Mal de Mali

The United States is providing aerial refueling for France's military efforts in Mali and may start transporting troops from other African nations to support the effort.  The U.S. cannot provide direct support to Mali's government because it came to power in a coup, not through democratic means.

I find this deeply disturbing.  The U.S. is once again helping France to re-take one of her former colonies from insurgents and hand it off to an unpopular, inept dictatorship. The motive this time is to prevent Islamists from using Mali as a base to export jihad to other nations in the region. Fifty years ago, we were concerned about communism spreading from Indochina (Vietnam) throughout Asia.

While the French airstrikes have allowed the "government" to quickly retake urban bases, "The Islamists seemed to be pulling back further north into the trackless desert wastes and mountain fastnesses of the Sahara, from where some military experts fear they could carry on a hit-and-run guerrilla war against the government."

Sound familiar? 

Perhaps we should all learn the French word for quagmire: bourbier.  The venerable French newspaper Le Monde is already using it.

A Martyr for Democracy

For some time before September 11, tension had been simmering between various factions in post-revolution Libya. The weak transitional government has abdicated responsibility for security to armed militias, many of them Islamist.  One of those Islamist militias, Ansar al-Sharia, is widely held to be responsible for the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Chris Stevens was held in high esteem by Libya's revolutionaries, whose cause he supported last year. His death outraged many Libyans and may have inspired the populist demonstration against the militias that took place in Benghazi on Friday.


There were counter-demonstrators, but they were far outnumbered. The clashes killed at least 11 people and wounded 70. A day later, the Libyan government banned all militias and armed groups that are not under government authority and are working to cobble together a national security force.

There is no way to know what Libya will look like in a year. It may be taken over by Islamist militias in the end.  Or, it may install a secular democracy on the Turkish model.  There are no strong leaders, no Libyan Kemal Attaturk, but this weekend has shown that not all Muslims are anti-American, not all Muslims want to live in an Islamic theocracy, and many Muslims are willing to stand up and fight against the extremists in their midst.

In the News

The Butcher of Srebrenica has been captured. I wonder who the anonymous tipster was. I'm not usually a supporter of capital punishment, but I would gladly serve on a firing squad to execute that monster.

Congress is growing a spine over Libya.  I'm glad to see both parties stand up for the War Powers Act. I usually trust President Obama's judgement, but I don't like any Commander in Chief to have dictatorial, unconstitutional powers. He had his 60 days. It's time to get Congressional approval for the action in Libya or end it in 30 days.

John Edwards will face criminal charges for misusing campaign funds to cover up an affair.  John Ensign should be very nervous.

Concealed carry advocates want no training or permits required.  For everyone's safety, I think we should start mandatory firearms safety classes in public schools. Imagine if we let everyone drive a car with no training or testing required.

Erik Prince's Foreign Legion

Blackwater founder Erik Prince has found a more lucrative market for his mercenary business.  His new company, Reflex Responses, is providing security for the government of the United Arab Emirates, where he "hires a mixture of Colombian soldiers of fortune and South African vets of Executive Outcomes, the pre-Blackwater merc firm that fought nasty counter-guerilla wars in Angola and Sierra Leone."

I guess that's one way to keep the Arab Spring from spreading.  Perhaps the UAE feels that foreign mercenaries will have fewer qualms about firing on peaceful protestors than their own army, who may have relatives in the crowd.

Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead

A moment of celebration is in order. Sing it, Harry.

It's Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

I have spent the month of April thinking about this. When we invaded in 2001, it was a war of necessity, in my opinion. The ruling Taliban had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden and his followers, who used their Afghan base to plan the 9-11 attacks on the U.S.

Unfortunately, the administration's ambitions to forcibly spread democracy through the Middle East led it to fight the Afghan war on the cheap and to severely underfund post-war security and nation-building, just as we did in the 1980s after the CIA helped Afghanistan expel the Soviets. Rather than repeating the Marshall Plan, we repeated Charlie Wilson's War.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama argued for the need to wind down the Iraq occupation and instead devote more boots on the ground in Afghanistan and, if necessary, Pakistan. He has followed that policy. However, it seems like the window of opportunity to achieve our goals in Afghanistan closed in 2002.

Two events in April have underscored the futility of our continued occupation. At the beginning of the month, a UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif was stormed by a group of ordinary Afghans without Taliban ties, and eight people were killed. The crowd was outraged by the burning of a Koran by a pile of human feces who claims to be a clergyman in Florida. It is notable that the Koran-burning did not provoke attacks on Westerners in more modern Islamic nations like Turkey and Indonesia, nor even in Saudi Arabia, the heartland of extreme fundamentalist Islam. The Koran-burning was a trigger and an excuse, but I believe the real reason for the attack in Mazar-i-Sharif was a deep hatred of western occupiers.

A few days ago, a member of the Afghan military, following a dispute of some kind with his U.S. allies, opened fire, killing eight U.S. troops and an American contractor before he was shot dead himself. He had no known ties to the Taliban nor Al Quaeda.

If the very people who are being served by UN workers in a relatively secure city hate them enough to riot and kill them, and the Afghan military whom we are supposedly training to take over the nation's security hates our troops enough to turn on them with little provocation, what can our continued occupation possibly accomplish? We are not just fighting the Taliban and Al Quaeda over there. We are fighting ordinary people who are frustrated by the corrupt kleptocracy we put in place there. Hamid Karzai rigged the last election, yet we supported him. How is that encouraging democracy? In Libya, we are dropping bombs to keep Quaddafi from killing the civilians who rose up against him, yet in Afghanistan, we are protecting Karzai from a similar uprising.

We need to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. Now.