Anti War: Thread

[grarpamp]

Meanwhile Back In Washington, & Somalia, & Syria, & Kenya, And...

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/05/26/meanwhile-back-washington-and-somalia-and-syria-and-kenya-and

So we hear that former President George W. Bush finally came around to
denouncing “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and
brutal invasion of Iraq.” This unexpected and belated outburst of
truth-telling and self-criticism was, of course, unintentional—just
one of those verbal gaffes that the man once entertained the nation
with on a regular basis. Realizing his error, the former
commander-in-chief quickly explained that the unjustified and brutal
invasion he was condemning was, naturally, not that of Iraq, but
Ukraine. He brushed his faux pas off as a result of his advanced age,
and the audience had a good laugh about it all.

Unfortunately, that crowd at the George W. Bush Presidential Library
in Dallas was not the only group with reason to smile at the current
state of affairs, for these are happy days throughout the entire
war-making community. With the nation understandably and justifiably
outraged at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s been widely noted
that NATO is back in favor, arms manufacturers are back in clover, and
increased military spending is way back in vogue in Washington—not
that it ever suffered much of a downswing, mind you.
Image: Special Operations Command Africa

What’s also happening these days is that the public are paying much
closer attention than usual to matters of war. With the Ukraine
invasion streaming on every screen, most Americans appear to know far
more of the activities of the Russian and Ukrainian militaries than
they know about their own—a situation that our domestic military
policy makers are probably quite comfortable with. Unfortunately, the
rest of us ought to be quite uncomfortable with this situation—as a
glance at the back pages of the past week’s news will show.

First, there was the announcement that President Biden would be
sending troops back to Somalia. Why? In the words of National Security
Council spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson, the purpose is to wage “a more
effective fight against Al Shabab.” Al Shabab, (“the youth”), a
fundamentalist Islamic group thought to have 5,000-10,000 members, has
been fighting for control of Somalia since the 2000s.

The U.S. started bombing Somalia in 2011. The following year Al Shabab
declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. The U.S. has bombed Somalia in every
subsequent year. The reason we can be waging war in Somalia? Well,
it’s not something much discussed, since the fact that we bomb Somalia
is not much discussed in the first place. Used to be that the
justification and authorization cited for almost all of the bombs we
have dropped in this century was the 2002 Authorization of the Use of
Military Force resolution (the one that only Democratic Rep. Barbara
Lee of California opposed.) Since that authorization was actually
repealed last September, the White House/Pentagon’s operative
rationale here now seems to be a sort-of “We’ve always done it this
way” thing.

This move on the part of Biden—who declared it “time to end the
forever war” when he announced the withdrawal of all American troops
from Afghanistan—will reverse President Trump’s decision to remove
almost all of the 700 Americans previously stationed in Somalia, which
Watson called “a precipitous decision to withdraw.” The unofficial
word is that about 450 will return. Biden has also approved the
Pentagon’s request to attempt assassinations of about a dozen
suspected Al Shabab leaders, part of an overall effort—in the words of
an unnamed senior administration official—to reduce “the threat to a
level that is tolerable.” A prime example of the type of “threat” that
Americans might face in that part of the world was the attack that
killed three soldiers at the American air base at Manda Bay, Kenya on
January 2, 2020. (American soldiers killed in Kenya? We’ll return to
that.)

And elsewhere on the assassination-attempts-on-enemy-leaders front,
the very next day the Pentagon spoke for the first time about civilian
casualties resulting from its March 18, 2019 drone strike near Baghuz,
Syria. The U.S. military had not originally intended to discuss this
matter at all, until the New York Times uncovered the incident in a
November, 2021 series on civilian deaths resulting from U.S. air
strikes. This recent Pentagon acknowledgment came a week after the
Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for that series. Although the bulk
of its investigation remains classified, the Pentagon does acknowledge
73 casualties including 56 dead, 52 of whom it claims “were enemy
fighters, including one child.” The enemy in this case refers to the
Islamic State (ISIS). Anonymous officials familiar with the findings
acknowledged that all males at the site, armed or not, were assumed to
fall into the “enemy fighters” category, despite the Times report that
the camp’s occupants included “captives and scores of wounded men who
were no longer in the fight and, according to the law of armed
conflict, were not legal targets.”

    The Kremlin has been banking on this shift in western support for
the economic war: "Americans are becoming less supportive of punishing
Russia for launching its invasion of Ukraine if it comes at the
expense of the U.S. economy"https://t.co/9KkfsYhXnw
    — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 24, 2022

The justification offered for this bombing was the defense of our
Syrian Defense Force allies in Syria’s civil war. At the press
conference announcing its report, Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby
characterized the Times’ findings as “not comfortable, not easy and
not simple to address,” but he assured those present that “We actually
do feel bad about this.” No wrong doing was found on the part of any
American involved in the military operation, however, nor was anyone
found to have improperly covered it up. And why are U.S. military
forces currently at war in Syria? Again, it would pretty much seem to
come back to the undeniable fact that this is just the sort of thing
we do, ever since four airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The very next day following the Pentagon’s self-exoneration in the
Syria bombing, it took the opportunity to present even happier news:
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has nominated Lt. Gen Michael E.
Langley to a position that puts him in line to become the U.S. Marine
Corp’s first black four star general. If formally nominated by
President Biden and confirmed by the Senate, Langley will assume the
top position of the U.S. Africa Command, a group said to currently
number about 2,000 men and women, about 1,500 of whom actually operate
out of Stuttgart, Germany (a country that is host to 40 U.S. military
bases and about 35,000 American military personnel). The actual extent
of the Africa Command remains a bit murky, though. In 2020, the news
website Intercept published a Pentagon planning document that listed
29 U.S. military bases in fifteen different African nations.

And why are we in Africa? According to the Africa Command’s website,
the organization “counters transnational threats and malign actors.”
Indeed, these “malign actors” do appear to be on the rise. For
instance, in the course of the decade plus in which the U.S. has been
bombing Somalia, the number of militant Islamist organizations
operating in the continent has risen from about five to 25. And now it
appears that there are at least 29 locations there where Americans
might now be threatened.

So, with just a brief look at what’s not streaming on every screen,
it’s hard to avoid thinking that if there were half as many Americans
who knew what our own military was up to around the globe—or if there
were half as many Americans who could name even half the countries we
repeatedly bomb—as there are Americans who know what the Russian
military is doing, people might start talking about making some real
changes there.