From: yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.somalia
Subject: Re: U.S. Is Not Going to War in Somalia for any Good Reasons
Date: 15 Dec 92 10:17:03 GMT
Organization: Yale Computer Science Department
NNTP-Posting-Host: cathy.na.cs.yale.edu

egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
>In article <1gjhr2INNkeo@CATHY.NA.CS.YALE.EDU> yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin) writes:
>You see, part of my problem with clan leaders exerting more than
>nominal control over their troops is the talk of "subclans" and other
>subdivisions.  Would troops have greater allegiance to the local clan
>leader than a more visible warlord?  Is the situation somewhat feudal,
>with chieftans pledging nominal support to a warlord, while mostly
>galavanting about on their own?  Also, this list accounts for about half
>of the 70K or so Somalis under arms.  What of the rest?

I don't know the answers to these questions.  But from the list it does not
seem that clans have split too often.  I would assume there is a
centralization of power.  Even Somalia was developed enough to have that.

>>You are right that just sending weapons need not be a major operation.  But
>>it also might not work.  Serbia is a larger country than Bosnia.  I would
>>think the Serbians can field a larger force.  Furthermore the war seems to
>>have degenerated into a static affair, with two Bosnian enclaves remaining
>>under siege.  The Bosnians were defeated by the Serbs in open warfare, but
>>when their fighters became packed together (relatively speaking) in these
>>two areas, and could entrench, they started being able to hold off the
>>Serbs.
>
>I'd question popular support of the war in Serbia itself.  Milosevic's
>political support is iffy.

Uh, what does this have to do with anything?  Would there be a revolution if
he were unpopular enough?  An election?  Certainly if he were unpopular
enough with the military leadership, things might change.  But that has
little to do with popular support.

>  He has managed to hold his regime together
>in part becase the West has given it legitimacy (by negotiating with
>him, so he can argue that his government is recognized in
>international circles; by imposing the arms embargo on Bosnia also, so
>he can say that the Bosnians are the real bad guys.  A few other
>things that I don't recall.

All this stuff may legitimize the government to us, but I think the Serbians
will not care in the slightest whether their government is "legitimate".  I
mean, if they had much effect on it in the first place.

>>> Also, the Bosnians would have more incentive to fight than the
>>>Kuomintang or the ARVN.  In the latter cases, the wars were ambiguous.
>>>Vietnam was a war of national independence.  China, similarly, was a civil
>>>war. In the case of the Bosnians, they are defending their own homes
>>>against foreign aggressors ("we're fighting you 'cause you're here"). A
>>>more analogous situation may be Afganistan.
>>
>>Ambiguous?  Communist rule is devastating; many conquests by a foreign
>>aggressor have been far less injurious to the invaded country than a
>>communist revolution.  Even today there are boat people fleeing communist
>>Vietnam.
>
>I was refering more towards how Vietnam was more of a war of national
>independence, and not an invasion by a foreign power.  You can look at
>references in Neil Shennan's _A Bright Shining Lie_.

A war of national independence, perhaps.  But in addition Vietnam was a
communist takeover using all the traditional communist methods.  I have read
Sheehan's argument that Ho Chi Minh need never have become a communist, and
it is not particularly convincing.  So what if he appealed to the US for aid
on occasion?  So did Castro and the Sandinistas, and we did give them aid,
and they still became communist.  Besides, it was very early on when the
communist apparatus took charge of the Viet Minh, and after that happened
the war was inevitably a communist insurrection.

Sheehan does not talk about the Viet Cong methods of conquest.  Thus their
barbarism is not evident from his account.  It was this barbarism that gave
many South Vietnamese the motivation to fight.

--
Norman Yarvin						yarvin@cs.yale.edu
 "...for a professor must have a theory, as a dog must have fleas."
	-- H. L. Mencken