In those days, it was called the "White Man's Burden." Today, it's the "responsibility of the international community." The name has changed, but the sentiments haven't. There is still an underlying assumption of helpless, uncivilized natives and helpful, civilized nations. That assumption reeks of a gross underestimation of the people we went to "help."

I'm not saying that we should never have gone to Somalia. The society was crumbling down on the heads of the people, and they were suffering. Military intervention was necessary to avert even more unbelievable horror. Intervention was right.

But the way we went in--humanitarian mission as media event--was ignoble. The bloodless amphibious landing (first since the Korean War!) made us feel so good about ourselves that we forgot to ask the Somalis how they felt.

It got worse. Demonstrating blissful ignorance about Somali politics, we tried to impose a ready-made TV dinner of a political settlement on the country. Then, when one clan leader called our bluff, we got all red in the face and tried to destroy him. All we destroyed was our credibility.

And when we began pounding Mogadishu like just one more bloodthirsty warlord--that was immoral.

All of these things stemmed from overestimating ourselves, and underestimating the Somalis. As Isaias Afewerki, president of Eritrea recently put it, the United States has been behaving "like Rambo."

Now we are trapped in a conflict we thought would stop the minute we arrived. And I'm willing to bet that six months from now, Clinton's promise notwithstanding, we will still be there.

We will be trapped until we face up to the real issue. No, the issue is not timelier intelligence, or more firepower, or improved U.S. command and control, or better political spin at home. The issue is mental. We will be trapped until we choose to understand and respect the people we went to help.

If Clinton and the other leaders of the Somalia mission change their attitudes, we might end up being a force for good in that country. If we all change our attitudes, we won't have to relearn the lessons of Somalia somewhere else.

Haiti, for example.

Jacques E.C. Hymans '94 is an editor of The Harvard Crimson.