ARTICLE: “This time it’s revenge: Despite its previous unhappy experience, America decides to get involved once again in a civil war in the turbulent Horn of Africa,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 41.
FEATURE: “Saving Somalia: As the U.S. strikes al-Qaeda, a new government tries to restore order. Here’s what it will take,” by Alex Perry, Time, 22 January 2007, p. 44.
ARTICLE: “Somalia’s chance for new beginning ‘slipping away,’” by William Wallis, Financial Times, 24 January 2007, p. 6.
ARTICLE: “Aid Conference Raises $7.6 Billion for Lebanese Government: Trouble in Beirut even as donations surpass expectations,” by Helene Cooper, New York Times, 26 January 2007, p. A7.
ARTICLE: “Months After War, Vision of Rebuilding Lebanon Wanes,” by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 22 January 2007, p. A8.
The lack of some internationally-recognized A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states means we simply go back to that well every 7-10 years.
That’s our post-Cold War record in Iraq, in Haiti, and now in Somalia. Where we came closest to exercising the A-to-Z rule set I outline in BFA was in the Balkans. No surprise, we never left there. No exit means no exit strategy.
Also no surprise, the Balkans are our most successful success story. Not pretty. But check out the casualties among the peacekeepers, and check out the trials in the Hague (the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the model for the ICC), and check out the mix of U.S. troops to allied, and check out the follow-on integration to date with the EU and NATO.
To me, that’s an amazing success story that we refuse to recognize elsewhere. We come up with all sorts of good excuses, but it’s primarily a matter of political will and nothing more. Unfortunately, we’ve got too much of it with Bush-Cheney, while the rest of the Core’s pillars have too little.
So we’re back in Somalia. Said we’d never return, but we’re back, Nixon Doctrine-style (which I approve of, absent some larger Core rule set being employed).
What will it take to win the peace this time, seeing as we’ve simply driven the radical Islamic infestation one apartment over--yet again?
A long-term effort that we cannot possibly manage on our own, that must inevitably involve regional diplomacy and the Chinese, that . . . oh you get the picture.
Will we make this effort? I’m sure CJTF-HOA (Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa) will make a good faith effort, but I’m not optimistic until we get a more comprehensively serious (and strategic) leader in the White House, and by then it may be too late for this go-around with Somalia, whose golden hour is already “slipping away.”
Again, no surprise, as the FT reports “no clear commitment from outside the continent to fund an 8,000-strong AU peacekeeping mission.” That mission is supposed to “plug the gap once Ethiopia withdraws.”
Sound familiar?
The lack of the A-to-Z rule set is seen in poor Lebanon as well. The usual passing-the-hat on aid masquerades a more profound passing-the-buck on peacekeeping presence, which would have to be a lot bigger than what Europe has--largely on its own--mustered.
But of course, Lebanon “is a battlefield in a larger proxy war,” with America and its friends on one side and Iran on the other. We refuse to deal with Iran in Iraq, so Iran forces us to deal with them in Lebanon.
We treat every case as America-versus-the-world and you add up the cases and find that our “allies” in one situation are also our competitors or our outright opponents in another, and somehow we think--in our “we don’t do diplomacy” mindset--that we’re running the overall show.
When in reality, it’s the show that’s running us.
Hezbollah exercise the veto in Lebanon, with the strings being pulled back in Tehran. Not only have we been stupid enough to get ourselves into a proxy struggle with Iran. We’re managing to lose it. Why? We pick all the wrong venues and avoid all the right ones.
Bush doesn’t do diplomacy. He also doesn’t do winning.