I usually don'y agree with Gettleman's biased rants but on this piece I think he nailed it. 
When Kenya sent columns of troops storming across Somalia’s border on Oct. 16, government officials initially said that they were chasing kidnappers who had recently abducted four Westerners, two from beachside bungalows on the Kenyan coast, and that Kenya had to defend its billion-dollar tourism industry.
But on Wednesday, Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government’s chief spokesman, revised this rationale, saying the kidnappings were more of a “good launchpad.”
“An operation of this magnitude is not planned in a week,” Mr. Mutua said. “It’s been in the pipeline for a while.”
Many analysts wonder how Kenya will be able to defy history and stabilize Somalia when the United Nations, the United States, Ethiopia and the African Union have all intervened before, with little success. They argue that the Kenyan operation appears to be uncoordinated and poorly planned, with hundreds of troops bogged down in the mud because of rains that fall at this time every year.
Kenyan military officials also publicly said the United States and France were helping them, but both countries quickly distanced themselves from the operation, insisting that they were not taking part in the combat.
“The invasion was a serious miscalculation, and the Kenyan economy is going to suffer badly, very badly,” said David M. Anderson, a Kenya specialist at the University of Oxford.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/world ... &ref=world
