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Here's another noodle-scratcher from the Obama administration. Last Wednesday,the U.S. deployed combat troops to central Africa to serve as advisers to regional forces battling the Lord’s Resistance Army.
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A total of 100 combat-equipped troops will eventually be deployed, with the rest being dispatched in the next month, according to the letter. “However, although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense,” Obama writes.Yes, advisers only; won't engage the adversary unless absolutely necessary. Check. As Rocket J. Squirrel used to say, "That voice. Where have I heard that voice?"
The announcement was masterfully delayed until Friday afternoon, which is the part of the weekly news cycle where authorities typically bury the release of negative or controversial news. Yet the announcement of other important "foreign policy" news---a positive development in the eyes of most people, I'd think---was also obscured by its timing:
The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.Just in time for deployment to... where? Uganda? Iran? Cardassia Prime?
Seriously, has someone just discovered huge new deposits of mineral wealth in Uganda?
That LRA is a long-time cancer in far more countries than just Uganda. Clinton should have wiped them out 15 years ago. Good for BO, getting around to it finally. This is not a government or any sort of leadership in any single place. They're free-range gangsters and they need to be eliminated permanently. This is not a 'war in the making'. Don't go all "Ron Paul" on us.
ReplyDeleteThe reasons you give for rubbing out the LRA reinforce my feeling that they should be handled using multilateral security forces instead of US military troops alone. Either the US is the world's policeman or it isn't (that is, either it should be or shouldn't be). If the LRA is in fact an international criminal gang, then there may be a role for INTERPOL. Not sure why anyone should be confident that this sort of intervention isn't a potential war in the making.
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