The one consistent thing in America's attitude toward Somali lives is total indifference.
A good example of this indifference is today's NY Times article.

The Obama administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.
Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993.

Remember how just two years ago President Obama described how he was going to defeat ISIS?

“This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

Intensifying a clandestine war in Somalia is the opposite of "successfully pursued strategy in Somalia".
In fact, during Obama's "successful strategy" a quarter of a million Somalians died of starvation, half of them children.
Americans didn't notice.

The last the American public took notice of Somalia was the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993, but that doesn't mean that our government hasn't been inflicting untold misery on the most brutalized people on Earth since then.

A short history of how we helped destroy Somalia

I saw the movie "Black Hawk Down" and really liked it. The realistic battle scene, the bravery of the American troops. It even had an almost happy ending.

  What it didn't have was a motivation for the Somalis who fought those brave American soldiers. Between the movie, the political rhetoric, and the MSM, all you can tell is that the Somalis hated us for no particular reason.
  In other words - they are acting like primitive savages. You don't have to understand them.

Any place with 4,000 years of civilization is going to have an excess of motivations (often conflicting) rather than a lack of them.

  For those of us who actually look for reasons and motivations, you might want to check the news from September 10th, 1993, just three weeks before "Black Hawk Down".

In the latest incident, at least 200 Somalis -- mainly women and children -- were killed when a US Cobra helicopter gunship opened fire on a crowd in Mogadishu on September 10. (Cobras have not been used in inner city combat since the Vietnam War.)
  In a grotesque attempt to justify the slaughter, UN military spokesperson Major David Stockwell told reporters that ``the women and children were combatants'' and that they posed ``an imminent threat against our soldiers''.
  The massacre began as a bulldozer accompanied by three tanks, four armoured personnel carriers and 100 ground troops started removing barricades in south Mogadishu. Armed resistance to the attack was followed by tank reinforcements. But when barricades were re-erected, largely by Somali children, the Cobra cannon attack started. According to Stockwell, the decision to fire on the Somalis was ``regrettable but a last resort''. One UN soldier was killed, bringing the UN death toll to 48 since May.
  A day earlier, hundreds of patients, doctors and nurses were forced out of one of Mogadishu's main hospitals as UN Cobra and Black Hawk helicopter gunships attacked.

While the 19 American soldiers had their deaths made into a movie, the 200 dead Somali woman and children are completely forgotten in the western world. No wonder we don't understand their motivations - we never cared enough to look for them.

After that tragedy we pulled out of Somalia, but never stopped messing with them.
Eventually, late in 2006, we underwrote the invasion of Muslim Somalia by Christian Ethiopia that killed tens of thousands of Somalians.
How this came about is a story in itself.

Ethiopia just happened to have met with the Bush Administration in 2002 in order to sign up for the Global War on Terror. Shortly afterwards Ethiopia started getting about $800 million a year in military aid from the American taxpayer.
  If that sounds like the Ethiopian invasion is a proxy war for America, you should remember that this wouldn't be the first time. Somalia was used as a Cold War proxy both in the 1960's and the bloody Ogaden War of the 1970's.

  How did the Islamists get into power in Somalia? It was the Bush Administration policies that put them into power.
  Oh, not intentionally. It required incompetence that only the Bush Administration could provide. This whole war was started over a worthless patch of scrub land.

Our story begins with two warlords from the Abgal sub-clan. One warlord is named Bashir Raghe. He was a waste contractor with the U.S. military forces in Mogadishu before the United States pulled out in 1994. After 9/11 he became one of America's top allies in Somalia. He was paid handsomely to capture alledged terrorist and turn them over to U.S. officials.

Raghe strode through Mogadishu wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses on his head and a pistol strapped to each hip. And in the months leading up to the fighting in Mogadishu, he was seen using crisp, new $100 bills to buy machine guns and heavily armed pickup trucks.

  The rival warlord is named Abukar Omar Adan, a devoutly Islamic and heavily armed clan elder with ties to the Islamic Courts Union (now named Supreme Islamic Courts Council).

The trouble began late last year when Adan paid $30,000 for land that straddled the airport road, intending to build a development including homes and warehouses.
  Fearing the loss of control over lucrative airport traffic, Raghe objected, according to Adan's brother and son. After several verbal confrontations, the two sides began fighting in the open Jan. 13, moments after the U.S. intelligence officials -- most accounts put the number at four -- had landed at Esaly.

