Somalia--White Man's Burden?

With more than a dozen soldiers dead and thousands more arriving to avenge their deaths, America is searching for answers (or excuses) as to why the humanitarian mission in Somalia has degenerated into a seemingly interminable bloodbath.

In general, the editorial pages have concentrated on the difference between President Bill Clinton's open-ended approach and the tight, focused mission defined by former President George Bush. Because Clinton let the United Nations take the lead, the argument goes, the mission's purpose was enlarged to include a vague (and costly) vision of "institution-building" in the wartorn country.

Certainly Clinton should not have let his mind wander away from close management of the operation in Somalia. But why didn't he pay more attention to what was happening there? Why didn't any of us pay more attention?

To "refocus" the mission, as Clinton is doing now, is not to resolve the underlying problem with our activities in Somalia. Because the problem is not in Somalia, it's in all of us.

In an editorial a few months ago, I mustered all of my verbal firepower (read "cheap journalistic tricks"), to condemn the president for stumbling headlong into another Vietnam in Bosnia.

Why didn't I write about Somalia? Why didn't I even mention Somalia?

Well, of course, I could defend myself by saying that Bosnia was very much on people's minds when I wrote my column, so it was a more timely subject. But that's not an answer, that's just a restatement of the problem.

The truth is, while I was worried about the danger of intervention in the Balkans, I didn't consider Somalia to be a problem for the Lone Remaining Superpower. I saw pictures of skin-and-bones Somali gunmen and scoffed. I thought we could walk in, mop the place up, and go home. I was wrong.

And I was not the only one. Most Americans thought the same thing. The Somalis won't try anything funny with us, we thought. They'll just recognize our superiority and accept our diktats. Anyway, we're doing this for their own good.

Clinton's plans for intervention in Bosnia met with a chorus of teeth-chattering. We fear the Balkans; we fear the fierce, tribal warfare and the lack of clear boundaries. Most of us opposed sending any troops to Bosnia, no matter how limited the mission's objectives. But in Somalia--a land of fierce, tribal warfare, where clear boundaries are hard to find--we feared no one.

Did we ever notice this weird disparity between our fear about the Balkans and our self-confidence about Somalia? Did we ever wonder about what attitudes might be underlying our different policy positions?

Did we ever wonder if we were being racist?

Racist? "Racist?" you shout. "We were moved by the pictures of starving humanity. We went to help them. And now here's the Crimson P.C. Patrol calling us racist."

Yes, you have a point. We certainly did not rejoice at the sight of suffering Africans. But our "humanitarian" response was not as pure as we would like to think. It was laced with racism, and several American soldiers have paid a terrible price for it.

Back around the turn of the century, when official racism stood tall, Americans were capable of incredible generosity toward our "little brown brothers" overseas. Oh, without doubt, our foreign activities were often spurred by greed. But for the broad mass of people, whose support for such adventures was crucial, American imperialism represented a genuinely moral, Christian undertaking (this was before Christianity became unfashionable).

In those days, it was called the "White Man's Burden." Today, it's the "responsibility of the international community." The name has changed, but the sentiments haven't. There is still an underlying assumption of helpless, uncivilized natives and helpful, civilized nations. That assumption reeks of a gross underestimation of the people we went to "help."

I'm not saying that we should never have gone to Somalia. The society was crumbling down on the heads of the people, and they were suffering. Military intervention was necessary to avert even more unbelievable horror. Intervention was right.

But the way we went in--humanitarian mission as media event--was ignoble. The bloodless amphibious landing (first since the Korean War!) made us feel so good about ourselves that we forgot to ask the Somalis how they felt.

It got worse. Demonstrating blissful ignorance about Somali politics, we tried to impose a ready-made TV dinner of a political settlement on the country. Then, when one clan leader called our bluff, we got all red in the face and tried to destroy him. All we destroyed was our credibility.

And when we began pounding Mogadishu like just one more bloodthirsty warlord--that was immoral.

All of these things stemmed from overestimating ourselves, and underestimating the Somalis. As Isaias Afewerki, president of Eritrea recently put it, the United States has been behaving "like Rambo."

Now we are trapped in a conflict we thought would stop the minute we arrived. And I'm willing to bet that six months from now, Clinton's promise notwithstanding, we will still be there.

We will be trapped until we face up to the real issue. No, the issue is not timelier intelligence, or more firepower, or improved U.S. command and control, or better political spin at home. The issue is mental. We will be trapped until we choose to understand and respect the people we went to help.

If Clinton and the other leaders of the Somalia mission change their attitudes, we might end up being a force for good in that country. If we all change our attitudes, we won't have to relearn the lessons of Somalia somewhere else.

Haiti, for example.

Jacques E.C. Hymans '94 is an editor of The Harvard Crimson.