes, this definitely was not a shining moment for this country. However, it should be noted here that, even though General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the main target of the raid, was not apprehended, several "tier-one personalities" in Aidid’s militia were apprehended (of course, in Bushco parlance, those “personalities” would be trumped up as this week’s No. 2 al Qaeda leaders in whatever region before subsequent reporting by the New York Times or intelligence briefs revealed them to be either a doorman, driver, or some other lower level functionary).

And as noted here, Sen. John “Country First (which one I wonder at times, though)” McCain sponsored a resolution at that time to pull our troops out of Somalia (and the Qaeda presence has only grown in that country since then). Of course, McCain had also done the same thing about our intervention into Haiti (geez, wonder what he’d be called in our “post 9/11” world if he sponsored two resolutions to take our forces out of dangerous places now?).

Even as Mark Bowden, author of “Blackhawk Down” (the book about the Somalia mission, particularly in Mogadishu – it also became a movie) tells us here…

The choice was made by Aspin because, as he later explained it, of concern for so visibly escalating US military involvement when Congress was pushing for a pullout (Aspin later said he regarded his decision as having been a "mistake").

(And as noted here, how nice it would have been if Aspin's arguably most notorious successor in that job had shown a fraction of Aspin's truthfulness.)

The point of this post is not to pillory Les Aspin, a capable individual who ended up making two horrific mistakes as Defense Secretary under President Clinton (Aspin resigned over the Somalia episode and died of a stroke a year and a half later). The point is to show how severely politics clouds the judgment of those who claim to be experts in military policy, and how that impacts our fight in Afghanistan primarily (with the Somalia mission a chore Clinton inherited from Poppy Bush, though I don’t mean to absolve Clinton totally by pointing that out).

By the way, I said that Aspin made two horrific mistakes, with his handling of the Somalia mission as the first one.

This was the other (not totally his fault, though), from which we are still trying to recover.

(And speaking of Somalia, I thought this was an interesting item concerning our 43rd president.)