So POTUS Why Are You Sending U.S. Troops To Uganda-Africa Again? Is This Going To Turn Into Another 'Blackhawk Down' or Another Seek and Find ?

LRA Joseph Kony

TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

President Barack Obama has decided to send 100 Special Forces troops to the Heart of Darkness in order to defeat evil. That, at any rate, is how critics of the president’s decision to help the Ugandan army track down Joseph Kony and his gang of psychotic murderers known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have described the undertaking. As Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, put it at a congressional hearing earlier this week, “What is the strategic interest of the United States in doing this? I mean, there are lots of unpleasant people in the world…. The United States obviously cannot try to dethrone every one of them.”

 A senior administration official blandly reassured me that the troop commitment constitutes the same “capacity-building” efforts the Pentagon has undertaken elsewhere in Africa, and even offers “a unique opportunity for our guys to train” — in a vast, trackless jungle in pursuit of maybe 250 lunatics. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told Congress that “it is in the interest of the United States to lend our support to partners in Africa so they can address threats to their citizens and help achieve the conditions necessary for regional security and broad-based development.”

Well, come on. This is not a training exercise, and the deaths of literally millions of civilians in central Africa over the last 15 years has had little discernible impact on American national security. In fact, the President has dispatched troops to the jungle and mountains of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and southwestern Central African Republic (CAR) to fight evil — and he should be congratulated for it. The moral case for action against the LRA is much stronger than, say, the case for joining the NATO bombardment of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya. No less important, the Obama White House, State Department, and Pentagon have designed a complex and sophisticated approach that seems to have a real chance at bringing the LRA to book.

The United States Army in Somalia
1992-1994

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The body of a dead US soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. [Source: History Channel

Americans consider themselves to be a compassionate people, and the United States Army has a long tradition of humanitarian relief operations both within and outside the continental United States. Never has this humanitarian impulse proven more dangerous to follow than in 1992 when the United States intervened to arrest famine in the midst of an ongoing civil war in the east African country of Somalia. Ultimately hundreds of thousands were saved from starvation, but unintended involvement in Somali civil strife cost the lives of thirty American soldiers, four marines, and eight Air Force personnel and created the impression of chaos and disaster. How could a mission that had accomplished so much have ended in such unhappy circumstances?

The LRA stands out even among the amoral hierarchy of the bandits and self-styled insurgents who roam Africa’s Great Lakes area. Despite its “Christian” rhetoric, the group has no program save for killing and raping, and abducting children as slaves and soldiers; atrocities, that is, are not the means to some programmatic end, no matter how ugly, but the end itself. The group’s top leaders, including their apparently charismatic supremo, Kony, were indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, but have eluded capture. The United States has targeted them before. In late 2008, the George W. Bush White House provided crucial intelligence support for Operation Lightning Thunder, a Ugandan campaign to attack LRA forces by air and ground. The mission was a complete fiasco: Kony smelled out the attack and fled, and the Ugandans failed to get the support of their neighbors in Congo and South Sudan, while keeping U.N. forces completely in the dark. The LRA scattered throughout the region and proceeded to carry out a series of gruesome killings as retribution for the invasion.

Operation Lightning Thunder was a ham-fisted response to a very complicated problem. In an April 2010 report, the International Crisis Group suggested that any future U.S. attempt to rout the LRA should focus on “civilian protection” rather than just hot pursuit, and proposed that the United States send a team to the battlefield to coordinate intelligence from armies throughout the region and help the Ugandans put their soldiers where the bad guys are.

Why Are Jewish Groups, (Which In Turn Get’s The USA Involved) Backing A Somali War Criminal?

Mohamed_Ali_Samatar

Mohamed_Ali_Samatar

On March 3, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Samantar v. Yousuf et al., an appeal of a case involving Mohamed Ali Samantar, who served as minister of defense and prime minister of Somalia during the bloody dictatorship of Siad Barre.

Dictator Siad Barre was successfully courted by US imperialism in the 1980s

In his last year in office, President Siad Barre promised reforms to introduce multi-party democracy.
In June 1990, a hundred prominent citizens signed a declaration called the Mogadishu Manifesto, calling for his resignation and the appointment of a transitional government pending free elections.

He called the manifesto “destructive,” and jailed 45 of those who had signed it, but about a month later he ordered their release. He agreed to multi-party parliamentary elections to be scheduled in February but later canceled them and the civil war took its course.MORE

Americans who were raped, tortured or imprisoned by the Barre regime, and the Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of the lawsuit. As is customary in such high-profile cases, many groups with concerns over the ramifications of the court’s decision have filed “amicus” or “friend-of-the-court” briefs, which urge the Supreme Court to rule one way or the other. Samantar’s defenders are few in number, but, surprisingly, they include four of the largest Jewish communal organizations in America: the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the Orthodox Union (OU), and Agudath Israel, as well as the government of Saudi Arabia. None of these parties were required by the court to offer their opinion — amicus briefs are submitted voluntarily — and the Jewish groups’ decision to participate in such an unholy alliance speaks volumes about their distorted priorities.

