Why America’s Diplomats Must Remain Visible!

[Mario B]

 

 

 

The New Yorker

 

 

September 14, 2012

Why America’s Diplomats Must Remain Visible

Posted by Jon Lee Anderson

 

 

 

In the aftermath of the gruesome mob violence in Benghazi this week that resulted in the murders of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats, together with as many as ten Libyan security guards, as well as attacks on U.S. embassies elsewhere in the Middle East, it is easy to recall the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, in which eighteen American servicemen were killed, their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by angry mobs.

 

Democracy does not tend to flourish in the midst of civil wars, nor in fragile states, much less without a strong partner, such as the nations of Europe and Japan enjoyed under the U.S.-sponsored Marshall Plan in the years following the Second World War. In Somalia after Black Hawk Down, there was no state, there was a hydra-headed civil war, and there was no American goodwill—or anything else for that matter, for a very long time. Soon afterward, the United States withdrew its troops from the country, and Somalia was left to its own devices. The country became an ungoverned black hole where armed gangs fought for turf, sea pirates established a sanctuary to launch raids offshore, and Islamist extremists took refuge after launching terrorist attacks. In the intervening years, by and large, the U.S. presence in Somalia has been fleeting and furtive: lighting raids by Special Forces commandos to snatch or kill fugitive extremist suspects; convoys of naval warships escorting seaborne shipments of food to alleviate the country’s periodic famines, and anti-piracy operations in the seas off its lawless shores. For most of the past two decades, Somalia has languished under widespread international opprobrium as the world’s “most failed state.”

 

Continue on the link below:

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/09/why-americas-diplomats-must-remain-visible.html

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Americans not safe in Somalia what else is new.

[Mario B]

America should concentrate more on soft-power, the ratio of 650billion dollars defence and armament to 24billion in aid should be recalibrated so that United State is carrying a big carrot instead of a big stick [ i.e Drones, cruise missiles, B 52s].

 

Terrorism, piracy, famine, and mob justice are symptoms of failure of governance, helping countries build capacity for effective governance is the cure and not bombing, drones and cruise missiles.