American Involvement in Somalia

This is a continuation of my research into the American involvement in the Somali civil War between 1992 and 1994. This paper will attempt to fit the historical data into some of the various ideas put forth in the Kriesberg book, though, unfortunately, the war did not really develop in the same way that the book might describe due to the complete failure of the mission and the brief time of actual American combat. Nevertheless, Kriesberg will provide a useful theoretical starting point to understand this conflict and its ultimate lack of resolution. The civil war that the US was supposed to stop continues without resolution to this very day.1. Escalating the war took place in three rapid stages. All of these were American led operations, though under the cover of â€Å"UN Resolutions† which seemed to provide some kind of a moral stamp on the operation. The three stages were all complete failures from every conceivable point of view. Conventionally, they are called, in order UN OSOM I, UNITAF and finally, UNISOM II, which was finally terminated in 1994 (Lyons, 1995, 39). All of these acronyms concern either UN or US projects in Somalia. The first, in 1992, saw the deployment of only a handful of peacekeepers once most of the factions in the country agreed to some kind of mediation.But as soon as the grand total of 50 men landed, the factions refused any kind of negotiation and immediately resumed fighting. UNOSOM I was considered a bad joke at best. However, the US took over operations a brief time later under UNITAF, which was basically an American controlled operation. In early 1993, the US sought to intervene under the cover of both UN diplomacy and under the idea of â€Å"humanitarian intervention,† a concept where the state intervening does not have any real political capital to gain, but is intervening to save lives and avert famine.But the reality is that the US was interested in controlling Somalia for one reason: to keep it from falling int o the hands of the Islamic movement of General Mohammed Farah Aidid (Lyons, 1995, 39-42). Aidid very quickly succeeded in making himself the most powerful faction leader in Somalia, and in his turn, made himself the anti-American and anti-Israeli leader in the war, holding to a semi-communist kind of Islam that sided with Sudan and, to some extent, Syria in the middle east (Schultz, 2006, 92-94). Aidid also condemned American involvement in the Iraq war.Hence, very quickly, the Clinton administration dropped both te UN and the â€Å"humanitarian† cover and sought to capture Aidid at all costs. Aidid was a threat to both US and Israeli interests for several reasons, dealt with in detail in the last paper: first, Somalia is an oil-rich state, second, it helps control access to the Red Sea, and third, it controls access, to some extent, to the equally oil-rich state of Sudan, where western backed rebels in oil rich Darfur are fighting the Islamic state of Omar Bashir (Kreitzman, 2006).Hence, Somalia was considered a strategic country on all counts. The American force was fought to a draw by Aidid’s forces in the famed 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. It was not long after that that both UNITAF and UNOSOM II, engaged in at the same time, withdrew its forces from Somalia. 2. There was an US brokered attempt to create a unified faction against Aidid in Ethiopia (then a pro-US power in the region), but negotiations quickly broke down (Lyons, 1995, 40-41 also 45). But this is where the American failure can be more closely analyzed.First of all, the Americans approached negotiations as a purely zero-sum game (Kriesberg, 2006, 273). The point of negotiations in 1993 was not to end the war, but to escalate with, with a strongly western backed coalition against Aidid. Since there was no real understanding of the ideas of all factions, political or religious, the US also, secondly, stereotyped its opponents: the Muslims were evil, foul and, worse, anti-Israel, and t he others were secular and progressive (Kreisberg, 2006, 280).Hence, both due to the zero-sum question as well as stereotyping, the US could not successfully operate on Somali territory, even if the number of soldiers escalated higher. The zero-sum aspect of this is also connected to what Kriesberg calls â€Å"cognitive dissonance† in warfare–that is, an intervening party must convince themselves that the official reason that one is intervening is the real one (Kreisberg, 2006, 157). Of course, no serious person could possible pull that off, and hence, there was a schism in the mentality of the intervention from day one.Since the real purpose behind US intervention was to install a secular government friendly to American interests, and the â€Å"humanitarian† rhetoric went out the window at an early date once Aidid became powerful and popular, the official purpose and the real purpose of the intervention became an â€Å"open secret† early on. This could o nly hamper American efforts. As General Montgomery pointed out, the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 814, with tacit U. S. support, clearly changed the mission. â€Å"For us there was no such thing as mission creep,† he pointed out, â€Å"because it was very clear at the outset what we were supposed to do.† While the resolution was unrealistic and overly ambitious, General Montgomery insisted the taskings in it were clear enough (Hoffman 2004). Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, â€Å"mission creep† was the order of the day. Directives from Washington differed from directives from the UN. Washington wanted Aidid, while the UN wanted some kind of humanitarian action. But this is not atypical from upper brass in the military establishment, as much a political position as a military one.Ultimately, there was a superficial resolution of the problem by saying that the reason the humanitarian disaster occurred was that Aidid made sure the food aid did not get to â€Å"the people. † This assertion has no evidence to underscore it. But even more, the US got involved in an obscure part of the world for oil and Israeli interests. The US had no real comprehension of the religion and culture of either the Islamic or Christian Somalis. The US, as mentioned in the last paper, failed miserably in the propaganda war once Aidid made it clear that the US was an invading and imperial force working at the behest of wealth and power.This set of ideas helped bring Somalis to his side, and made the US look bad. But American ignorance of the real situation and the perception of US interests among the common population ultimately forced the withdrawal of all troops by 1994 with little having been done. 3. The consequences of this intervention were absolutely disastrous. Since 1992, roughly 1. 2 million Somalis have lost their lives. Starvation is the order of the day, and the war continues without abatement. Aidid himself was ki lled in a gun battle in 1996, yet his movement remains strong.But more abstractly, there are indirect consequences. First, the US realized that any serious commitment needed a large number of troops with strong air support. Second, the approbation of the UN, while having no military value, has a strong degree of moral value. Third, Americans are not interested in long term warfare, unless a major event can take place where Americans are killed. Hence, 9/11 gave both the US and the Israelis a green light to take care of their political problems with little fallout (at least in the short run). Fourth, there needs to be a constant threat to keep Americans interested.Since Somalis did not threaten Americans, it was very difficult to maintain American interest or support. But constructing an ubiquitous web of Islamic terror cells might keep Americans interested. In reality however, none of these lessons were truly learned, and the realist approach to intervention still maintains itself: the US will intervene whenever its financial interests are concerned, which includes protecting the hated state of Israel at all costs to her prestige or credibility. Even more, the UN ended up looking like a paper tiger, a tool of US interests and without a clear agenda of its own.It was a disaster in every significant way. 4. The sort of warfare one is looking at in Somalia is clearly â€Å"zero-sum. † The US intervened solely out of an interest in African oil and the control of access to the strategic Red Sea. The failed negotiations in Ethiopia produced no results because of American ignorance and the refusal of US negotiators to permit Aidid to have any say in the matter. Hence, it became officially clear (contra the words of General Montgomery above) that the real purpose of the mission was to keep Aidid away from power at all costs.But in rejecting the most popular and powerful faction in the country and trying to cobble together a coalition of small and non-ideologica l factions led to complete disaster, and American intelligence completely failed to figure out who was who, and who wanted what (Razack, 2004, 44). The US failed due to the â€Å"social psychological† atmosphere that they themselves created (Kriesberg, 2006, 147). Aidid saw through the American purpose from the outset, which permitted him to construct an Islamic nationalist base that proved very popular. That was a nut that the semi-committed Clinton administration could not understand or crack.Furthermore, organizational structure of Aidid’s forces also changed (Kriesberg, 2006,158). As he became more and more popular, it became clear that his organization became more powerful, regularized and disciplined. As mentioned in the last paper, Aidid began providing his own social services, paving roads and even contemplated minting his own currency, all of which the US was determined to destroy, apparently on â€Å"humanitarian grounds. † 5. In Conclusion, Kriesberg can help us understand the war in Somalia and the American failure in several ways. First, the US stereotyped its enemy and the Islamic world in general.Second, it approached the war as a zero-sum game, with everything on the secular warlords and nothing on Aidid. Instead of talking with him and respecting his popularity, the US attempted to destroy his very base of power and his functioning administration (Lyons disagrees with this, and claims the US did briefly negotiate with Aidid, pp 43, but it went nowhere). Third, the US entered this war without any real understanding of the mentality of third world people in an impoverished state. Like in Iraq, it was assumed that the US would be greeted as peacekeepers. Instead, they were greeted as occupiers (Razack, 2004, 10-11).Fourth, the US did not have a clear sense of mission. While official sources held that the mission was truly humanitarian, from the outset it was clear that the purpose was to keep Aidid and all like him from power and make certain a pro-US leader was installed in this strategic country. Aidid, a man of great military and political talent, took advantage of all these failures to eventually drive the US out of Somalia. Bibliography: Hoffman, Frank (2004). â€Å"One Decade Later: Debacle in Somalia. † The Proceedings of the Naval Institute. January. (www. military. org) Kriesberg, L.(2006). Constructive Conflicts. Rowman and Littlefield. Kretzman, Steve (2003). â€Å"Oil Security, War and the Geopolitics of United States Energy Planning. † Multinational Monitor, Jan/Feb. Lyons, Terrence (1995) Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention and Strategies for Political Reconstruction. Brookings Institute Razack, Sherlene (2004). Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. University of Toronto Press Shultz, Richard (2006) Insurgents, terrorists and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat. Columbia University Press

