Book contents
- America’s Wars
- Cambridge Military Histories
- America’s Wars
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 An End and a Beginning
- 2 The Persian Gulf War and Its Aftermath
- 3 Wars Other Than War
- 4 Afghanistan
- 5 The Iraq War
- 6 America’s Small-Footprint Wars
- 7 America’s Larger Forever Wars
- 8 A Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Wars Other Than War
Wars in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2021
- America’s Wars
- Cambridge Military Histories
- America’s Wars
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 An End and a Beginning
- 2 The Persian Gulf War and Its Aftermath
- 3 Wars Other Than War
- 4 Afghanistan
- 5 The Iraq War
- 6 America’s Small-Footprint Wars
- 7 America’s Larger Forever Wars
- 8 A Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter chronicles military incursions on behalf of humanity into Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans twice to feed the starving, restore democracy, and rescue populations from annihilation. These altruistic missions, known as “military operations other than war,” or MOOTW (pronounced as “moot-wah”) were viewed skeptically by the traditionally minded Pentagon brass. They regarded MOOTW as a diversion from real soldiering. But troops died in them. George H. W. Bush committed US forces, under United Nations auspices, to Somalia so as to distribute food to the starving Somalis in their volatile and violent land. This humanitarian mission led to a bloody skirmish in Mogadishu during William J. Clinton’s presidency that politically humiliated America. Also in 1993, a military junta in Haiti ousted the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. When desperate Haitians landed on American beaches, Clinton tried sanctions to restore Aristide. Then he militarily invaded the Caribbean nation to put defrocked Catholic priest back in power. Sobered by the “Mog” firefight, Clinton refused to help halt the bloodbath in Rwanda. He could not avoid the raging war in the Balkans to rescue Bosnian Muslims from Serbia in the worst conflict since World War II. In 1995, Washington corralled Britain, France, and other NATO members into bombing the Serbs and then occupying Bosnia to preserve the peace. Next, the tiny Muslim-dominated province of Kosovo erupted against its Serb overlords. A three-month sustained bombing campaign compelled Serbia to surrender.
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- America's WarsInterventions, Regime Change, and Insurgencies after the Cold War, pp. 56 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022