From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: Peace Mvmnt Condemns US in Somalia
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 02:14:16 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

U.S. TROOPS INVADE AFRICA

Anti-war forces condemn Pentagon invasion of Somalia

By Brian Becker

The first of 28,000 U.S. troops, which include many of the same
units that demolished Iraq and killed upwards of 200,000 people,
landed in Somalia Dec. 8. They return to the Gulf region under the
guise of a humanitarian mission that famine-plagued country in
Africa.

"We ... wanted to put in a large enough force that we could
dominate the entire country," Colin Powell, chairman of the
Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, unabashedly explained on Dec. 5.
Powell was responding to a reporter's question about why such a
large force was neccessary in a mission to feed people.

Powell also announced that the "rules of engagement" under which
U.S. troops will operate will allow them to take "preemptive
action" against any perceived threat. "We are not just going to
ride shotgun, waiting for people to shoot at us and then shoot
back," Powell told the Dec. 5 news briefing.

These same rules of engagement, which boil down to ordering heavily
armed occupying forces to shoot first and ask questions later, led
to many civilian deaths during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.

Although this is an essentially U.S. military operation, the Bush
administration has again pushed through a United Nations Security
Council resolution that provides a UN cover for the plan. It did
the same for the war against Iraq.

No one can doubt for a moment that the graphic images of starving
Somalis show the need for a massive, international emergency relief
effort. But many anti-war organizations, as well as relief agency
workers in Somalia, question the effectiveness and real motives
behind the abrupt, 180-degree change in U.S. policy.

`Food may be needed, but not U.S. troops'

"Anyone who reads the newspapers or watches television can't help
be moved by the tragedy in Somalia," explains Monica Moorehead of
the International Action Center. "The world certainly has the
resources to come to Somalia's rescue, however, without the
unilateral military occupation of Somalia by 30,000 U.S. troops.

"It is well to remember that the U.S. government has supported the
most racist and reactionary forces all over Africa, from the
apartheid regime in South Africa, to Mobutu in Zaire, to Savimbi in
Angola," Moorehead said.

Moorehead warns that the Pentagon plans to turn Somalia into a
strategic base along the Red Sea/Suez Canal shipping route. She
noted that this operation is conducted by the Pentagon's Central
Command, headed until recently by General Norman Schwarzkopf.
Moorehead said, "the Pentagon revamped its military strategy in the
Middle East starting in 1988."

"Nine months before the Iraq war, Schwarzkopf testified in Congress
that the U.S. needed to place a permanent military presence--with
bases--in this region to assure continued domination over its vast
oil reserves," Moorehead explained.

The Pentagon achieved its goal of permanent military bases in the
Persian/Arabian Gulf and now they intend to dominate the strategic
tip of the Horn of Africa, Moorehead contends.

The U.S. military intervention also provides a convenient public
relations ploy by the Pentagon which wants to justify its $300
billion annual budget in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the end of the so-called Cold War.

PENTAGON PUBLIC RELATIONS

A Washington Post reporter asked if the crisis wasn't being used by
the Pentagon command "to showcase their capabilities and
usefulness" at a time when Congress is under growing pressure to
cut the war budget. Brig. General Thomas V. Daude, chief of public
affairs for the Marine Corps, answered, "I'd be lying if I said
that never occurred to us."

Colin Powell echoed the same theme. In a briefing on the Somalia
crisis, Powell delivered what he called a "paid political
advertisement" for the Pentagon's plan to maintain a uniformed
force level of 1.6 million personnel.

Powell openly resisted the calls for money to be spent on jobs,
education, health care and housing instead of the Pentagon. He used
the Somalia briefing to reiterate that "the nation is blessed that
it has a military capability that ...can respond in a moment's
notice to this type of operation. And if another popped up
tomorrow, we could do that, too ..."