PHP Source Code Isnt Viewable; Only HTML Code

PHP Source Code Isnt Viewable; Only HTML Code With many websites, you can use your browser or another program to view the documents source code. This is a common occurrence  by viewers who want to see how a website developer accomplished a feature on a website. Anyone can view all the HTML that was used to create the page, but even if the web page contains PHP code, you can only view the HTML code and the results of the PHP code, not the code itself. Why PHP Code Isnt Viewable All PHP scripts are executed on the server before the website is delivered to the site viewer. By the time the data gets to the reader, all that is left is the HTML code. This is why a person cant go to a .php website page, save the file and expect it to work. They can save the HTML and see the results of PHP scripts, which are embedded inside the HTML after the code is executed, but the script itself is safe from curious eyes. Here is a test: The result is  PHP Code Test, but the code that generates it isnt viewable. Although you can see that there must be PHP code at work on the page, when you view the document source, you only see PHP Code Test because the rest is just instructions for the server and is not passed on to the viewer. In this  test scenario, only the text is sent to the users browser. The end user never sees the code.

Philosophical Quotes on Beauty

Philosophical Quotes on Beauty Beauty is one of the most intricate and fascinating topics of philosophical discussion. It has been taken up in relation to a host of other subjects, such as truth, the good, the sublime, and pleasure. Here is a selection of quotes on beauty, divided into different themes. Beauty and Truth Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all \ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (John Keats, One on a Grecian Urn, 1819)Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. (Albert Einstein, My Credo, 1932)The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness because it affords a greater temptation to the ego. (Northrop Frye, Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype, 1957)I must not say that she was true |Yet let me say that she was fair |And they, that lovely face who view |They should not ask if truth be there. (Matthew Arnold, Euphrosyne)Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart. (Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos)O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem| By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! (William Shakespeare, Sonnet LIV)If truth is beauty how come nobody has their hair done in a library? (Lily Tomlin, American comedian) Beauty and Pleasure Tis impious pleasure to delight in harm.And beauty should be kind, as well as charm. (George Granville, To Myra)Beauty is pleasure objectified - pleasure regarded as the quality of an object (George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty)The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty. (Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects, On Dissipation) Beauty and the Sublime Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt. (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment)What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly, it leads to resignation. (Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation)When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene. (Jane Austen, Mansfield Park)Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we everyday experience. (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful)A thing of beauty is a joy forever | Its loveliness increases; it will never |Pass into nothingness; but still will keep | A bower quiet for us, and a sleep |Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. (John Keats)