  After a six hour battle Raghe's forces had killed seven of Adan's men and captured the land and four of his gun trucks.

The U.S. officials, at the airstrip just three miles away, wrongly concluded that they were under attack by Islamic terrorists and abruptly fled. Adan had no idea the Americans were nearby, but soon learned of it.
  Adan travelled to Nairobi to reassure the Americans that the gunfight was about land, and to ask for his trucks back.

  But over the next several weeks, in numerous discussions in person and on the phone, U.S. officials accused Abukar and his family of being terrorists, he said. "They said, 'You were ready to kill us.' . . . They said, 'Your file will be put in Washington, and you will be recorded as a terrorist group.' "
  A third Somali, speaking on condition of anonymity, recounted a separate but similar conversation with a U.S. intelligence official who said of the officers at the airstrip on Jan. 13: "They were ambushed. This was a terrorist who was trying to kill American officers."

  The Bush Administration couldn't let a terrorist attack go by unanswered, and so began funding regional warlords, including Raghe. These were some of the exact same warlords that killed American soldiers in 1993. Anti-Americanism, stoked by the Iraq War, intensified in Mogadishu. Warlords had been raping, robbing and killing for over a decade, and now they were being funded by the Bush Administration. Public opinion swung in favor of the islamic courts, which were originally created as a judicial system by regional businessmen, but gradually became a local police force, and even provided services such as education and health care.

Blowback

  On February 18, Raghe and at least six other warlords created the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). Four of the warlords were also part of the Somali Transitional Government. American support money flooded into this group, estimated at about $100,000 a month. However, the popular reaction was even more swift. Battles between homegrown Islamic militias and a hated U.S. proxy force started the very same day.

Only a few months ago, this would have been impossible for lack of public support, experts said.
  But the US support for the warlord Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism -- hated by the population -- sparked a wave of anti-American sentiment that massively boosted support for the Islamists, they said.
  Karin von Hippel, a former UN expert on Somalia and member of the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that by backing the warlords, Washington encouraged the Islamic courts to take up arms.

  A month later the forces of Adan and Raghe met again. This time Adan was backed by the islamic courts, and the ending was very different. Raghe's forces were routed despite the backing of American military aid. It was the start of the blowback against Bush's Somalia policy. On May 7th an outright war began between the U.S. backed warlords and the islamic courts, and by June 5th the warlords had been driven from Mogadishu. A few weeks later Raghe and another warlord fled to a waiting American warship. The fighting had cost about 350 lives.

And as you might imagine, the Bush Administration, in its usual "sour grapes" moment, has ruled out any contact with the new leader of Somalia.
But this was not the end. It was mearly the start.

The UIC followed the fleeing warlords to the nearby towns of Jowhar and Hobyo and quickly captured them. Most of the warlords fighters were now being put to work for the UIC. As the summer and fall grew long, so did the territory that the UIC has occupied. It has also created security and added services that a whole generation of Somalis haven't experienced.

In July the UIC organized a clean-up campaign - the first litter removal in Mogadishu in over a decade. That same month, the first commerical flight left Mogadishu airport in a decade. In August the first ship docked in Mogadishu harbor since 1991. On August 15, the UIC captured the coastal town of Haradhere and cleaned the pirates out of it. And just two days ago, the islamists stormed a ship that was captured by pirates and returned it to its owners. The changes in Mogadishu have been startling to say the least.

 Things have never been so quiet, he says. Two weeks ago AK-47s sold for $550 as fresh fighting consumed the city. This week, he cannot move them for $350.
    "Before, there were always two or three groups that I could sell to. Now there is just the Islamic courts and we are worried that they will bring peace here and put us out of business," he says.

 The islamists have also cracked down on the illicit drug trade, sale of endangered birds, and the indiscriminate logging of trees. You would think all of this would please everyone. You would be very mistaken.

 Where did the Bush Administration get information that the UIC was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists? From the same warlords who called themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) in order to get American taxpayer dollars from gullible neocons.
   You have to remember that when the news media approached the Bush Administration about allegations of funds going to Somalian warlords, the first reaction by the Administration was to lie about their involvement. Then, when diplomats in the State Department warned that the policy was misguided, those same diplomats had their careers cut short.