With more than a dozen soldiers dead and thousands more arriving to avenge their deaths, America is searching for answers (or excuses) as to why the humanitarian mission in Somalia has degenerated into a seemingly interminable bloodbath.

In general, the editorial pages have concentrated on the difference between President Bill Clinton's open-ended approach and the tight, focused mission defined by former President George Bush. Because Clinton let the United Nations take the lead, the argument goes, the mission's purpose was enlarged to include a vague (and costly) vision of "institution-building" in the wartorn country.

Certainly Clinton should not have let his mind wander away from close management of the operation in Somalia. But why didn't he pay more attention to what was happening there? Why didn't any of us pay more attention?

To "refocus" the mission, as Clinton is doing now, is not to resolve the underlying problem with our activities in Somalia. Because the problem is not in Somalia, it's in all of us.

In an editorial a few months ago, I mustered all of my verbal firepower (read "cheap journalistic tricks"), to condemn the president for stumbling headlong into another Vietnam in Bosnia.

Why didn't I write about Somalia? Why didn't I even mention Somalia?

Well, of course, I could defend myself by saying that Bosnia was very much on people's minds when I wrote my column, so it was a more timely subject. But that's not an answer, that's just a restatement of the problem.

The truth is, while I was worried about the danger of intervention in the Balkans, I didn't consider Somalia to be a problem for the Lone Remaining Superpower. I saw pictures of skin-and-bones Somali gunmen and scoffed. I thought we could walk in, mop the place up, and go home. I was wrong.

And I was not the only one. Most Americans thought the same thing. The Somalis won't try anything funny with us, we thought. They'll just recognize our superiority and accept our diktats. Anyway, we're doing this for their own good.

Clinton's plans for intervention in Bosnia met with a chorus of teeth-chattering. We fear the Balkans; we fear the fierce, tribal warfare and the lack of clear boundaries. Most of us opposed sending any troops to Bosnia, no matter how limited the mission's objectives. But in Somalia--a land of fierce, tribal warfare, where clear boundaries are hard to find--we feared no one.

Did we ever notice this weird disparity between our fear about the Balkans and our self-confidence about Somalia? Did we ever wonder about what attitudes might be underlying our different policy positions?

Did we ever wonder if we were being racist?

Racist? "Racist?" you shout. "We were moved by the pictures of starving humanity. We went to help them. And now here's the Crimson P.C. Patrol calling us racist."

Yes, you have a point. We certainly did not rejoice at the sight of suffering Africans. But our "humanitarian" response was not as pure as we would like to think. It was laced with racism, and several American soldiers have paid a terrible price for it.

Back around the turn of the century, when official racism stood tall, Americans were capable of incredible generosity toward our "little brown brothers" overseas. Oh, without doubt, our foreign activities were often spurred by greed. But for the broad mass of people, whose support for such adventures was crucial, American imperialism represented a genuinely moral, Christian undertaking (this was before Christianity became unfashionable).