Doing It On The Cheap
If it didn't involve people's lives, I would find the latest US foreign policy failure laughable. The gang that can't shoot straight has done it again, this time in Somalia. From the British Guardian:
It was a rout. After months of fighting that left hundreds dead Mogadishu fell suddenly this week: pick-up trucks with mounted machine-guns and young warriors scrambled to leave the city.
The victors broadcast a triumphant announcement that the warlords had been ousted. In their place a relatively disciplined militia promised order and security after 15 years of mayhem. At a victory rally a militia leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, made another promise: to create an Islamic state.
Mogadishu is now largely ruled by the Islamic Courts Union, a powerful movement that advocates a strict version of sharia law, including public executions, and has alleged ties to al-Qaida terrorists. The Horn of Africa, say some analysts, has just acquired its own Taliban.
News of the takeover broke like a thunderclap over Washington.
"This is worse than the worst-case scenarios - the exact opposite of what the US government strategy, if there was one, would have wanted," said Ken Menkhaus, associate professor of political science and Somalia expert at Davidson College, North Carolina.
It has emerged that the Bush administration bankrolled the warlords, who are secular, to gain access to al-Qaida suspects and block the rise of the Islamic militia. CIA operatives based in Nairobi funnelled $100,000 to $150,000 (£80,000) a month to their proxies, according to John Prendergast, an International Crisis Group expert on Somalia who has interviewed warlords. "This was counter-terrorism on the cheap. This is a backwater place that nobody really wants to get involved in, so [they] thought, let's just do this and maybe we'll get lucky."
...US diplomats in Nairobi who criticised the warlord payments as shortsighted were ignored and, in one case, reassigned to another country. The State Department, which favoured a wider policy of nation-building, was trumped by the CIA and the Pentagon, which wanted results fast.
"They didn't realise their limited engagement would actually make matters worse," said Mr Prendergast. "It's ignorance and impecuniousness that have led us to be in a more difficult and disadvantageous position than we were." [Emphasis added]
We can now add Somalia to the list of countries the Emperor and his minions have totally messed up and turned over to the very elements they allegedly were trying to root out.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
It was a rout. After months of fighting that left hundreds dead Mogadishu fell suddenly this week: pick-up trucks with mounted machine-guns and young warriors scrambled to leave the city.
The victors broadcast a triumphant announcement that the warlords had been ousted. In their place a relatively disciplined militia promised order and security after 15 years of mayhem. At a victory rally a militia leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, made another promise: to create an Islamic state.
Mogadishu is now largely ruled by the Islamic Courts Union, a powerful movement that advocates a strict version of sharia law, including public executions, and has alleged ties to al-Qaida terrorists. The Horn of Africa, say some analysts, has just acquired its own Taliban.
News of the takeover broke like a thunderclap over Washington.
"This is worse than the worst-case scenarios - the exact opposite of what the US government strategy, if there was one, would have wanted," said Ken Menkhaus, associate professor of political science and Somalia expert at Davidson College, North Carolina.
It has emerged that the Bush administration bankrolled the warlords, who are secular, to gain access to al-Qaida suspects and block the rise of the Islamic militia. CIA operatives based in Nairobi funnelled $100,000 to $150,000 (£80,000) a month to their proxies, according to John Prendergast, an International Crisis Group expert on Somalia who has interviewed warlords. "This was counter-terrorism on the cheap. This is a backwater place that nobody really wants to get involved in, so [they] thought, let's just do this and maybe we'll get lucky."
...US diplomats in Nairobi who criticised the warlord payments as shortsighted were ignored and, in one case, reassigned to another country. The State Department, which favoured a wider policy of nation-building, was trumped by the CIA and the Pentagon, which wanted results fast.
"They didn't realise their limited engagement would actually make matters worse," said Mr Prendergast. "It's ignorance and impecuniousness that have led us to be in a more difficult and disadvantageous position than we were." [Emphasis added]
We can now add Somalia to the list of countries the Emperor and his minions have totally messed up and turned over to the very elements they allegedly were trying to root out.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
posted by Diane at 9:13 AM
2 Comments:
At least they are consistent. This was but a burp in the MSM,just those Afre Kans messing up withlittle to no mention that the BUSH DOME OF SCREWUP fell upon that sad land. But they got al Zaqarri!
Well, it isn't Bush or his circle that's going to suffer, but the people of Somalia, especially the women. "Stability" has limited attractiveness when you're stable in something that strips of your rights, dignity and possibly your life.
Let's see, which is preferable - being killed by gunfire, or in an "honor killing." Can't there be a "none of the above" for them?
If George Bush has a scrap of conscience, he'd be roaming the White House halls like Lady Macbeth.
Post a Comment
<< Home