Houk,+Charles

Historical Investigation

To what extent did the outcome of intervention in Somalia affect President’s Clinton’s decision to avoid intervening in Rwanda during the genocide?

A.) Plan of Investigation- Word Count 134 The essential question of this investigation is to what extent did the outcome of intervention in Somalia affect President’s Clinton’s decision to avoid intervening in Rwanda during the genocide? The main section of the investigation will describe the context of each of the situations and the similarities between them. Also, the research will show President Clinton’s point of view on both situations. The two main sources used to strengthen the investigation will be Bill Clinton’s My Life, and Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. The origin, purpose, value, and limitations will be the key parts of both of these texts. This contextual evidence is imperative to understand why President Clinton decided to refrain from entering Rwanda. Through both of these texts, a strong analysis, and a solid conclusion, the investigation will answer the essential question.

B.) Summary of Evidence-Word Count- 806 The reason President Clinton placed troops into Mogadishu to capture warlord Mohammad Aidid. The UN was in place in Somalia attempting to control the region, a region with no real government. The main thing the UN was attempting to do was feed the general population. “Aidid and the others in his clan had welcomed the UN intervention” in the beginning, believing they could bring stability to the region but “the mission had gradually deteriorated into hatred and bloodshed.”[i] After this change in heart, “warlord Mohammed Aidid killed twenty-four Pakistani peacekeepers.”[ii] Aidid wanted control of Somalia and he believed the only way to have that control was to expel the UN. The United Nations did not have the abilities to defend them and detain the warlord so they went to the United States. The whole feeling in the White House was that “arresting Aidid and putting him on trial was the only way to end the clan based conflicts that kept Somalia mired in violence, failure, and chaos.”[iii] Clinton agreed to send the army’s Tenth Mountain Division to Somalia in order to capture Aidid and some of his partners. After a tip that a meeting between some of Aidid’s lead men would be taking place in Mogadishu’s “Black Sea” neighborhood, Major General William Garrison ordered his Army Rangers to storm the building and capture the men. “They flew into Mogadishu in Black Hawk helicopters in broad daylight.”[iv] The soldiers stormed the building, capturing the leaders of the meeting and headed back to base when one of their helicopters was shot down, shortly thereafter a second helicopter was shot down. This led to an all out firefight in the middle of the city. “The Rangers were pinned down in the most dangerous part of Mogadishu, Somalia and taking casualties.”[v] The belief prior to entering Mogadishu was that “Somali warlord Aidid lacked broad popular support” however as the fight carried on, “it seemed like everybody in the city wanted suddenly to help kill Americans.”[vi] When all was said and done nineteen American soldiers were dead and more than five-hundred Somalis had died. [vii] “The battle of Mogadishu was a planned 90-minute mission which turned into a deadly 17 hours.”[viii] Although the actual mission was successful, “The battle of the Black Sea was perceived outside the special operations community as a failure. The images the battle produced of dead soldiers dragged by jeering mobs through the streets of Mogadishu are among the most horrible and disturbing in our history, made all the worse by the good intentions that prompted our intervention.”[ix] One State Department officer interviewed by Mark Bowden pointed that “the idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that.”[x] The good intentions that prompted the intervention in Mogadishu showed themselves again in the spring of 1994. “On April 6, 1994 Rwanda’s long standing Hutu dictator, President Juvenal Habyarimana, was assassinated in Kigali, and a clique of Hutu Power leaders from the military high command seized power.”[xi] This was the beginning to one of the worst atrocities the world has ever seen, one that the United States watched, and did nothing. “In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda.”[xii] The UN had been in Rwanda since the summer of 1993, under the command of Romeo Dallaire, with the simple role of keeping the peace. After several warnings that genocide could be rising in Rwanda, the UN shipped Dallaire eighty useable “hand-me-down vehicles from the UN’s Cambodia mission.”[xiii] After a request of 5,000 soldiers from the United States to help keep the peace, Dallaire received the response “that the United States would not support aggressive peacekeeping,” something they tried and failed in Somalia.[xiv] The outcome of the Rwandan Genocide was the worst anyone could’ve asked for, especially President Clinton. “In the weeks after April 6, 1994, 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as many as three quarters of the Tutsi population.”[xv] Many large countries shared in the shame of the events because they “were aware of the preparations for massive slaughter and failed to take the steps needed to prevent it.”[xvi]

