The phrases resounded through political Washington all week in an insistent, Kissinger-esque echo of an era that had supposedly ended. "We can't just cut and run," the policymakers said again and again after last Sunday's bloody battle in Mogadishu. "It would send the wrong signal."
In his speech Thursday, President Clinton joined the chorus. If the United States left Somalia now, he said, "Our leadership in world affairs would be undermined at the very time when people are looking to America to help promote peace and freedom in the post-Cold-War world, and all around the world, aggressors, thugs and terrorists will conclude that the best way to get us to change our policies is to kill our people."The Clinton administration believes that the old verities, however timeworn, retain their valid-ity in the single-superpower age. That is the main reason there will be no quick pullout from Somalia. But many critics, in government and out, remain profoundly skeptical.
What signal? they ask. To whom, now that local conflicts no longer threaten to turn into East-West showdowns? Does it matter enough to continue risking American lives on a murkily defined mission in a region where no one believes that nation's vital interests are at stake?
With many on Capitol Hill and in the nation at large demanding a quick exit from an enterprise that has strayed far from its initial goals, Clinton offered something very different - more troops and heavy weapons now, a much less ambitious set of goals than the one in the U.N. resolution that the United States eagerly supported only last month, withdrawal by next March 31, and no explanation of why a withdrawal then would seem any wiser or any more practical than it seems now.
The president asserted nothing more than "a reasonable chance" of success, even under his revised policy. He disavowed any commitment to nation building with this comment, so reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's statements about Vietnam: "It is not our job to rebuild Somalia's society or even to create a political process that allows Somalia's clans to live and work in peace. The Somalis must do that for themselves."
American officials speak confidently of handing responsibility over to "other nations" after establishing political stability. But imposing political stability on a country with no real government tradition and only a faint sense of community has proved impossible so far.
It will be made no easier by added firepower, despite the president's vague assurance that "through their pressure and their presence, our troops will help to make it possible for the Somali people, working with others, to reach agreement among themselves so that they can solve their problems and survive when we leave."
So what has changed? Washington has hoped for months that the Africans would somehow come to the rescue, and it apparently still does; that is said to explain the dispatch of Robert Oakley, an old African and Somalia hand, to search again for peace in the region.
But the United States has found no viable alternative to Gen. Mohamed Aidid, the elusive clan leader. It cannot find him, either, let alone engage him in substantive political negotiation.
If disorder reigns six months from now, the temptation will be to shove the deadline back. Klaus Kinkel, the German foreign minister, who is visiting Washington this week, said that if Somalia's basic problems have not been solved, there will be no one for the United States to turn over to because others will pull out, too.
"All of this talk of pulling out is a very bad sign," Kinkel said in an interview. "One week, two months, six months, it's the same thing, if you leave before the job is done. Europe will see this as a new tendency in American politics, likely to spread."
American officials acknowledged on Thursday that he was probably right, that the chances of a 25,000-strong American contingent in the Balkans looked suddenly remote after this week, despite Clinton's earlier pledges.
Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who has taken a pounding this week for his handling of the fallout from the Tailhook scandal, as well as the Somalia operation, argued that an early pullout would wreck the administration's strategy of dealing with many problems through the United Nations - a strategy designed to stretch limited U.S. resources.
"If after we got a dozen guys killed on Sunday, we pull out," Aspin said, "it tells people wherever we go - the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Syria, Haiti, wherever - that all they have to do is give us double-digit casualties and they can get rid of us."
The problems with that argument are many. The most important is that it leaves no room for the United States to decide, having joined a U.N. operation, that it should get out because it isn't working or no longer serves American interests.
In addition, the argument is undercut by the president's pledge to get out by March 31. If cutting and running is bad now, why is it good then, with the United Nations presumably still committed to its ambitious resolutions on building stable, modern institutions of government?
Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, whose career began in the antiwar movement of the late 1960s, listened this week to Aspin, her fellow Democrat, who spent years in Vietnam, explain the administration's reluctance to withdraw at once from Somalia.
She was horrified.
"We spent 20 years together on the Armed Services Committee, and we agreed on most of the issues," she said. "I kept thinking, `Come on, Les, pull yourself together. Have you forgotten everything you learned in Vietnam? Remember the quagmire?' "
Even allowing for the difference in scale, the parallel is far from exact. But there seems little doubt that Clinton got into the predicament from which he is trying to extricate himself and the nation by failing to heed as well as his predecessor did some of the lessons from the war in Southeast Asia.
Before sending American troops to Saudi Arabia for the war in the Persian Gulf, George Bush talked constantly about the need to get Congress and the nation on board, to define the mission and stick to it and to use overwhelming force. He did most of that, and things worked out remarkably well.
Clinton, on the other hand, inherited a mission that Bush had carefully limited and allowed it to be widened, largely by the United Nations, to include political and military aims as well. He increased the job, moreover, while greatly decreasing the number of American troops assigned to it.
Nor did he sell his policy to Capitol Hill or to the public. His initial effort to do so, when Aspin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher went to the Hill this week, evoked little but fury, with Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who served seven years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, describing their briefing as "by far the most pathetic performance I have encountered since I came to Washington."
Facing that kind of condemnation, the president was forced to fall back.
The initial reaction to his speech was favorable, but much of Washington was still wondering how he could achieve enough political progress between now and March 31 on the distant, intractable soil of Somalia to give real meaning to his promise to achieve "an honorable withdrawal." That was what Johnson and Richard Nixon sought, too, and they never did get it.
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(Additional information)
4 tasks remain
President Clinton said the American military mission in Somalia has four tasks to complete before the troops leave:
- To provide protection for the entire U.S. military contingent and the U.S. operating bases there.
- To keep open and secure the roads, the port at Mogadishu and the lines of communications needed to maintain the flow of food and supplies throughout Somalia "so that starvation and anarchy do not return."
- To keep the pressure on "those who cut off relief supplies and attack our people."
- To make it possible for the Somali people, "working with others," to "reach agreement among themselves so that they can solve their problems and survive when we leave."