It is difficult to imagine the scenes on the ground in the small and remote Somali village of Hayo on January 9, when a heavily-armed American AC-130 gunship appeared in the sky and “rained gunfire” into the village. Officially the raid on Hayo, and others on the same day and later in the month, were aimed at suspected al-Qa‘ida members, conveniently linking the Somali war with Bush’s “war on terror”; in reality they had more to do with publicly associating Washington with Ethiopia’s successful toppling of the Islamic government that had brought Mogadishu a few months of peace and stability after 15 years of civil war. Having quietly supported the Ethiopian invasion with weapons and intelligence, the Bush administration evidently decided that it wanted some of the credit for a successful war. The fact that up to 100 people were killed (and valuable homes and livestock destroyed) was incidental; they were neither Western nor Israeli, after all.
