American Troops

Most Americans must instinctively welcome the offer the Bus administration made to the United Nations to send up to 30,000 American troops to ensure that food aid gets through to the starving Somalian people. This is what we want to believe the United States stands for in the world -- doing good, saving lives, putting wrong right.The old rules of humanitarian aid don't apply to Somalia. They assume a government whose sovereignty must be respected. They assume that if food is provided, people will eat. Somalia is patrolled by thugs from rival clans who seize the food, shoot at ships bearing more and force their own people to starve.

As the last American troops departed Mogadishu Friday, there were no delegations of well-wishers, no displays of thanks for a humanitarian mission that had literally saved tens of thousands of Somalis from starvation. In military parlance, this was dubbed "Quickdraw," an accurate term to describe a withdrawal in a swarm of helicopters and amphibious craft to prevent incident or casualty.How different a scene it was from 16 months ago, when troops assigned to "Operation Restore Hope" landed on the beaches in the bizarre glare of TV floodlights.

HUSAYBAH, IRAQ -- The U.S. military command said yesterday that civilians had been killed and wounded in heavy fighting here in the past few days, the first such acknowledgment of civilian casualties since the anti-insurgent sweep of this town in western Iraq began Saturday. The Marines said that, according to a witness, rebels broke into a family's home, killed two of the occupants and locked the rest in a room. The insurgents then used the house as a base to launch attacks on American and Iraqi troops, the Marines said.

MIHAMA, Japan - This is the story of a rape and of a death and the different attention each has provoked on this small island where more than 20,000 American troops are based. Both incidents can be traced to an unassuming restaurant named the 3F, which caters in almost equal measure to Japanese and to American troops. First came the reported rape of a Japanese customer at 2 a.m. on June 29 in the parking lot outside the restaurant. Timothy Woodland, a 24-year-old Air Force staff sergeant, was charged.

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared yesterday that Iraqi forces could secure the country on their own "any time" American troops decided to withdraw, his first response to the White House report this week that found his government falling well short of many political reforms and military readiness goals sought by the Bush administration. Al-Maliki has been under attack by American officials and many Iraqi politicians for leading a government mired in disputes and unable to make progress on major legislation seen as crucial to stabilizing the country.

The four young Foreign Service officers who have resigned to protest U.S. policy in Bosnia acted in the finest tradition of their calling. They might have been better advised, however, to ask for transfer to the Somalia desk where a sobering experience would have awaited them on the pitfalls of U.S. intervention in conflicts overseas -- especially conflicts involving peoples and cultures only dimly understood and not adaptable to the prompt, casualty-free solutions...

Regarding your recent article about the continuing violence in Iraq, it's disturbing that it and many similar pieces all followed President Obama's Dec. 2010 announcement that all American troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011 ("Blasts targeting pilgrims kill 15, injure 52 in Iraq," Jan.10). It's quite obvious that the president's action was nothing more than a political ploy to position himself in a more favorable position for re-election in 2012. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's announcement also created the chaotic situation the articles describe.

WASHINGTON -- In a sharp reversal of earlier estimates, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said yesterday that worsening sectarian violence will require American force levels in Iraq to remain at or above the current level well into next year. In a sober new military assessment, Gen. John Abizaid said that worsening sectarian violence in Iraq had forced him to revise his estimate of six months ago that significant troop reductions would be under way by now. Instead, he said, the current level of 147,000 American troops "will probably have to be sustained through the spring, and then we will re-evaluate."

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Faced with armed resistance that has killed four U.S. soldiers this week, allied military commanders now plan to keep a larger force in Iraq than they had anticipated and to send war-hardened units to trouble spots outside Baghdad, senior American officials said yesterday. Instead of sending home the 3rd Infantry Division, which led the charge on Baghdad, plans now call for most of its troops to extend their stay to quell unrest and extend American control. Allied officials said that about 160,000 American and British troops are in Iraq and that the vast majority are likely to stay until security improves and other nations ease the burden by contributing troops.

Suddenly, droves of congressmen are jumping up to make emotional speeches about Somalia: What the heck are we doing there? When are we going to get out? How did we get into such a mess?Are they really as dumb as they sound?Anybody with an ounce and a half of common sense could have predicted that what has just happened -- the deaths of American troops -- was going to happen.You didn't have to be a foreign-policy or military expert to know that if you stick around a country like Somalia long enough, bad things will happen.