Somalia and militant Islamists

A brief bit of summing up: the United States and allies invades Afghanistan in order to destroy the extremists there - including the Taliban - and to set up a free and democratic government. So far there's been mixed results from there. The United States also invaded Iraq, with the horrible results that followed. Then there's Iran, which the United States has failed to deal with, mostly good ol' extremist Islamist Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions. My point for this is to show that the United States does not have a good record for dealing with militant Islamic extremists.

Now, to get more specific: In 1993, the United Nations started UNOSOM II; its task was "to assist in the reconstruction of economic, social and political life" of Somalia after it was ravaged by a civil war. A year later, after losing eighteen soldiers in Somalia's capitol of Mogadishu, the United States withdrew. Since then Somalia has basically been without any central government, there's lots of lawlessness and murder and all that bad stuff that goes along with being a poor African country torn apart by feuding warlords.

In early 2006, much of Somalia - Mogadishu included - was taken over by a group of militant Islamists. Tensions were risen, there was talk about Al-Qaeda opening up a new front there in the "war against western imperialists" (their wording) or the "war on terrorism" (ours). The United States didn't seem like they could do much of anything, what with being bogged down in Iraq, the United Nations wasn't ready to send anyone in and Somalia barely had a recognizable government of its own, let alone one that could defend itself. Then, December 24th of last year, Ethiopia launched an attack against the militants. By now, the militants are out of most of Somalia, out of Mogadishu and basically defeated. The government of Somalia is stepping up, showing its muscles and beginning to act like a government with some semblance of control over the situation. Just remember that Ethiopia - a country that couldn't afford to pay off its debt, who has an estimated fifty percent of its population below the poverty line - was able to pull this off.

What I've been wondering the entire time that this has played out is really a simple question: Why can't the United States do this? What happened here in Somalia that did not happen in Iraq? What did they do that we didn't do? Honestly, I can't wrap my head around this.