Java Expressions Introduced

Java Expressions Introduced Expressions are essential building blocks of any Java program, usually created to produce a new value, although sometimes an expression assigns a value to a variable. Expressions are built using values, variables, operators and method calls. Difference Between Java Statements and Expressions In terms of the syntax of the Java language, an expression is akin to a  clause in the English language  which portrays a specific meaning. With the right punctuation, it can sometimes stand on its own, although it can also be a part of a sentence. Some expressions equate to statements by themselves (by adding a semicolon at the end), but more commonly, they  comprise part of a statement. For example,(a * 2) is an expression. b   (a * 2); is a statement.  You could say that the expression is a clause, and the statement is the complete sentence since it forms the complete unit of execution. A statement doesnt have to include multiple expressions, however. You can turn a simple expression into a statement by adding a semi-colon:  (a * 2);   Types of Expressions While an expression frequently produces a result, it doesnt always. There are three types of expressions in Java: Those that produce a value, i.e., the result of (1 1)Those that assign a variable, for example (v 10)Those that have no result but might have a side effect because an expression can include a wide range of elements such as method invocations or increment operators that modify the state (i.e., memory) of a program.   Examples of Expressions Here are some examples of various types of expressions. Expressions that Produce a Value Expressions that produce a value use a wide range of Java arithmetic, comparison or conditional operators. For example, arithmetic operators include  , *, /, , , and %. Some  conditional operators  are ?, ||, and the comparison operators are , and .  See the Java specification for a complete list. These expressions produce a value: 3/2 5% 3 pi (10 * 2)   Note the parentheses in the last expression. This directs Java first to compute the value of the expression within the parentheses (just like the arithmetic you learned in school), then complete the rest of the computation. Expressions that Assign a Variable This program here contains plenty of expressions (shown in bold italics) that each assigns a value. int secondsInDay 0;int daysInWeek 7;int hoursInDay 24;int minutesInHour 60;int secondsInMinute 60; boolean calculateWeek true;secondsInDay secondsInMinute * minutesInHour * hoursInDay; //7System.out.println(The number of seconds in a day is: secondsInDay);if (calculateWeek true){  Ã‚  System.out.println(The number of seconds in a week is: secondsInDay * daysInWeek); } The expressions in the first six lines of the code above, all use the assignment operator to assign the value on the right to the variable on the left. The line denoted with //7 is an expression that can stand on its own as a statement. It also shows that expressions can be built up through the use of more than one operator. The final value of the variable secondsInDay is the culmination of evaluating each expression in turn (i.e., secondsInMinute * minutesInHour 3600, followed by 3600 * hoursInDay 86400). Expressions with No Result While some expressions produce no result, they can have a side effect which occurs when an expression changes the value of any of its operands. For example, certain operators are considered to always produce a side effect, such as the assignment, increment and decrement operators. Consider this: int product a * b; The only variable changed in this expression is the product; a and b are not changed. This is called a side effect.

The Crown Court Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Crown Court - Essay Example Summary offenses dealt with at the Magistrate Court include less serious ones such as traffic offenses or failure to pay taxes and will generally include all cases, including triable offenses, where the defendant has opted for a summary trial. However, the Crown Court hears those cases involving indictable offenses which include the category of serious offenses such as rape or murder. In so far as triable offenses are concerned, all offenses start at the Magistrate Court but the Crown Court deals with all those offenses which the Magistrate Court feels is so serious that only the Crown Court can with it, or where the defendant has requested for trial by jury. â€Å"Approximately ninety-six percent of criminal cases are dealt with summarily at a Magistrates Court.†2 A comparison of workloads of the two courts in terms of trials which was conducted in 1999 showed that â€Å"over four times as many trials took place in the magistrate's courts as in the Crown Court.†3 The q ualifications required to sit as a judge in a Crown Court is that the person in question must be a fully qualified solicitor or barrister and must have spent a minimum time of at least seven years in practice, after qualifying. In the case of magistrates, no formal training is advocacy is required and magistrates are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds. Lay Magistrates only undergo a short period of training and the exhaustive legal qualification and practice requirements required of judicial authorities in the crown courts are not expected of them. They are appointed by Lord Chancellor on the advice of the local advisory committees. However, the advantage with lay magistrates is that they are sensitive to local conditions prevailing in the area where they serve.  While judicial officials receive a salary, magistrates are not paid and give their time on a voluntary basis to engage in the business of administration of justice.  

