Remember Somalia

In the brief introduction to the BHD series, directly taken from the aricle, I found something very peculiar and interesting about what was stated:

In the five years since that humanitarian mission dissolved into combat, Somalia has had a profound cautionary influence on American foreign policy. When Washington policymakers consider sending soldiers into foreign crisis zones, there is invariably a caveat: Remember Somalia. America's refusal to intervene in Rwanda in 1995 and in the former Zaire this year; its long delay in acting to stop Serbian aggression in Bosnia; its hesitation before sending troops into Haiti; and its present reluctance to arrest indicted war criminals in Bosnia stem, in some measure, from the futile attempts to arrest Aidid.

With the exception of the Persian Gulf war, modern American warfare no longer pits great national armies in sweeping conflicts. Instead, it is marked by isolated, usually brief, encounters between specially trained U.S. forces and Third World irregulars as America seeks to alter the political equation in some tumultuous location - Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia.

The American public is rarely exposed to the realities of warfare. The Pentagon does not allow reporters to accompany soldiers directly into battle, a journalistic tradition that ended after Vietnam. What results is a sanitized picture of combat. The public knows only what the military chooses to portray, or what cameras are able to see from afar. Americans have little understanding of what awaits frightened young soldiers, or of their heroic and sometimes savage attempts to save themselves and their fellow soldiers.

I find it funny how quickly times have changed.  The American public is exposed to the realities of warfare; we are exposed on a daily basis with our constant media coverage.  And if Somalia has had such a "profound cautionary influence" on our foreign policy, then I question why there was little hesitation in entering Iraq.