Somalia

[jiacinto]

Discuss

[charlie]

1. Haha

Gonna use up "valuable web real estate" making a point?

Trolling, trolling, trolling, keep those sheeple rolling...

[jiacinto]

2. I want to have a disucssion about this country

and its relevance to world affairs.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

3. Well, since "Operation Restore Hope" was GHW's brainstorm

best look at his mission statement from December '92.

Here's a good overview and a bunch of links on this page:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/restore_hope.htm

[NewYorkerfromMass]

17. Well, the 19 deaths weren't Clinton OR Aspin's fault according to this

According to this research paper the 19 deaths in Task Force Ranger weren't Clinton OR Aspin's fault. It blames the military leadership in Somalia for not pursuing a strategy that would have worked.
Go to page 25 of 46 to paragraph starting with: "Another important decision..."

good reading! :)

[Trad Bass]

21. It was partly their fault

We had NO buisness using our Rangers for going after some two bit warlord. It was also many other peoples fault including GHWB for sending our troops there to begin with.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

29. Whatever.....

[NewYorkerfromMass]

30. kick

[NewYorkerfromMass]

31. Kick for all the freepers here today!!!

:hi:

[charlie]

4. Sure

I think Somalia is VERY relevant to world affairs and WORTH discussing.

Your turn.

[jiacinto]

5. Is there anything we can do?

The people are trapped in anarchy. Can we make life better for them?

[charlie]

6. We'll add them to our dance card

after Iraq, Liberia, Syria, Iran, and Korea. Hope they can hold on.

[jiacinto]

7. Well

I've heard that the beaches are beautifult here.

[charlie]

9. Tourism!

Freeper junkets, that'll save them. Frolick the lovely beaches and dine in the shadows of the building where Aidid got his ass blown off.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. I'll discuss it because it underscores the idiocy of realpolitik and the

republican party.

A series of articles appearing at the Center for Public Integrity last winter addressed the illegal arms trade and the money that funds terrorism being directly related to that trade. The majority of deaths due to wars and insurrections are to this day still caused by small arms not nukes or bioweapons.

The stupidest thing we could have done was withdraw from Somalia over the deaths of 19 troops. It might have been intelligent to take a step back, regroup and go back in but the problems in that area of the world have only gotten worse since we withdrew. Bin Laden apparently made his money to fund terrorism off of the illegal arms trade in this region and all it did was embolden terrorist groups such as Al Queda when we withdrew as it underscored what the world already knew..America has no real tolerance for any bloodshed and we will not go the distance if it means a risk for us beyond expensive weapons.
2 million people have died in that region since we withdrew.
Somalia was one of the few wars we could have gotten involved in in recent years where the war itself could conceivably have SAVED more lives than it cost.

[jiacinto]

10. Yeah

but will things ever get better?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. I don't know. They won't get better if ignored

[NewYorkerfromMass]

16. OMG NSMA it's right out of the Freeper book

OMG everything you said.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

18. Sorry? I'm not following you

YOu think my opinions on the matter are freepish? How so?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

19. "We cannot ignore Iraq- we cannot DO NOTHING!!!!"

It's this PNAC thinking of "dredging the swamps" of terrorism.
It's this proactive thinking.
Not that proactive is bad, but you criticised pulling out of Somalia, and pointed out how Americans can't stand to shed blood. It is SOOOOOOO Right Wing.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

22. Yes if you would like to think in unidimensional platitudes I suppose

it would sound that way. But that was not my point. my point was that in an area of the world where we got invloved and it most likely WOULD have made a difference, we pulled out due to losing 19 troops. By doing so, we left that area to WARLORDS who then proceeded to slaughter people and where it is documented that terrorism actually WS financed, unlike Iraq where there is no proof.

Frankly Americans can't handle bloodshed.
BTW, if Americans can handle bloodshed then why don't Bush's poll numbers go UP with every dead troop.

My thoughts are my own based on my extensive reading of the illegal arms trade and the ill effects of it.

Any questions?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

24. O.K. Let's look ahead. Iraq is to Somalia.....

on a much, much, much, bigger scale. Another Bush has fucked us again.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

28. You don't understand Somalia then

This article is written by a Dem congressional research assistant. He is considered very credible on the issue. I am not sayin Somalia funds terrorism or Somalia funds Al Queda or Bin Laden therefore we should bomb it...there's nothing left to bomb. I am saying the small arms trade throughout the horn of Africa seems to benefit American and Russian arms manufacturers at the expense of Africans and also serves to enrich those who make their funds under the radar.

