Congo Mission Creep Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

So last night, I was at the gym and I happened to come across the movie Blackhawk Down - the story of the ill-fated Battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 US soldiers and ended the US involvement in Somalia. It's a somewhat interesting war movie overshadowed pretty significantly by an amazingly racist portrayal of Somalis. Later that evening I was catching up on my NYRB reading and I read Adam Hochschild's dispiriting report from Congo about the horrific civil conflict taking place there. (BTW, as you can see it's truly a laugh a minute each evening at the Cohen household).

Anyway, both the movie and the article were ample reminders about the limitations of American power and the often complex nature of civil conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, if today's op-ed in the Washington Post is any indication, Michael O'Hanlon hasn't received that memo - because apparently he thinks that we should be training a whole new crop of American servicemen to send to sub-Saharan Africa. And no, I'm not making this up:

For crises like those in Congo and Darfur, the United States should consider a radical innovation in recruiting policy. We should create a peace operations division in the Army with individuals enlisting specifically for this purpose. There would be risks in such a venture, to be sure. But they are manageable and tolerable risks, especially since most such deployments would be legitimated by the United Nations, carried out with partners such as key allies, and backstopped by the U.S. armed forces in worst-case scenarios.

I mean really, where do I start here. It's almost as if Michael O'Hanlon is making it his mission in life to feed me things to blog about. Do I even have to mention that our mission in Somalia WAS legitimized by the UN; WAS carried out in partnership with key allies and WAS backstopped by the US armed forces. How did that work out?

But there's more:

The dangers of deploying such units to missions such as the one in Congo, would be real, but the risks would be acceptable. First, those volunteering would understand the risks and accept them. Second, in most civil conflicts such as Congo's, possible adversarial forces are not sophisticated. Soldiers in the new division would not need to execute complex operations akin to those carried out during the invasion of Iraq or current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would largely monitor villages and refugee camps, inspect individuals to make sure they did not have illicit weapons, and call for help if they came under concerted attack. Their jobs could be somewhat dangerous and would require discipline and reasonable knowledge of some basic infantry skills -- but they would not be extremely complex. Care would have to be taken in deciding when to deploy this force, but it generally would be, given the scars of recent difficult American experiences in places such as Somalia.

Well I'm quite sure the risks are acceptable when someone else is going on these missions, but soldiers always understand risks and accept them - that's their job. On the other hand, the job of civilian policymakers is not to send those soldiers on hare-brained missions that are not in the national interest.

But really, maybe I'm being too critical.

First of all, it's really hard to think of anything that could wrong in sending lightly armed US troops, without proper training, into the midst of a complex civil war. Easy, peasy. Second, there clearly is nothing complex about the civil war in Congo, the fighters there are just a bunch of dead-enders and of course American troops are well-versed in the cross-cutting tribal and ethnic rivalries that exist in Congo. Third, there is a clear national interest in having the United States become immersed in a civil war in sub-Saharan Africa; look how well it worked out in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia etc.  Fourth, it does seem like a really good idea to further militarize American foreign policy by ramping up our military involvement in failed states like Congo; I mean why would Congolese look askance at that (we have the best intentions) and I'm quite sure the AID, Peace Corps and NGO workers there wouldn't suddenly be viewed with suspicion. No, no, the entry of armed Americans into an active civil conflict always makes things better.

I know it's hard to express a new idea in a 750-word op-ed, but really is Michael O'Hanlon blind to all the things that could go wrong with sending US ground forces into Congo; and by what possible measure of the national interest does it make sense? The last paragraph provides a hint:

Problems like Congo, Darfur and Somalia tend to get solved only with U.S. leadership. And the United States cannot truly lead on this issue while resisting any role for its own ground forces. It is time to recognize the contradiction of pretending otherwise and get on with a solution.

Right, right, the only way for the US to lead is by sending in the armed forces. (Oh and just out of curiosity how did Darfur and Somalia "get solved" by US leadership?) One would think that after the experience of the past 6 1/2 years and the most disastrous military intervention in US foreign policy history, people would think more critically about the efficacy of utilizing American military force overseas. One would think that other non-military measures of America power might receive greater consideration in foreign policy discussions. One might even think that advocates of US military intervention would be humbled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they tell us about the limitations of American military force.

Apparently not.

Comments

[SNLII]

He said the same crap in a recent Orbis article, Michael. I can send it to you if you like.

[Zathras]

Where I started with O'Hanlon's idea was "no." It's where I ended up, too. Nothing in the middle.

I remember seeing Black Hawk Down, and am curious as to why Cohen thinks its portrayal of Somalis was racist. As I recall, Somalis are depicted in the movie either as gunmen, as people who run gangs of gunmen, or as terrified bystanders. One can't speak of the film's insights into Somalia in any depth; it's basically a war movie told from the American perspective. However, nothing in the film would contradict a view that Somalis are heirs to a violent, backward culture and have brought most of their problems on themselves -- which they are, and which they have.

Honestly, if we're ever going to get away from the idea that every problem in the world is America's responsibility to solve, we need to drop the prissy attitude toward the cultures producing those problems and what we can say about them. The last administration spent years promoting the idea that there was no democracy in the Arab world because American policy didn't promote it; President Bush never directly addressed the argument that the Arab world being full of Arabs might have been a contributing factor, but I'm sure he would have considered it racist. And so here we are -- and here O'Hanlon is with respect to the Congo, proposing another American solution to problems that are someone else's fault.

[Tim Moon]

You mentioned that our mission in Somalia was "carried out with partners such as key allies", which (overall) it was. But I just wanted to clarify that the specific mission portrayed in Blackhawk Down actually wasn't coordinated with the U.N. command. In the book it goes into detail about how the General in charge of the U.N. troops was pissed we left him out of the loop and when we asked for help, it led to long delays in the final (successful) rescue convoy.

Clearly, Cohens view of Blackhawk Down as being racist shows he hasn't read the book or really analyzed the film. In the book, Mark Bowden does a great job showing the Somali perspective.

Anyway, this was a really good article. If anything is done with a military force in Congo it would have to be with U.N. peacekeepers and not simply American troops.

[DJF]

Michael O'Hanlon gets the level of training needed wrong. These peacekeepers, police, failed state supporters will need extensive training. They will need to know the languages, customs, laws, factions of these states and also need to know a great deal of military knowledge’s since they will be spread in small units across a wide area in hostile territory and need the knowledge to not be overwhelmed.

If having marginally trained soldiers was the road to success in Africa then the various African Union deployments would have already been successful

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