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Somalia: US Foreign Policy and Gangsterism
(AntiWar.com, December 29, 2006)
. . . using Ethiopia, a major recipient of American arms and technical support, as our proxy – in a new project that ought to be named Operation Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. In the post-9/11 Bizarro World alternate universe that our leaders and policymakers seem to have slipped into, the Bad Guys have become the Good Guys, and the formerly fiendish Somalian warlords are now part of the "anti-terrorism coalition" that the U.S. is assembling in the region. . . . This latest American turnabout – flooding Somalian warlords with money and arms – came about largely as the result of an imaginary confrontation between U.S. officials and supposed "terrorists." [Click link above for the full text, which includes an excellent explaination of the event that led to this incorrect conclusion.] . . . When the warlords were driven out, the U.S. resorted to its ally in Addis Ababa to return its gangster-proxies to power. Washington has openly signaled its support for the Ethiopian invasion, which is shortly about to be billed as a "liberation" and a great "victory" in the "war on terrorism." The illusion can be maintained only so long as one squints one’s eyes sufficiently to blur the exact identity of these "liberators" – Somalian thugs and the army of Ethiopia’s dictator, "President" Meles Zenawi. . . . A former pro-Albania communist and leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, comrade Zenawi morphed into George W. Bush’s staunchest ally in the Horn of Africa. U.S. military aid increased by leaps and bounds. Zenawi’s trajectory parallels Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, the former Soviet client and avowed Marxist, who seized power in 1969, immediately became a Soviet client, and eventually led his Somalian Socialist Revolutionary Party into a military and political alliance with the U.S. (The Soviets had championed Barre's Ethiopian arch-enemies in the ongoing dispute over the Ogaden region.) One of Africa’s most brutal despots, Barre enjoyed Washington’s full support right up until he was driven from the country, in 1991, by numerous local uprisings. . . . Zenawi is a budding Barre. In the summer of 2005, his U.S.-trained-and-equipped army fired on student protesters who objected to the blatant rigging of the recent election: over 20 were killed, and many wounded. This same army has now turned its guns on the Somalian people, violated Somalian sovereignty, and set up a puppet Somalian "government" that virtually no one in Somalia recognizes –again, with full American support. . . . Our complete misunderstanding of Somalia, its culture and unique politics, has led us into the trap of making decisions based on ideological constructs rather than anything related to the facts on the ground. The blundering into a local clan dispute and mistaking it for an armed attack on U.S. interests is emblematic of the problem: in the end, it seems, it’s always about us. A foreign policy founded in the spirit of hubris, and based on pretensions to "global hegemony," is inevitably blinded by a disabling narcissism. . . . That is what’s really frightening about U.S. foreign policy and the decision-makers who have such an adverse impact on the lives of people around the world. These guys are wandering around in the dark, utterly clueless: i.e. they’re typical government employees. . . . Policy is made not only with imperfect knowledge but with a complete disdain for knowledge, as such. That’s for the "reality-based community," as one White House advisor put it to Ron Suskind – those vulgar empiricists who insist that American policy must have some anchor in factual knowledge, as opposed to the neo-Trotskyite wet-dreams of various neoconservative gurus and White House speechwriters. . . . This anti-realist methodology is precisely what lured us into Iraq. In the case of Somalia, yet another quagmire beckons with its siren song of "fighting terrorism." How long before Ethiopia requires the presence of U.S. "advisors" – in addition to those already there – can probably be measured by the time it takes to post this piece. No doubt U.S. "emergency" aid to Ethiopia is being rushed to Zenawi even as I write, and you can bet we won’t hear much protest anywhere. Certainly not from most Democrats in Congress. Anyone who doubts that the U.S. is acting out of motives other than those that are proclaimed will immediately be smeared as an enabler if not outright supporter of "terrorism." Congress hasn’t got the gumption to cut off aid to the death squad "government" of "liberated" Iraq – and I doubt they’ll deprive murdering dictator Zenawi of his blood money as compensation for their cowardice. . . . The Islamic courts movement was a logical response to the condition of Somalian society, and the complete absence of any law enforcement whatsoever. For the Americans to hold up this movement as proof that "terrorism" has taken power in Somalia is the best evidence that, as Michael Scheuer puts it, the U.S. government is Osama bin Laden’s one "indispensable ally." If al-Qaeda is credited with reversing the threat of a complete social breakdown in Somalia, and the gangster warlords we once held responsible for the country’s torment, in league with a foreign invader, is held up as the only alternative, then surely the terrorist leader is smiling somewhere in a deep dark cave, rubbing his hands together and chortling at his extraordinary good fortune.

posted by Lorenzo 7:43 AM