Channels, Fall 2016

Page 16 Dotson • The Successes and Failures of the Battle of Mogadishu United States to act militarily. 42 An article comparing the two tragedies noted that Darfur was called genocide much faster than Rwanda had been a decade prior. This was despite the fact that Rwanda was much more openly genocide and that very few ambiguous facts were known about Darfur. 43 President Bush took this newfound knowledge and used it to his advantage. Bush and his staff used publically declaring Darfur as genocide, even when the United Nations did not, as a means of escape from intervention. Officially using the term genocide was the United States’ attempt at doing its part, and that was as much as it was willing to assist in the conflict. Despite the lack of evidence pointing directly towards Mogadishu as the reason for America’s inaction in Darfur, very little had changed in terms of foreign policy since Rwanda. Both the conflict in Bosnia and the Rwandan genocide had ended without the United States playing any significant role. The United States even refused to chase world- renown terrorist Osama Bin Laden in the late 1990s. In a Pentagon study on why America did not seriously pursue Osama Bin Laden prior to 9/11, Professor Richard Schultz concluded that "the Mogadishu disaster [had] spooked the Clinton administration." 44 Excepting the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, nothing had changed since the post-Somalia policy shift in 1993; PDD-25 was still in full effect. Examining this document’s primary criteria for U.S. intervention displays that PDD-25 continued to restrict American forces. First, the genocide and civil war in Darfur remained contained within Sudan and posed no significant threat to the outside community. Additionally, Darfur had fewer casualties than both Rwanda and Bosnia. Second, American troops were not necessary in the effort to resolve the conflict, and the UN did not define a clear end-goal. Therefore, the United States continued to practice non-intervention, and Darfur was just as much a casualty of this method as the Rwandan genocide. This is clearly found when examining the similarities in the United States’ response to these three situations. Darfur marked the third time in only a decade that the United States’ new foreign policy doctrine was clearly displayed to the world. The old foreign policy model had been the same for almost half a century: America played the role of global peacekeeper. Anytime a situation popped up in the world, no matter the size or significance, the United States government viewed it as its role to intervene. Initially, Somalia was just another case of humanitarian intervention for President Bush in 1992. This was during the battle for power after General Barre’s death that resulted in the Somali civil war. Both the United States and the United Nations viewed the incident in Somalia as a chance to create the 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Benjamin Runkle, “The Lost Lessons of 'Black Hawk Down',” War on the Rocks, 2013, accessed January 20, 2016, http://warontherocks.com/2013/10/the-lost-lessons-of-black-hawk-down/ .