SUPREME COURT 08-1555 SAMANTAR vS YOUSEF  06-01-2010
These groups are not alone in their interest in the case — the Somali victims’ supporters include a range of human rights organizations, legal scholars, retired U.S. military officials, as well as the United States government — and some background information is necessary to understand why so many different organizations have chosen to get involved.

The challenge that went before the Supreme Court is whether Samantar, who currently resides in Fairfax, Va., can be sued in a U.S. civil court under the Torture Victims Protection Act, which permits lawsuits against government officials who commit torture, murder and the like.  Samantar’s lawyers maintain that he is protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which grants legal immunity to foreign governments. The question before the court is whether that immunity extends to individual officials of a foreign government, especially officials who are no longer in power.

To be clear about the scope of the case: the Supreme Court will not be deciding whether Samantar authorized, or was complicit in, war crimes.  Indeed, that is hardly open to question; there is incontrovertible evidence that, during the 1980s, the Somali government committed widespread human rights abuses, including torture, massacres, forced disappearance, and extrajudicial imprisonment. Whether or not the Supreme Court decides that Samantar, as a former Somali government official, is immune from being sued in U.S. courts, there is little doubt that he has blood on his hands.

Why then would four major Jewish communal organizations choose to enter the fray and defend so despicable a figure? Their answer is that they are concerned about how the broader legal aspects of the case relate to Israel’s welfare. As the jointly filed ZOA/OU/Agudath Israel amicus brief argues, allowing Samantar to be sued in a U.S. court would “encourage the institution of many unfounded lawsuits in the United States courts against present and former government officials of the State of Israel.”

This concern is reasonable, to a certain extent:

Thank you Ken

So is Somali and East Africa Going To Send Us Aid, When We Need It? THE USA IS BROKE!

United States Citizens and Elected Officials  STOP GIVING MILLIONS  IF NOT BILLIONS TO COUNTRIES THAT REMAIN IN TURMOIL, every-time the UN throws a pity party.  It’s bad enough US Tax payers are basically being gouged already paying for assistance to Refugees, Immigrants, non-Citizens and Citizens who have never paid a dime into anything.  Can’t officials  see  The United States is just one or two more crisis’s away (floods and droughts across the United States) from being in about the same boat as Somali or other third world nations. shera~

(CBS News)

A U.S. relief official says at least 29,000 Somali children have died in a famine that, day after day, is forcing hundreds of Somalis out of their own country.  For many, the desperate search for food, water, and medicine ends at a sprawling refugee camp in Kenya.

For one retired Marine Corps general, it’s deja vu on a tragic scale. CBS News correspondent Erica Hill reports that, regardless, retired Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston is relieved he got there at all.

He arrived at the world’s largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, where more than 1,300 Somalis arrive each day, many trekking over a hundred miles, driven from their homes by the worst drought in 50 years, and Somalia’s second famine in 20 years.

One refugee told CBS News: “I had some goats and a big farm. Four years with no rain and the farm died.”

Lt. Gen. Johnson says the situation is a kind of flashback for him. He led the international mission to feed starving Somalis – Operation Restore Hope – in the 1990′s.

“What’s happening now is almost a mirror image of what happened 19 years ago,” Johnson said.

During the 1992 famine, Somalis gratefully welcomed the help of the international community. When a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was shot down over Mogadishu on October 3rd, 1993, American empathy turned to outrage.

With the world economy stretched to the brink, and the U.S. military committed to two wars, America isn’t as willing, or able, to help.

“I don’t see them wanting to go in there again, and we’re surely not going to take the lead,” Johnston said.

Further complicating relief efforts is the fact that Somalia has been without a central government for two decades.

Armed factions are constantly at war, using food to buy loyalties and guns.more at source

‘Look UN, The Piggy Bank Is Broke!’ Where are you going to go when there is no more?

In The USA  And European Countries Your Asking  To Give Money In Case You Haven’t Noticed We Have Many Of The Same Issues:  War, Drought, Hunger, and Financial  Issues Of Our Own!  shera~

NAIROBI, Kenya – Parts of southern Somalia are suffering from famine, a U.N. official said Wednesday, and tens of thousands of Somalis have already died in the worst hunger emergency in a generation.

The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought compounded by war, neglect and spiraling prices. Some areas in the region have not had such a low rainfall in 60 years, aid group Oxfam said.

“Desperate” Somalia famine puts 11M at risk

The U.N. needs $300 million in the next two months, said Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. The last time conditions were this bad was in 1992, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death. That famine prompted intervention by an international peacekeeping force, but it eventually pulled out after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993.

