Turning the Tide: Humanitarian Interventions?

Noam Chomsky?: " I won't run through the details regarding Somalia since you can find a lot in print, right at the time and later.
Steve Shalom had a fine article about it at the time in Z; I wrote about it right away in Z too. More later, after other facts dribbled out. In brief, there had been a terrible famine after the chaos following the overthrow of the murderous US-backed dictator. By the end of 1992 it was declining, Red Cross supplies were mostly getting through, it looked as though the situation was coming under control. At that point Bush 1 decided to make a spectacular show of 'humanitarian aid.' Marines were sent in a manner so comical even the TV teams couldn't take it seriously. There was a night landing in front of TV cameras (of course all networks were notified: what else would be the point?). But the marines with their night vision equipment were blinded by the cameras and the crews had to be ordered to shut them off. There was no resistance of course.
After that came a tragicomedy in which some lives were saved by humanitarian aid and probably as many or more were lost by heavy-handed military tactics -- which were later blamed on the UN when it became a fiasco, though it was all under US military control. Black Hawk Down and all the rest are one fictionalized version of it. The US estimated that 7-10,000 Somalis were killed, for what that's worth. Specialists who have worked on the area, like Alex de Waal, estimate that deaths and saving of lives were about in balance, and that the whole matter could have proceeded better without the military intervention, which appears to have been done mostly for PR purposes, and was virtually announced that way. That's only the beginning. But a good enough reason to suggest plenty of skepticism."

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