MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Under a searing sun over an airport artillery battery here Sunday, Gen. John Shalikashvili implored Marines to ignore those who call this mission a failure.
"People are alive today because you were here," said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "You are real heroes."
Shalikashvili later told many of the 1,898 U.S. troops who remain on the ground here that the 15 months and 23,900-strong force the U.S. invested in Somalia and the 36 military lives sacrificed here were for a noble cause.
"There are those . . . who will tell you this was all for nothing," he said to troops clustered around him in a hangar. "Well, bull. . . . Don't you take any guilt out of this place."
Shalikashvili's defensiveness during his weekend visit is a reflection of the second-guessing sure to haunt U.S. policymakers long after all U.S. forces move offshore March 25.
To head off the critics, President Clinton will go Tuesday to Fort Drum, N.Y., to greet Army troops on their arrival. That's one step he can take to persuade the public and Congress that success elsewhere - using U.S. troops to keep peace in Bosnia - will be more readily measured there than it can be here.
As U.S. soldiers board transport planes for the long ride home, Somalia is no longer starving but is ready to explode into civil war - the situation that caught the world's attention in the first place.
When Marines clambered ashore under the stars and the glare of TV lights on Dec. 9, 1992, they were fulfilling an unprecedented humanitarian mandate: open supply lines to end the famine and anarchy that had resulted in 300,000 deaths and stirred the world's conscience. Then they were to leave.
The goal, said Brig. Gen. Richard Vercauteren, commander of Marine forces here, "was to feed the people, accomplish the mission and get out. And we got on with it."
Hunger has been defeated - at least for now.
"Look at what we said we were coming here to do and then judge against what the situation is today," Shalikashvili told reporters Sunday. "When you judge us against the target that we set when we came here, you tell me that we have not succeeded in doing it."
Still, the departure of U.S. troops is seen by many Somalis as retreat.
"How can they walk away now?" asks Shariif Hussein Abdi, who sells fruit in a Mogadishu market. "They have just decided to forget Somalia."
Somalia's problems persist as it enters an era of uncertain transition. There is no government and little hope one can sprout from ancient tribal rivalries. There's no electricity, no public water supply, no local law enforcement.
Warlords are still vying for power and the guns are everywhere. A long-whispered threat of a weapons sweep never became reality.
"There is great lawlessness in Somalia. I would say it was here before we came, it was here the entire time that we were here," said Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, commander of U.S. forces here. "It's the way things are in Somalia. . . . The mission isn't over."
When the U.S. troops leave, so will those from Italy and Germany. Left behind will be a United Nations force of 22,000 troops from 14 nations, through March 1995.
But the pullout has ignited rancor. Pakistan, with the largest number of the remaining force, is complaining about being left without sophisticated weapons and surveillance planes. Pakistan's foreign minister, Aseef Ahmed Ali, said the withdrawal "smacks of racism" because a mostly Asian and African force is left to stand against the clans.
U.S. officials are ready to leave those problems behind, along with the now-shattered expectations encouraged by Washington, at the U.N. and in Mogadishu's dangerous streets. But those lofty goals were never defined in the United Nations mandate or in the policies of Clinton and former President Bush - who sent the troops in during the waning days of his term.
And while U.S. forces were securing ports and airports and ensuring relief supplies could move unmolested across Somalia, little was being done to engineer settlement among the nation's feuding clans.
Any hope of reconciliation ended, or at least was detoured, in June 1993, when Mohamed Farrah Aidid's militia killed 24 Pakistani peacekeepers.
Retired Adm. Jonathan Howe, the representative of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, put a price on Aidid's head.
Soon, capturing Aidid became an obsession. U.S. forces snatched some of Aidid's top aides last Oct. 3. But during the raid, a U.S. helicopter was shot down. The rescue became a 15-hour pitched battle that left 18 U.S. troops dead and the United States aghast when an Army flier was taken hostage and a dead soldier was dragged through Mogadishu streets.
Overnight, Mogadishu was a tense battlefield. Clinton was forced by public outcry to set a March 31 deadline for total withdrawal and send in 10,000 reinforcements to guarantee the troops' safety.
"It was a failure of the Clinton administration," said Robert Oakley, Clinton's special envoy to Somalia.
Shalikashvili said the administration didn't do enough to warn Congress and the public how risky a humanitarian mission could be. "So when those casualties came, it was really a kind of a shock that brought about this reaction that in turn forced our withdrawal," he said.
The U.S. commitment to salvaging Somali society evaporated.
Oakley's efforts to negotiate a settlement among the clans foundered as Aidid and others decided to bide their time and wait for the Americans to leave.
There are reconciliation talks still going in Nairobi, Kenya, where Aidid is ensconced at a plush hotel, and in Cairo, where Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is trying to broker a peace accord.
But much of Somalia is bracing for civil war, not spontaneous peace.
Rear Adm. James Perkins, commander of Navy forces here, said the future is "tenuous. . . . I don't think anybody who is an optimist understands the problems."
Shalikashvili told the troops, "We don't know what's going to happen after we leave. I hope that when you're gone the Somalis can put their country together and build a future for their children . . . but we can't do that for them."
Army Spec. Scott Johnson, a food service specialist from New York City who left for Fort Bragg, N.C., this weekend, agreed. "It's not our problem," he said with a shrug. "Let them fix it themselves."
Pulling out of Somalia
The United States has 10,109 troops in and around Somalia, down from a peak of 23,900 in January 1993. Another 50 Marines are guarding State Department officials. Total United Nations force is 21,710.
Where U.S. force is
On ground 1,898
Marines on ships 4,101
Navy on ships 4,110
The toll U.S. U.N. (excluding U.S. force)
Killed in combat 30 67
Killed non-combat 6 19
Wounded in combat 175 262
Wounded non-combat 0 13
Injury/illness evacuees 2 48
A chronology
1992 Nov. 25 - President Bush offers troops as part of multi-national force
Dec. 4 - U.S. announces 28,150 troops will be deployed in short-term mission
Dec. 9 - Hundreds of Marines land in Mogadishu to secure the capital's airport and harbor
1993 Jan. 19 - First U.S. casualty reported
May 4 - U.S. hands over command of Somalia operation to U.N.
June 5 - 24 Pakistanis killed, 54 wounded in a series of ambushes
July 12 - About 50 Somalis killed by U.N. troops. An outraged mob kills four foreign journalists
Aug. 8 - Four U.S. troops killed, prompting President Clinton to dispatch the elite U.S. Rangers
Sept. 9 - U.S. Senate passes a resolution urging Clinton to seek congressional authority for continued U.S. involvement
Sept. 28 - Clinton says he wants a fixed date for the U.S. and U.N. to end their mission in Somalia
Oct. 3-4 - 18 U.S. soldiers killed, 90 wounded and six missing or held captive. Clinton orders more troops and equip
