seeing as how the United States was there for purely humanitarian reasons<\/i><\/p>\n
I keep seeing this “purely humanitarian” phrase a lot. To be eminently Machiavellian, very little the US ever does is purely humanitarian – it’s never been noted as one of the UN’s major soft asset suppliers. Generally, the US intervenes when it has significant strategic or military objectives.<\/p>\n
Like the Afghan adventure, Somalia is primarily about oil, and access to oil. Somalia’s former Barre regime struck significant deals with US oil interests, leasing nearly two-thirds of Somalia to four huge American oil companies: Conoco, Chevron, Phillips, and Amoco<\/a>. This required the input of around $50m annually in aid to Barre’s regime<\/a>, and the elimination of any opposition. Rather similar to Saudi Arabia, and the late 90s support of the Taliban central regime in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, in the power vacuum after Barre’s removal, there was no central authority to guarantee US oil company access to the promising Somalian fields. The country descende d into factionalism<\/a>, and led to an interruption of food supplies.<\/p>\n The initial phase of the UN engagement in Somalia, safeguarding food warehouses and convoys, was a qualified success. But the US’s increasing involvement in “nation building” led to allegations that it was in fact creating a nation aligned with US interests<\/a>. This is of course understandable if you own those soldiers, but very far from the remit of the UN. But it’s very far from “purely humanitarian<\/b>“.<\/p>\n The fact that the US-friendly Boutros Ghali had been a Barre supporter and had opposed Aideed and was now Sec Gen in the UN also pissed off the Aideed-aligned factions greatly. Excluding Aideed-aligned factions from settlements did nothing to alievate this situation.<\/p>\n Finally, the extraordinary racism<\/a> displayed by many of the UN troops (not just US troops) led to Congressional enquiries, the disemboweling of heavy-handed Pakistani troops<\/a>, and the trial of several Canadian and Belgian soldiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" seeing as how the United States was there for purely humanitarian reasons I keep seeing this “purely humanitarian” phrase a lot. To be eminently Machiavellian, very little the US ever does is purely humanitarian...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t