From: awells@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu (Andrew V. Wells)
Subject: somalia
Followup-To: alt.current-events.somalia
Keywords: no reply
Organization: Northeastern University
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:20:21 GMT

This is a more detailed rebuttal to those who are trying to
claim that the US was justified in what it did in the
Gulf "war" just under two years ago, and what it is doing
now, the military occupation of Somalia.

Yes, I do think that war is profoundly immoral. However, I do believe
that people have the right to defend themselves against an aggressor,
and perhaps you agree with this also. So the basic disagreement
we have is: was the US defending itself against a dangerous
aggressor in the gulf war (and in Somalia), or was 
(and is) something else going on? 

   Let's examine the assumption that Iraq was in fact a 
dangerous aggressor, bent on taking over the whole
Mid East. There are two facts on which I'm 
sure we both agree that bare on this assumption: 
(1) Iraq was "defeated" in less than six
weeks; and (2) very few US military personel were killed. 
Moreover, Schwartzkopt himself characterized the action
as a "Turkey Shoot," apparently refering to the ease with
which they "defeated" Iraq. So if Iraq was really so dangerous, 
as dangerous as Nazi Germany like the mass media and Bush claimed,
then why was it so easy to "defeat" Iraq? It took the 
combined powers of the US Britain and Soviet Union 4 years
to defeat Nazi Germany, not six weeks!

  I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have
plenty of questions:
     
(1) Bush originally claimed that they were fighting 
this "war" to get rid of Hussein, but he is still in power
even after the US declared "victory". So just what were
Bush's true motivations then? 

(2)  Hussein was an ally
of the US for about 10 years prior to the Gulf "war,"
receiving all kinds of trade credits and bank loans
(on a very large scale- billions of dollars worth)
to buy military hardware and other stuff from the US.
Both Reagan and Bush fought Congress hard to allow Hussein
to do this from 1980-90. Given this, don't the Reagan 
and Bush administrations bare at least some responsibility 
for Hussein's invasion of Kuwait?

(3)  There is apparently one other thing we disagree on. You
say the majority of people in the US supported US actions
in the Gulf "war".  But this support was very very thin.
There were polls taken that said that if a thousand or more
US military personel were killed, people would no longer
support the action. In addition, opposition to the war
was very strong and obvious before the bombing started
(Dec.90 to early Jan. 91). But even if most people did
support it, that doesn't justify it. If people are
profoundly misinformed, they can be made to support just 
about anything. One thing we probably agree on is that
you can't trust the mass media because of its bias. So
why should we trust the mass media when it was so
obviously in favor of the Gulf "war"?  And since the
mass media was so obviously biased in favor of the gulf
war, it must follow that they were consciously misinforming
the public to get them to support it also.

(4)  I read recently that US troops in Somalia have been
ordered to "shoot at anything they want to."  This 
is certainly not consistent with a supposed humanitarian
mission. And just how much food aid was the US sending
to Somalia since the famine began many months ago? Very
little, in fact. Why does Bush only become concerned
about humanitarian causes when he decides to deploy 
troops?  Why didn't he start a big campaign to send
food aid over there a long time ago? And is he
really sending large amounts food now? And why should
a foreign occupying army (the US army) be able to
more effectively distribute food, when the main
effect of sending troops there is to greatly
escalate the military conflict? There's no question
that whatever local military forces are already in 
Somalia are going to react to the newly arriving US
troops in a hostile way, escalating the
conflict. And even if more fighting doesn't take
place, the presence of a large foreign army certainly
increases tensions to an extreme degree. All of
this makes it even MORE difficult to distribute
food. And as a long term solution, the Somalians
need a situation in which they can feed themselves,
and escalating the military confrontation makes 
this even more impossible.

Andy