What I AM saying is that a humanitarian effort was undermined by Republicans which left the UN impotent in dealing with the situation and underfunded. Remember, Bush DID NOT want to go to Somalia. Unrest in that region has served American business interests. COLTAN comes from the horn of Africa....used in cell phones and computers.

http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivedec01/020201101.htm

[Sufi Marmot]

11. May be breaking up...

The northern chunk of the country seems to have declared itself independent. I don't think it's recognized by any other nations, though...It appears to be an Islamic Republic, at least judging by its flag...

http://www.somalilandgov.com/">Somaliland Official Govenment Website


-SM

[TheBigGuy]

32. This was the "British" part of Somalia

Somalia was formed by the joining of an Italian and British colony...the northern part was British Somaliland.

This is the part that has declared itself indepedent.

[Warren Stuart]

12. Somalia, a dirt poor country with no natural resources

Except poverty. Traditionally the country consisted of nomadic tribespeople. It's an artificial construct, the British were responsible for its borders, it being arbitraily drawn 100 miles inland from the water.

Since a good part of the population are nomads, borders are a meaningless concept. However borders are important to the rulers of the countries that the nomads drift in and out of. You can't discuss Somalia without taking into account Eithopia, there has been much friction between these two countries, with the nomads generally caught in the middle.

I believe that there is a provence called Eitria (sp) that these nomadic people belong to, they are a distict ethnic type. This provence has been agitating for independence, and obviously this is not a popular concept in Mogadishu or Addis Abbibia.

I went to school with the niece of the Somalian dictator Said Barre, she was a striking beautiful woman, and a very classy person. She loved the US and later married an American.

As far as what can be done, I don't understand what the issue is, famine is a persistent problem, however unless we understand the dymanics on the ground, chances are we may just make any problems worse.

[Brian Sweat]

14. Poverty is a resource?

You must be a "cheap labor conservative." :) My second favorite term after "credit card conservative."

[Warren Stuart]

20. You obviously missed the point

.

[radwriter0555]

23. Hmmm. You forgot Somalia's 12 (TWELVE) OIL LEASES...

that's right kids.

Oil.

Go ahead. Google "oil leases somalia" and take a gander at what Black Hawk Down and the Bush regime aren't likely to share anytime too soon.

to pique your interest, start here... http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1993/85/85p19b.htm

enjoy.

things are not always what they seem.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

25. Does Liberia have oil?

as if I don't already know....

[Trad Bass]

26. Not really

but I think diamonds.

[Walt Starr]

15. Bad

Respond

[Aidoneus]

27. Somalia

my knowledge of it begins with the occupation of the lands by various European empires, 3-4 of them dividing up different parts of "Somaliland" to exploit and call their own. Post-independence it, like a lot of ex-colonial lands, became a pawn in the Soviet/US campaigns of aggression, the Horn of Africa (Somalia/Ethiopia/Djibuti/Eritrea) being seen as an ideal land for a naval base. Various dictators propped up by the 2 superpowers until it ceased to be useful as a Cold War battlefield, then abandoned and forgotten.

Somewhere between then & now the central regime lost power over large parts of the country, a vacuum filled up by various groupings of people with lots of guns around. And as Charlton Heston says, it's not guns that kill people, it's um.. no, actually it is guns that kill people, or actually to be specific it's "people with guns", and at any rate there's quite a few of them about. Opportunistic leaders in the past there used to package themselves either as socialists or pro-Western dictators, now their opportunistic language appears to be Islam, and the centralized government that remains is probably packaging itself as a willing puppet in the fake "war on terra".

There's occasional rumblings about oil being discovered offshore, and the whole Horn of Africa region is of interest to the last imperial superpower for the reasons of strategic interest and, if the oilfields in southern Sudan ever become accessible, with respect to that. Western government intervention at various periods is at the least partly responsible for the current situation, the 90s intervention did little, if anything, to "help" aside from cheesy backslapping in editorial pages back home (the myth of the "humanitarian intervention" exposed as a fraud as "peacekeepers", particularly the Belgian contigent, run amok around the place, pissing off everybody they had been sent to "save"--an article about some of the more interesting abuses by the "peacekeepers"). I don't think any further intervention by Western governments would be helpful--for those people just have photo ops, backslapping, and Texas Tea on their minds--, though I guess geniunely humanitarian NGOs can have a constructive effect if the cameras aren't around to make rah-rah headlines for some asshole politician back home.