Somalia: The Obama Foreign Policy Mineshaft Canary

[Truth2Tell]

A few days ago The Chicago Tribune ran a great expose of America’s ongoing secret war in North Africa. For anyone familiar with the last century’s American interventions in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere, the latest interventionist hot-spot is déjà vu all over again – CIA abductions, long-distance missile strikes and deals with every devil you can imagine. It looks an awful lot like America is headed once again down the same well-worn path.

But this time we are on the precipice of "The Great Change" ©. Right?

Because North Africa is where the Middle East and Central Asia were fifty years ago in terms of US policy and political development, Somalia presents the Obama administration with the clearest of all opportunities to re-assess our failed foreign policy paradigms - if indeed that is the plan. It is therefore a critical situation to watch for signs of real change - the canary in the Imperial mineshaft, if you will.

The Tribune piece tells us where we are today:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-shadow_war2nov24,0,4720127.story?page=1"> 'NOBODY IS WATCHING'

America's hidden war in Somalia
By Paul Salopek
4:39 PM CST, November 24, 2008
...

It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts. (The raids' success or failure is almost impossible to verify.)

It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and... secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.

Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that Washington appears to be losing, if it hasn't already been lost.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-shadow_war2nov24,0,4720127.story?page=1">I highly recommend reading the whole article here.

So will the Obama Change Team take a hard look at North Africa?

Will our new Imperial leadership finally grasp that we don’t need to support virulent dictators in places like Ethiopia in order to "influence" events in neighboring States and maintain our base of power? Can President Obama accept that this model has proven its moral and strategic bankruptcy over years of failure elsewhere?

Instead of ramping up the newly refurbished NorthCom and letting the CIA run wild, will President Obama seriously consider a program of real support for the international institutions that could really negotiate peace? Will such a paradigm-change include recognition of, and rapprochement with, African Islamic regimes, even where we find them objectionable?

Somalia has indeed become a central, yet overlooked "front" in the failed "war on terror." The opportunity now exists for it to become a central front in the development of a smarter American foreign policy. Will Obama finally turn the ship?

Watch this canary closely, and by summertime I think we will know the answer.

[NNN0LHI]

1. Recommended

[Truth2Tell]

7. Thanks NN0LHI! nt

[stillcool]

2. negotiate peace?

I have a hard time believing that the empire will cease because of Obama. I'd like to <gasp> hope, that military intervention will not be used as frequently, but I truly doubt that anything will change until we run our of money to support those operations. And then there are the other countries that are compliant with U.S. military interventions. Perhaps one of them will take the lead, and leave the U.S. to play a supporting role. And then again, perhaps China/Russia rising will use their might to secure resources. So many possibilities.

[Truth2Tell]

3. I hear ya. But everyone keeps bitching at me

to "wait and see what Obama actually does." Sooo, I figure since he hasn't even taken office yet I will wait until he acts like another Imperialist before I actually call him one.

[stillcool]

4. Maybe you won't have to...

maybe the country will collapse and take the empire with it.

[Truth2Tell]

6. Could be. Either way, I think the title of the article I linked

is apropos: Nobody is Watching.

[Zhade]

5. Hear, hear.

NT!

[Truth2Tell]

8. Thanksgiving kick. nt