Years later Clinton expressed his own opinion for his decision to not intervene in Rwanda. “We were so preoccupied with Bosnia[1], with the memory of Somalia just six months old, and with opposition in Congress to military deployments in faraway places not vital to our national interests that neither I nor anyone on my foreign policy team adequately focused on sending troops to stop the slaughter.”[xvii] Clinton goes on to explain that deciding not to intervene in Rwanda was one of the worst decisions of his presidency.[xviii]

Evaluation of Sources Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print. The origin of the source Black Hawk Down is that it’s story of the U.S. invasion of Somalia on October 3, 1993, published in 2000. Mark Bowden created this non-fiction book after extensive research and interviews of those involved. Bowden has been a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and has won many national awards for his writings. The purpose of this story was to tell the story of the men who fought in Mogadishu and give the general public knowledge of the incident for the first time. The value of this story is the information of the invasion, and ultimately the failure viewed by the world. Bowden describes the events in detail, from the positives to the mistakes made by the leaders. The biggest limitation, described in the epilogue, was the differing viewpoints. Retired Army Colonel David Hackworth stated many different points than Bowden found while interviewing his sources that were on the ground during the fight. Bowden wrote the book mainly from interviews. He interviewed many soldiers that were there during the fight but he admits that it’s not perfect. He realized that many soldiers memories may have been cloudy after such an intense firefight. Clinton, Bill. My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. 550-554, 592-593. Print.

The origin of the book, My Life by Bill Clinton, is that it was published in June of 2004. In this book Clinton describes all of his life and his presidency. Although the book is over 950 pages, I will be using the sections where Clinton talks about the Mogadishu intervention and the Rwandan “genocide,” although Clinton does not classify it as genocide. The purpose of Bill Clinton making this book is truly to make money and to make his presidency look good, which leads to some limitations. The value of this book is that it’s a primary source written by the President who made the decisions during the Mogadishu and Somalia incidents. Although this book presents a good first hand account on the events I will be focusing on, it does have some large limitations. Bill Clinton wrote this book so obviously he will try to make himself seem strong and intelligent during both the situations, creating a very biased opinion. Although there are many limitations this book gives me a great source to describe Clinton’s feelings and actions during both the Mogadishu battle and the incident in Rwanda.

[1] Between April 1992 and November 1995, Serbia set out to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnian territory by systematically removing all Bosnian Muslims. Serbia, together with ethnic Bosnian Serbs, attacked Bosnian Muslims with former Yugoslavian military equipment and surrounded Sarajevo, the capital city. The siege of this city was brutal, as snipers were used to shoot civilians walking in the street. Many Bosnian Muslims were driven into concentration camps where women and girls were systematically gang-raped and other civilians were tortured, starved and murdered. In the course of the war as many as 1 million Muslims in Bosnia were forced to flee their homes. (Excerpt from “The Holocaust Museum Houston”)

[ii] Clinton, Bill. My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. 550-554, 592-593. Print. [iii] ibid [iv] ibid code [v] "Ambush in Mogadishu: Synopsis." PBS.Web. 16 Sept. 2010. . [vi] Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. New York: Penguin, 2000. 230. Print. [vii] Clinton, Bill. My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. 550-554, 592-593. Print. code [viii] Ambush in Mogadishu: Synopsis." PBS.Web. 16 Sept. 2010. . [ix] Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. New York: Penguin, 2000. 332. Print.  [x] Ibid. Pg. 334 code [xi] Gourevitch, Philip. We wish to inform you that tomorow we will be killed with our families. New code York: Picador, 1998. 26. Print.

[xii] Power, Samantha. "Bystanders to Genocide." The Atlantic Monthly: The Atlantic Monthly. 86. Web.6 Sept. 2010. [xiii] Ibid [xiv] Ibid. code [xv] "Genocide in Rwanda." United Human Rights Council. N.p., 2010. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. code . [xvi] Ibid. [xvii] Clinton, Bill. My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. 550-554, 592-593. Print.

[xviii] Ibid.