Possible US military attack against Somalia? Not again!!

Steve Clemons and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama have both been writing about the possibility that the new Obama administration might launch some form of attack against ground targets in desperately war-torn Somalia.
Please God, no! Does no-one in this White House have a memory that stretches back to 1993, when a newly inaugurated Bill Clinton thought that– especially as a Democrat with a previous pro-peace record– he needed to “show some spine” and turn the US’s existing aid-protection mission in Somalia into a war-fighting “compellence” mission instead?
With disastrous effect.
Wikipedia reminds us (footnotes removed) that,

On July 12, 1993, a United States-led operation was launched on what was believed to be a safe house in Mogadishu where members of [anti-US Somali political leader Mohamed Farah] Aidid’s Habar Gidir clan were supposedly meeting. In reality, elders of the clan, not gunmen, were meeting in the house. According to U.N. officials, the agenda, advertised in the local newspaper, was to discuss ways to peacefully resolve the conflict between Aidid and the multinational task force in Somalia, and perhaps even to remove Aidid as leader of the clan
During the 17-minute combat operation, U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound, killing 73 of the clan elders…
Some believe that this was a turning point in unifying Somalis against the U.S. and U.N. efforts in Somalia, as it unified many Somalis, including moderates and those opposed to the Habar Gidir.

Pres. Clinton’s childish and destructive “spine-demonstration” exercise in Somalia turned out very badly indeed for Somalia. As did the “compellence by proxy” mission that Pres. George W. Bush launched against the country in December 2006, using the Ethiopian invasion army as his proxy.
Clinton’s completely needless chest-baring exercise in Somalia also turned out very badly for the US. With Somali politics thrown into uproar after the July assault, by October the US military (and White House) had decided on another raid, this time to try to capture two key aides to Aidid from a house they were in, in Mogadishu. That raid, codenamed ‘Operation Gothic Serpent‘ was a complete and embarrassing fiasco. Two US helicopters were downed and there was a very serious lack of communication and coordination between US ground and heli-borne units– and also, between US units and the Pakistani and Malaysian troops who were supposed to be their allies in that nominally UN force. A total of 18 US servicemen– and many, many more Somalis– were killed. Clinton’s attempt to demonstrate US military capabilities and resolve was quickly abandoned as he turned back to using much more diplomatic means to try to de-escalate the Somali situation.
That mad, destructive, and completely avoidable firefight then became the subject of the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
Another consequence of Clinton’s childish attempt to “show US muscle” in Somalia in 1993 was that the US military (and Clinton) then became extremely casualty averse. To the extent that the following April, when Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN’s small peacekeeping force in Rwanda, was crying out for reinforcements in the lead-up to and the early days of the genocide there, Clinton and Madeleine Albright worked actively at the UN to have Dallaire’s force completely disbanded, instead. Their “fear” was that even if there were no US units in the UN force in Rwanda, the US would somehow get sucked into it, and US troops might end up dying as they tried to save Rwandan lives.
(Actually, people who join an all-volunteer military like that in the US do so knowing full well that they might die on the job. That’s part of the deal. Also, Dallaire was able to hang onto a much-reduced skeleton force in Rwanda, which saved thousands of lives– though not nearly as many as it could have, if he’d been sent the reinforcements he’d begged for.)
The damaging legacy of “Gothic Serpent” lived on for many years, and in many different ways… both in Somalia and far beyond.
So please, please, President Obama, don’t even contemplate launching any kind of new military attack against Somalia– whether under the pretext of “fighting piracy” or any other pretext.
There are plenty of nonviolent ways to address any problems the international community faces in (and from the shores of) Somalia. Another war is not the answer. Plus, you have absolutely no need to “prove” anything, in a chest-thumping militaristic way. We elected you to solve problems, not create new ones; and most of us who elected you did so based on your promise to find nonviolent ways to resolve tricky conflicts, to de-escalate international tensions, and to build better relations of mutual respect and respect with the other nations of the world.
We certainly did not elect you to launch another US military attack against Somalia.