
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 11, 1993                   TAG: 9401220003
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SETTING LIMITS IN SOMALIA

PRESIDENT Clinton has once again shown his inclination to find a middle way in his decision last week to send more troops to Somalia now - but with an April 1 deadline for complete withdrawal and a renewed emphasis on political, rather than military, initiatives.

This is a corrective action, demanded by Congress, after a foreign policy misstep that drew thinned-out U.S. forces into a fight with fugitive warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid - precisely the sort of internal conflict the United States vowed to stay out of when it launched its humanitarian action to save lives in a starving nation.

Once the immediate threat of mass starvation was averted, the temptation arose, of course, to encourage the creation of some civil structure that would keep the continuing conflicts in the African nation from re-creating the conditions that had threatened its population in the first place.

But such structures aren't built by troops and armor. Clinton, trying to correct the course of a drifting foreign policy, has committed another 5,300 troops and more heavy armor to finish a mission started "for the right reasons" in order to "finish it the right way."

This sounds eerily like the "peace with honor" the United States spent years and lives fruitlessly seeking before it withdrew its forces from Vietnam. The saving difference is that Clinton has put a six-month deadline on the U.S. military presence in Somalia - and Congress is in no mood to complacently allow that deadline to pass unmet.

It seems unlikely that the temporary increase in American forces will succeed in laying groundwork for governing Somalia, any more than U.S. and U.N. forces have thus far.

But it is apparent that the U.S. troops already in the African nation need greater support. America must not put soldiers at risk to prove its "manhood," as congressional critics have rightly noted. But neither must America cut and run every time it suffers any casualties or there are atrocities. Soldiers know they risk their lives when they volunteer; Americans back home should know that as well. And the soldiers there need help now.

In putting an April 1 cutoff date on the U.S. military's role - even if a settlement "doesn't happen by then" - the administration has turned to presidents of other African nations to try to bring Somalia's warring clans into peace negotiations. And it has let it be known that the United States won't necessarily balk at a solution that includes warlord Aidid.

These moves offer the best hope yet (which isn't saying much) for bringing order to a nation that isn't a nation in the sense of having a unifying government, but is really a collection of tribal clans. In any event, a stable government will have to be built from within, as messy a process as that might be. It cannot be imposed at gunpoint by another country.

If the Clinton administration forgot that for a while, at least it seems to have remembered - and accepted - that fact recently.

by CNB