[Peace-discuss] USAF attack in Somalia

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's important to recognize that in the mind of the administration 
Sudan-Somalia -- indeed all of northern Africa -- is one theater of an 
American war that's been going on for more than fifteen years (in some 
senses, for more than fifty).  We might call at least the last decade 
and a half by a sort of synecdoche "America's Gulf War(s)," because the 
energy resources of the Persian Gulf are the cynosure of US policy.

 From Foggy Bottom (the home of the US Department of State), the Middle 
East looks like a vast target, concentric circles with a bull's-eye in 
the Gulf and a radius of 2500 miles, from central Asia to central 
Africa, from Belgrade to Diego Garcia.  Whatever happens within that 
circle is interpreted by the US in terms of its insistence on 
controlling world energy as the way to control its economic rivals, the 
  economies of the EU and northeast Asia.

Previous administrations have been active in this theater. 
Contemporaneously with his attack on Iraq (1991), Bush Sr. staged a 
"humanitarian" invasion of Somalia, which the CIA estimated produced 
thousands of Somali casualties.  Clinton's attack on Sudan also may well 
have resulted in the deaths of thousands.

It's an indication of the continuity of US policy, regardless of the 
change of administrations, that, even if the Johns Hopkins study is 
right and Bush Jr.'s war in Iraq has killed more than 650,000 people, 
Clinton is still responsible for killing even more Iraqis, by means of 
his administration's murderous sanctions.  And of course Clinton's 
attack on Kosovo can be seen as a different theater of the same war.

This weekend, as a direct and specific result of this grand strategy, a 
US Air Force gunship carried out an attack in Somalia, with which we are 
not at war but which the US Navy has been blockading for weeks. (See 
attached article.) The US not surprisingly claimed that it was an attack 
on "al Qaeda," its all-purpose description of independent nationalists 
such as those of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union. (A generation ago the 
term would have been "communists.")

The CBS/AP report says, "The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing 
thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were 
seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no 
confirmation of the identities."  And of course it may not be the only 
US air strike.

The gunship came from the US base in Djibouti -- the only US military 
base in sub-Saharan Africa -- and flew the length of Somalia to attack 
the remnants of the ICU forces that had been overthrown by an invasion 
from Ethiopia, encouraged and paid for by the US.  The popular ICU had 
previously suppressed the CIA-backed warlords who had kept Somalia in 
anarchy since the US withdrawal in 1993.

"Once they started moving," reports CBS/AP, the ICU forces "became 
easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air 
strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and 
moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward 
Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the 
AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command" -- the 
darling of SOD Rumsfeld's desire for independent (and of course 
unconstitutional) killing.

The AP reports that "the Islamic movement's main force is bottled up at 
Ras Kamboni, the southernmost tip of the country, cut off from escape at 
sea by patrolling U.S. warships and across the Kenyan border by the 
Kenyan military."

The US of course has no warrant under either US or international law to 
kill people in Somalia.  It is in fact another war crime to be added to 
the administration's lengthening list.  I'm sure however that if pressed 
Bush et al. would point to the ever-elastic "Authorization for the Use 
of Military Force" against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or 
aided" the 9/11 attacks, passed by the Congress in the immediate 
aftermath of those attacks.  (That's why the people killed by US 
imperialism must always be "al-Qaeda.") And of course the administration 
will continue to kill people with that excuse until stopped, by 
resistance from their victims and from the US populace.

In Somalia, there's still a good bit of the former, according to CBS/AP. 
"Many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent the presence of troops from 
neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The 
countries fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.  On Sunday, gunmen 
attacked Ethiopian troops, witnesses said, sparking a firefight in the 
second straight day of violence in the capital, Mogadishu."

For an interesting analysis of the military situation, not favorable to 
the US in spite of its apparent victory in this semi-proxy war, see 
"Somalia: A State Restored? Not So Fast," by William S. Lind 
<http://antiwar.com/lind/>.

--CGE



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