"George Z. Bush" wrote in message ...
"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in message
om...
"George Z. Bush" wrote in message
...

Note the caveat above 'for a time'.

Really, I meant that. It took a while for the warlords to gain
control. Even after they did, I am sure that the Somalis who
had the means to procure the food from the warlords distributed it
further in exchange for various forms of renumeration to themselves,
such as labor. That's called 'trickle down'. Perhaps you can
find some Ronald Reagan fans who can explain to you how that works.

If you can explain how sending food to a starving country fails to
help to relieve that famine regardless of who distributes
the food, please do so.

You keep arguing the same point, i.e.-that regardless of
who got the food, those
Somalis didn't starve.

No. That argument came later. The first argument I advanced was:

At least some good did come of it. For a time, the
humanitarian relief effort was a success.

You replied:

Unless my foggy memory is again playing tricks on me,
I seem to recall that the people who profited most from
the relief supplies that we sent to that unfortunate country
were the very war lords who kicked us out of it. I seem to
recall that they sold the relief supplies we sent over there
to whichever starving Somalis had something of value to
trade for those supplies.

Please feel free to correct me if I've got it wrong.

Your statement was not wrong in the sense of being contrary
to fact and I never said that it was wrong. To be clear, I
agreed that it was a true statement while also pointing out
that the effort continued to save lives despite the unfortunate
developements you noted.

However, the context in which it was introduced gave me the
impression that it was an objection to my statement, and a
falacious one, specifically an argument from irrelevency.
That appears to have been a false impression on my part,
though had you preceded your remarks with "Yes, but" I
might have done better.

In a similar vein, I observed that despite the
corruption of the relief by the warlords starvation was
still reduced in Somalia. That statement was made neither
in support of my earlier statement as it referred to later
developments, nor was it made to contradict yours, which
in fact it does not. It was made to keep it clear that
the humanitarian relief effort, even after being corrupted,
continued to accomplish some good.

I will agree that the effort was corrupted by the warlords.
Yet despite that, there were fewer people starving in Somalia
even with the warlords in control of the food supply. The
demagraphic distribution of the famine victims is less important
than their sheer numbes which continued to be reduced even with
the warlords in control of the food supply. I suspect that many
who received food through the warlords were as poor as those
who did not. The warlords needed soldiers, starving men and men
with starving families could be bought for food. In every modern
nation the soldiers are recruited from the poorest of the social
classes. This had seriously bad implications as it helped to
perpetuate the civil war by keeping the militias populated with
soldiers But starvation was reduced notwithstanding.

I hope we can agree that for a time the humanitarian effort was
a success and starvaton was reduced, that the warlords took
control of the food supply which both reduced that success and
reinforced some of the problems that had created the famine in
the first place, and that despite the corruption of the relief
effort by the warlords famine continued to be reduced because in
order for the warlords to use the food to their advantage they
had to distribute it to someone who otherwise faced starvation.

Perhaps we can also agree that the only way to keep the relief
effort from being corrupted by the warlords was the creation of
a strong central unified Somali government superior both in moral
authority and in brute force to the warlords. In short, nation
building.

I'm pretty sure we can agree that the nation building effort in
Somalia failed, in no small measure due to incompetant leadership
from the Clinton White house.

Have I got that right?

--

FF