Posted on 05/16/2022 9:20:51 PM PDT by blam
Aftermath of alleged US airstrike in Somalia in prior years, file image.
White House officials have announced that President Biden will reverse Trump’s Somalia withdrawal of US forces as the fight with al-Shabaab Islamic militants heats up. This includes talk of a return to a policy of indefinite “boots on the ground” – or as one senior official was quoted as saying – “a persistent US military presence” there.
“President Biden has approved a request from the Secretary of Defense to reestablish a persistent U.S. military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab, which has increased in strength and poses a heightened threat,” a senior admin official said to The Hill Monday.
“This is a repositioning of forces already in theater who have travelled in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis since the previous administration made the decision to withdraw in January 2021,” the official added.
Further The New York Times has also confirmed that “Biden secretly signed an order in early May authorizing the military to redeploy 100s of Special Forces into Somalia and to target about a dozen Al Shabab leaders” underscoring too that it’s reversal of a “last minute” Trump policy that went into effect within that last two months of his administration. The report said additionally that likely no more than 450 troops would be deployed.
Upon Trump’s ordered December 2020 withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, there had been an estimated 700 there in support of counterterror operations. The country has suffered from decades of intermittent civil war, and running conflicts between competing warlords.
Over the past three decades the war-torn country in the Horn of Africa only sporadically hits the news when things go horribly wrong, such as with major pirate attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Aden, or the November 2020 death of a CIA officer reportedly during a raid on a suspected al-Shabaab bomb-maker, and then there’s the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ 1993 mission wherein 18 American soldiers were killed.
US intelligence officials have in the past months been vocalizing their concerns that the terrorist organization al-Shabaab is spreading due to their being no significant military pressure on them. In recent years the Pentagon has established dozens or even perhaps hundreds of small forward operating bases across the African continent, ostensibly as part of broadly defined ‘counterterror’ support given to allied host nations.
If you had told me when I was a teenager, full of rage towards the Republican party for what they were doing to Iraq and Afghanistan, that it would be the Democrats who started most of the wars in my lifetime, I would have laughed in your face. https://t.co/FJJRLCqZeH
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 16, 2022
Critics, however, have denounced the rapid growth of AFRICOM as part of continued post-9/11 ‘imperialist’ US expansion, pointing also to US-NATO military intervention in Libya against Gaddafi as part of regime change operations, and as a new “scramble” for influence over the continent in competition with China grows, and even to a lesser degree towards thwarting a growing Russian presence in unstable countries like Mali. Are we witnessing the return to a (failed) Global War on Terror (GWOT) posture across the Mideast/North Africa region under the Democratic administration? It appears so.
Will Biden allow 'em to take their weapons?
This admins foreign affairs are terrible.
“This admins foreign affairs are terrible.”
Ditto internal affairs.
“Will Biden allow ‘em to take their weapons?”
He already has. All the loyal non thinkers have been vaccinated so they are safe against EVERYTHING.
The Neocon, McCainiac Freepers here who post unending threads egging the U.S. on into endless military interventionism will love Biden doing this.
We had to go to Somalia, or Putin would have gone there first!
One of the downfalls of being an empire. You’re eventually destroyed from within. And the U.S. is falling in just over 200 years. while Rome and Ancient Egypt lasted much longer. They didn’t put in foreigners in charge of their governments, either.
They avoid seeking congressional approval by just calling it an operation. But, either way - this is our 2nd military involvement since The dementia patient moved into the WH
Because Americas strategic interestin Somalia’s sheep and goat trade? Or why do this, Brandon?
I probably should warn relatives in minneapolis that they will be seeing the army around. /s
I am intimately familiar with the streets of Mogadishu. I’d skip this place as the nightmare it has been for me, for at least a couple of decades. The people, not so great on average. The worst, rule the place.
I keep asking you guys to identify those neocons. Where are they?
Clinton started the foolishness about Somalia, and Biden is resuming it. The immigrants run the highways in packs and stop here and there to harass and terrorize customer service employees.
People have told them on their threads.
Don’t support what McCain supported on military interventionism or you too are a neocon.
McCain apparently had no problem with a western-backed coup in Ukraine which toppled a legally elected president there as he didn’t speak out on it, but no doubt didn’t want others doing this. If so, this would show he was anti-democratic elections that didn’t support his neocon agenda.
The solution is for no countries to be involved in coups, especially countries that that claim to be democratic.
Have a good one!
Look in the mirror.
Sounds about as bad as Chicago.
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