Hunger in the United States
35.5 million people (including 12.6 million children) experience hunger or the risk of hunger.
This is roughly 10.9 percent of the 301 million people in the U.S. (July 2007 estimate)
4.0 percent of U.S. households (11.1 million people, including 0.43 million children) experience hunger. Some families skip meals, eat too little, or go a whole day without food.
1 out of every 8 households in the United States has reduced the quality of its diet to utilize money elsewhere (rent, clothing, day care).
6.9 percent of U.S. households (24.4 million people, including 12.2 million children) are at risk of hunger.
In 2007, an average of 26.5 million people participated in the Food Stamp Program each month (8.8 percent of the U.S. population).
In 2006, requests for emergency food assistance increased 7 percent. Of those requesting emergency food assistance, 48 percent were members of families with children, and 37 percent of adults requesting assistance were employed.
America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest network of food banks, reported that an estimated 24 to 27 million people turned to its agencies in 2006.

Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years,” Bowden said. “This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives.”

Famine is officially defined as when two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished. In some areas of Somalia, six people are dying a day and more than half of children are acutely malnourished, Bowden said. Prices of staple foods have increased 270 percent over the last year.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. will give another $28 million, on top of the $431 million in assistance it has given to the Horn of Africa this year, which Clinton said was simply “not enough.”

Britain has pledged $145 million in the past two weeks — about 15 percent of what is needed — and the European Union pledged around $8 million, with more expected in coming days. Spain has promised nearly $10 million and Germany around $8.5 million but Oxfam said France has so far not pledged any more money and Denmark and Italy have said no significant new sums are available.

“There is no time to waste if we are to avoid massive loss of life,” Equiza said in a statement. “We must not stand by and watch this tragedy unfold before our eyes. The world has been slow to recognize the severity of this crisis, but there is no longer any excuse for inaction.”

Some donors, like the U.S., have expressed fears that aid might be diverted byIslamist groups.

More at Source

“Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and “Down with America”

“Anti-American demonstrations are taking place in every part of the country. The aim is to show the enemy the number of angry Muslims who follow the Holy Koran they burned,” Rage said.  Florida pastor Terry Jones cancelled his plans at the weekend under pressure from the White House, but the Somali group posted pictures of individuals burning the holy Muslim book on its websites on Tuesday and called the protest.

“The Americans are trying to hide these evil acts from the public but we know and we saw what they did,” Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage, one of the insurgent group’s leaders and its main spokesman, told the crowd.
“This will draw immediate retaliation from the billions of Muslims around the world,” Rage said. The stadium in the war-battered city was filled with orderly rows of protestors listening to radical Shebab clerics and chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and “Down with America”.

“This rally was very big today and everybody was very angry at the American devils who burned the Koran,” Mohamed Suleban, a demonstrator, told AFP.  “I saw some pictures that were posted on the Internet showing two white guys burning the Koran. You cannot imagine how my heart felt,” he said.  “We will kill Americans over this, we will make them regret it,” said Shueyb Hasan, another 18-year-old demonstrator.

Groups of women wearing head-to-toe black abayas held open Korans while some children were also encouraged to attend. One turbaned child no older than 10 could be seen brandishing a handgun and holding a Koran under his arm.  “Today, brothers and sisters, we are here to voice our displeasure with this blatant desecration of our Koran by American church leaders,” Rage said.more

You Still Don't Get It?

The Somali and other Third World Nations are taking over the United States bit by bit, and it will only get worse now that Obama an admitted (Muslim) is President of the US. I have been trying to point this out for a few years now showing different ways that they are gouging the American Citizen not only monetarily but taking away our rights because things seem offensive to them and their religion or way of life. We as Americans should not have to assimilate to them. As I’ve said in many other things I’ve written and posted,

http://beautifulnightmare-killumbus.blogspot.com/2008/02/jst-remember-whos-paying-whos-doing.html

http://beautifulnightmare-killumbus.blogspot.com/2008/02/huge-large-can-of-worms-or-huge-can-of.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTguryo20tY



Minnesota: America's First Somali-Muslim State?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259761,00.html

Somalis in America are "very, very rude, inconsiderate, very demanding"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025409.php

Great the Somalis are celebrating there independence, but what I want to know is there independence of what taking more from us? (Somalis regardless of age get $1,000 a month for 7 years) Shouldn’t they be celebrating in Africa?

'Thou hast seen

the Passion, the Sorrow, and the horrid slaughter

of undefended right.

Thou hast curst, thou hast wept

Harvesting prison, misery, and affliction.

Cursing is sterile; weeping cowardly,

Listen!

History directs you; Science arms you.

From unavenged tombs,

killed by disease and gunshot

your fathers entrust you with their vengeance

Be Bold! Redemption springs from audacious revolt!'