Mark Bowden:

Nine years ago, in the epilogue to “Black Hawk Down,” I quoted an unnamed State Department official (he was Michael Sheehan, ambassador for counter-terrorism) as follows: “The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in the fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she will say, ‘Yes, of course, I pray for it daily.’ All the things you would expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another to have that peace, and she’ll say, ‘With those murderers and thieves? I’d die first.’

People in these countries . . . don’t want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old, and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don’t want peace enough to stop it.”

Funny thing…you don’t usually hear this from the State Department.

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