The Coalition Problem
It has a history.

By Seth Gitell, political writer of the Boston Phoenix.
September 21, 2001 9:30 a.m.

here's been much discussion both on this website and in other publications about the size and scope of the coalition being formed to fight terror. While arguments can be made in favor of both sides, a review of recent American military actions demonstrates the foolhardiness of the so-called broad coalition. The Somalia conflict, Kosovo war, and Gulf War — all these are examples where the American desire to keep the fighting alliances as broad as possible either cost American lives or helped prevent the U.S. from achieving its goals.

If prior history is any guide, a broad coalition could cost American lives. In 1993, American forces deployed to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope began to focus their work on capturing allies of warlord Mohammed Aidid. The U.S. attempted to use elite Rangers and Delta Force soldiers to go after the criminals seen as responsible for the famine in that country. (This work is not unlike what they may be asked to do against the "prime suspect" Osama bin Laden.) The American attempts to capture Aidid were repeatedly thwarted by Italian forces, operating in Somalia under the United Nations flag. "The Italians were not happy about the war the Americans were fighting against us," one Aidid militia commander said on a 1998 Frontline documentary Ambush in Mogadishu. "We had an understanding with some U.N. contingents that we would not attack them, and they would not attack us."

According to Mark Bowden's classic account of the Somalia war, the Italians were actually in league with the Somali forces. "You had some Italians, some of them openly sympathetic to their former colonial subjects who appeared to be flashing signals with their headlights out into the city whenever the [American] helicopters took off. Nobody had the balls to do anything about it." Everyone knows the result of this stab-in-the-back from our allies: the spectacle of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. If that's what the Italians were willing to do, who knows what elements within the Syrian or Palestinian Authority may do if they are brought into the anti-bin Laden alliance.

Relying on a large coalition of European allies also hindered the American war effort in Kosovo in 1999. While he hasn't said much about it during his myriad of television appearances recently, General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, rails against the obstacles the Europeans put up in prosecuting that war in his recently released memoir Waging Modern War. First, the European allies required that Clark's bombing targets be approved in advance — a fact that not only slowed up the war effort but risked compromising classified information. "Back in October, one of the French officers working at NATO headquarters had given key portions of the operations plan to the Serbs," Clark writes. Later, the Europeans objected to Clark's desire to bring in necessary Apache helicopters — let alone ground troops — and to America's bombing a troublesome Serb airbase in Montenegro, "a matter of protecting our American and NATO forces," according to Clark.

But if all that is not enough, remember the 1991 Gulf War. All the great alliance — which included such nations and Syria and Egypt — helped accomplish was keeping Saddam Hussein in power. The American forces were within one day of wiping out Hussein's Republican Guards, by then retreating to Baghdad, when Bush gave General Norman Schwarzkopf the OK to sign an armistice with Iraq. Bush did this mindful to Arab sensitivities. Many of the Arab regimes felt they could not survive if they were seen in collusion with an American massacre of Iraqis.

All these examples seemingly give serious pause to anyone saying that the American anti-terror coalition should be as broad as possible. It should. American lives are at stake.