[Peace-discuss] Re: USAF attack in Somalia (C. G. Estabrook)

[C. G. Estabrook]

If it wasn't crashingly obvious before, Scott, it should be now, after 
the Pentagon's construction of its "Africa Command," that the US is 
pursuing a common policy in NE Africa, including Somalia and Sudan. 
Tonight's PBS Newshour presented two "experts" -- a Clinton State 
Department official and a current war college academic (thus covering 
the range of opinion) -- to discuss and justify US attacks on Somalia: 
they immediately agreed that Sudan was part of the problem...

The constant ("bipartisan") goals of US actions in the arc 
Libya-Sudan-Somalia and neighboring countries are

	(a) to secure biddable governments and military bases in these 
approaches to the Middle East;
	(b) to control the region's energy resources so that they can be denied 
to political and economic enemies, channeled as far as possible thru US 
companies, and -- even more importantly -- financed through Western 
banks; and
	(c) to counter the growing influence of China, already Sudan's major 
oil customer, and a rival to the US in terms of investment and aid in 
Africa.

In pursuit of these goals the US is killing people in our name, in its 
race to overthrow governments.  The administration has just launched an 
aggressive war by means of its client Ethiopia to destroy an independent 
government in Somalia.  The method being used to curb an independent 
government in Sudan is similar, but here the agent is to be the UN 
rather than a neighboring state, and the excuse is to be "genocide," as 
it was in the US attack on the independent government of Serbia (for 
similar reasons).  That there are true enormities in Darfur (or Kosovo) 
does not justify American attacks, even if carried out by UN,  Nato, or 
Ethiopian proxies.  That's what Alex de Waal means when he says that 
there can be no military but only political solutions to the problems of 
Darfur.  The US however is interested in a military solution for its own 
purposes.   --CGE


Scott Edwards wrote:
> Good analysis on Somalia, Carl. I don't understand the opening, though:
> 
>> 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).
> 
> I'm not sure I see the connection to Sudan, even as I stretch credulity 
> to the limits of reason. Following 9/11, Sudan became very appeasing to 
> the admin. In fact, one of the security heads viewed as widely 
> responsible for the atrocities in Sudan was a guest in the US as he 
> consulted with US intelligence agencies. I suspect he will be indicted 
> in the next month by the ICC.
> 
> Unlike Somalia, Sudan actually *has* a government. The failure of the 
> administration to pressure that govnt to end the slaughter of its own 
> citizens is an indication of a misalignment of priorities by the 
> administration given its deference to the disgusting regime in Khartoum. 
> I do not see any connection to the US attack in Somalia, and it seems a 
> bit disingenuous to casually refer to a "Somalia-Sudan" theater.
> 
> The opposite of violence is not inaction.
> 
> I hope we recognize the difference between an attack on "extremists" in 
> Somalia that undoubtedly killed scores of civilians, and the 
> half-hearted winking policy of the administration as it relates to the 
> murder and displacement of millions of people. One is a crime of action. 
> The other is a crime of inaction that history will judge as a dark stain 
> on the already-bloody tapistry of human history.
> 
> se
> 
> 
>> Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:46:42 -0600
>> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] USAF attack in Somalia
>> To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> Message-ID: <45A31E32.9080008 at uiuc.edu>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> 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
>>