Congressmen Differ on Policy in Somalia : Foreign affairs: County’s representatives divide along partisan lines. Republican Elton Gallegly criticizes President’s decision. Democrat Anthony C. Beilenson voices cautious support.

Ventura County’s two lawmakers split Friday over President Clinton’s decision to send additional troops to Somalia this week but agreed that it was a mistake for the U.S. forces to be drawn into a mission that evolved from humanitarian to “nation building.”

Dividing along partisan lines, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) expressed strong criticism and Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) voiced tentative hopefulness about Clinton’s latest action.

“It’s an absolute outrage,” said Gallegly, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This thing has been botched from Day 1--from the time the Clinton Administration started making decisions.”

Gallegly, who was part of a congressional contingent that met with Clinton this week, repeatedly invoked the legacy of Vietnam as a possible harbinger of a Somali quagmire. He said the U.S. should have withdrawn months ago after overseeing the initial distribution of food and medicine.

“I do not see any compelling U.S. interest at stake in Somalia that warrants risking thousands of American lives,” Gallegly wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to Clinton, urging the President to bring U.S. troops home. “Unless our forces are withdrawn, I fear the stage is being set for another Beirut, if not for another Vietnam.

“As we learned so painfully in Vietnam, nation building must be accomplished by the people of that nation,” Gallegly wrote. “It cannot be imposed in the midst of a civil war by U.S. armed might.”

Beilenson, meanwhile, said that he regretted that U.S. forces had been drawn into a United Nations-led effort to track down Somalia warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid after successfully completing the original mission of saving up to 1 million Somalis from starvation.

“It was a mistake,” said Beilenson, a former chairman of the House intelligence committee. “We should either have gotten out or we should have insisted very, very strongly that we stick to our original mission.”

Beilenson, whose 24th Congressional District includes most of Thousand Oaks, voiced cautious support for Clinton’s decision to dispatch 5,300 additional soldiers in an attempt to lay a foundation for stability in Somalia while vowing to bring home all U.S. forces by March 31.

“We should withdraw and I would hope we can withdraw deliberately and not precipitously and in a way that, if possible, will preserve what has been accomplished,” Beilenson said. “I don’t think that we and other nations should pick up our soldiers and get out in a week’s time.”

Both lawmakers supported President Bush’s original decision to send troops to Somalia last fall. Both also said they had voiced unease for months with the changed U.S. role in Somalia.

Each said his office has received numerous calls from constituents urging a rapid withdrawal. Beilenson called this “a legitimate and to-be-expected reaction to the television coverage” of Somalis desecrating the bodies of U.S. soldiers.

But their reactions otherwise contrasted not only in substance but in tone. Gallegly expressed intense anger when discussing Clinton’s policy; Beilenson, pained frustration.

“To say I’m a little disappointed in his actions is certainly an understatement,” Gallegly said. “The great concern that I’ve had all along is that this should not be a military mission.”

And, he said, “the second mistake is to put young men and women in harm’s way without the rules of engagement to protect them. That’s what happened in Vietnam.”

Beilenson, meanwhile, said, “If we hadn’t suffered casualties, people wouldn’t be upset about it. It’s been a very worthwhile effort and a proper effort. (But), largely inadvertently, we allowed our troops under U.N. command to get into harm’s way in a way that has never been intended.”