Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

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leeway in determining whether and when to shoot than American
soldiers have ever been granted outside of traditional combat zones."
In most cases, the Post notes, the bodies of Somalis killed or
wounded are simply left lying in the street. Patrols which carry out
such killings quickly retreat to avoid confrontations with angry
crowds. There is never any attempt to verify whether or not those
shot had posed any genuine threat to the US troops or, indeed,
whether they had even been armed.
Marine Col. F.M. Lorenz, the chief legal adviser to the US
command in Somalia, defended the US policy, declaring, "If we had
to wait until we are absolutely sure he had a weapon before we pull the
trigger, that would be too late." He added that US military officials
ask few questions of soldiers involved in such killings, declaring,
"That would tend to inhibit their future actions."
The newspaper cites growing anger among Somalis over the
routine killing of civilians. "You can kill unarmed people and you are
not giving us compensation," Hussein Musal, a Somali working for
the British relief group, Save the Children Fund, declared. "It's up to
the Americans to say, 'We thought he was a threat because he was
raising his hand.' There is no international monitoring. It's like
colonialism."
Precisely. Whatever happened to the "rescue mission," to "restoring
hope" and feeding the starving children? Are they being fed?
What have the daily killings in Mogadishu and Kismayu to do with
providing food for the hungry? The capitalist media, which exploited
the images of the refugee camps in the early days of the US intervention,
now no longer even bothers mentioning the plight of Somalia's
famine victims.
The real character of the Somali intervention is emerging with
crystal clarity. It is a brutal imperialist intervention and part of the
drive to recolonize Africa.
The military intervention launched in the Horn of Africa under
the pretext of "rescuing" famine victims is only one of a growing
number of US military interventions being carried out or being
prepared all around the world. In the Persian Gulf, the Clinton
administration continues military provocations against Iraq and the
US military buildup in the region has steadily accelerated. Demands
appear virtually daily in the capitalist press for the overthrow of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein.
The Clinton administration is conducting a complete review of
US policy in relation to the civil war in Bosnia. There is open