US Attacks Somalia, Taking Sides With Former Enemy Warlords

Tuesday, 09 January 2007

UPDATED VERSIONThe United States has committed an act of war against Somalia (as Buzzflash noted), launching a gunship attack in pursuit of "suspected al Qaeda operatives." Several people were killed when US planes "strafed the village of Hayo near the Kenyan border" and possibly the village of Ras Kamboni, the Guardian reports. It is highly unlikely that whole villages can be strafed without killing some innocent civilians. But then again, George W. Bush clearly operates on the principle of statecraft laid down by Josef Stalin: "When wood is chopped, chips fly."

[Update: Civilians have indeed been killed, as the Guardian reports tonight:

Another air strike killed up to 31 people this morning near the town of Afmadow, 220 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, according to local witnesses and officials...The Associated Press cited witnesses as saying 31 civilians, including two newlyweds, had been killed in the strike, by two US helicopter gunships. Reuters cited a local witness as saying between 22 and 27 people had been killed.]

In launching the airstrike, Bush has now openly aligned the United States with the warlords once responsible for the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident, in which an American helicopter was shot down in Mogadishu (in response, as is rarely said, to a massive, indiscriminate U.S. assault in the city that left scores of Somalians dead). The attack also openly allies the United States with repressive dictatorship of Ethiopia, whose troops – trained and supplied by the Americans already – invaded Somalia to join with the local warlords in ousting the Islamic movement that had taken control of the country after more than 15 years of violent anarchy.

In other words, Bush has intervened in yet another loing-running, multi-sided civil war, aiding yet another bunch of unsavory characters, who need only promise fealty to the Bush Faction's geopolitical ambitions in order to receive armed American support (and bags of American taxpayer cash.) Evidently, the internal conflict in Somalia is yet another of the series of bloodlettings that Bush promised us back in 2002, when he proclaimed: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the Homeland."

Feeling secure yet?

Chris Floyd