Powell added that "we have to be careful ... that we don't go too
far" in reducing the military budget. (Washington Post, Dec. 6)

What Powell left out of his explanation was made clear in the
Pentagon's White Paper published last March. To guarantee U.S.
domination--not only of Third World countries but over its
imperialist rivals--the Pentagon planned to step into any power
vacuum. No opportunity would be overlooked to prove that the U.S.
was the number one military power. One rival imperialist
power--France--is sending 4,000 troops into northern Somalia.

ABRUPT SHIFT IN U.S. POLICY

Famine has raged in parts of Somalia for nearly two years. Yet the
U.S. had done virtually nothing until the Pentagon proposed at a
Nov. 21 meeting of the White House National Security Council
meeting to militarily occupy the country.

The Bush administration then decided to send troops without the
approval of Congress and, more importantly, without consulting any
Somali. Many in Africa fear that Somalia, which only won its
independence in 1960 after a century of colonial domination by
Britain and Italy, is targeted for re-colonization by the United
States.

How can Bush and the Pentagon send a massive occupying force into
an African country without consulting, much less obtaining the
approval of any Somali leader? They justify their unilateral
military action by simply portraying every Somali leader as a
"warlord" and every armed unit in Somalia as "gun-toting thugs."

The Wall Street Journal lead editorial Dec. 7 typifies the thinking
in the corporate boardrooms and the Pentagon war rooms. Under the
headline "Bring Back Lord Kitchener?" the Journal writes: "U.S.
security forces won't have to read the teenaged thugs [in Somalia]
their Miranda rights, as they must for the Crips and Bloods in
south-central Los Angeles."

Kitchener is the notorious 19th century British Governor of Sudan
who organized the massacres of tens of thousands of rebelling
Sudanese tribesmen.

DEMONIZING THE ENEMY

Constant references to "warlords" and "gun-toting thugs" is part of
a now-familiar Pentagon script to demonize its would-be enemies
before shooting at them. Saddam Hussein was called "Hitler" in the
build-up for the war on Iraq. Noriega was called the "Drug-Lord"
before the invasion of Panama.

The media portrayed killing soldiers and even civilians of these
countries as the justifiable exorcism of evil incarnate. That these
are all Third World countries means that demonization includes a
heavy dose of racism.

These racist images were effectively countered on national
television talk shows by Rakiya Omaar, who until she was fired last
week, served as Director of the London-based Africa Watch. Omaar
was fired after vehemently opposing U.S. military intervention and
decrying the refusal of Washington to consult any Somali leader.

"Contrary to the reports of the disaster by tourists flitting in
and out of the country, Somalia has not collapsed. It is true that
there is no government. Nevertheless, important social, economic,
and political structures continue to function," Omaar reports in
the November-December issue of Africa Report.

Omaar asserts that the roots of the crisis lie less with drought
than the legacy of the 21-year rule of the Mohammed Siad Barre
regime. To understand Barre's legacy it is necessary to examine the
U.S. role.

In the late 1970s, the Carter administration began funneling arms
and money to the Somali government to encourage it to launch a war
against neighboring Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government had just
expelled the U.S. Air Force from its Kagnew air base in Eritrea and
had announced its goal of carrying the Ethiopian revolution in a
socialist direction.

Clandestine arms shipments from NATO and the U.S. built up the
Somali army and flooded the country with weapons. The decline of
the Mengistu government in Ethopia lessened U.S. interest in
propping up Siad Barre, who was overthrown in January 1991.

Lacking a program for resolving the massive social problems caused
by colonial and neo-colonial underdevelopment, the Somali army
fragmented into warring factions.

"After having cruelly manipulated Somalia for the last 15 years to
further U.S. imperialism's dominance over the Horn of Africa, the
Pentagon now poses as Somalia's savior," Monica Moorehead explains.
"This is the height of cynicism. Instead of occupying Somalia, the
United States and the other European colonial powers that have
plundered the continent for their own enrichment, should be made to
pay massive reparations to the people of Africa."

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21 St.,
New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet:
"workers@mcimail.com".)



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