Description memo Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Description memo - Essay Example Workplace statistics highlight that the best performing employee is a happy employee. For an employee to be more efficient and more productive in todays workplace environment, as market research indicates, a healthy level of communication and relaxed atmosphere is important as these contribute to levels of happiness. The entertainment centre addresses this when compared to other options like using the space as a conference room. The centre will provide a work-free environment for stress relief via access to entertainment components such as television screens with an Apple TV subscription and gaming consoles. Game tournaments will be encouraged and set up to enhance communication while keeping the work-life challenging and interesting. Bean bag chairs and recliner seats will provide comfort during breaks with the cacti and bonsai trees adding a natural feel to the centre. The headphones and individual devices such as the iPads and google glasses are aimed at satisfying the interns ent ertainment needs without compromising ambience through noise pollution. Items such as the vending machine and table tennis set serve the purpose of encouraging interaction and mild entertainment through actual physical engagement. With this critical information in mind the entertainment centre appears to be an ideal response to enhance productivity, morale and communication of the interns in the

How and why might violence against women be perceived as indicator of Essay

How and why might violence against women be perceived as indicator of unequal citizenship - Essay Example This paper presents a very thoughtful argument as to why and how violence against women is an indicator of unequal citizenship. It explores the aspect of gender violence as a whole providing particular forms of violence affecting women, locations where these forms of violence take place, role of government in eliminating violence, and the key political values and forms of citizenship linked either directly or indirectly to the increased widespread of gender violence. Indeed, violence against women can be seen as an indicator of unequal citizenship in that from ancient times; women have been perceived as having no value in the society and considered as a man’s property. They were mandated to be submissive to their husbands and not perform industrial activities; they were forced to early marriage, and practiced female genital mutilations as well as mistreating widows like inciting them to commit suicide.2 In addition, with all these, there is no equal citizenship because men alw ays dominate and abuse women but a few or no perpetrators are brought to justice. For instance, there have been claims that death sentence as a rape case charge does not end violence but failure to prosecute rapists does not eliminate violence either. Today, feminist movements have addressed the issue of violence and discrimination aggressively as a criminal act so as to ensure that there is equality and elimination of gender discrimination because women need to be treated fairly equally as men. Additionally, violence against women serves, as a perfect example of unequal citizenship in that, the fact that women are not equally given chance to occupy some offices is a sign of inequality and as a result, women feel left out. Even though most women in the contemporary world are offered different job opportunities and others are even designated some tasks that are usually performed by men, they are still discriminated in some sectors. This to some extent can be seen as an indicator of u nequal citizenship. Furthermore, existences of forms of violence that affect women across a variety of location like battering, domestic violence, sexual violence among others, and the fact that responsible bodies cannot aggressively address them confirms gender imbalance and unequal citizenship. For instance, most societal members especially men believe that wife battering not a big issue and it is something that must be done as a way of ‘disciplining women’. More so, violence against women shows unequal citizenship since it has been noted that popular form of violence against women globally is intimate partner violence commonly referred to as domestic violence. This is what has been happening and is still happening but the government cannot work on this to offer complete protection of women. Psychological violence where a man dominates a woman and literally forcing her to be submissive to him as well as exploiting her economically,3 persists. Indeed, this confirms tha t violence against women is a manifestation of unequal citizenship in our societies. Truly, violence against women indicates unequal citizenship because men usually abuse women in other ways like sex working, child abuse and trafficking and yet, just like men they are supposed to be protected.4 As a result, only few perpetrators are held accountable of their inhuman acts and it has been confirmed that some police officers threaten the victims to never say a word. This for sure can be seen as lack of protection of wome