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So How’d That Africa Thingee Work Out?
W-a-y back in October 2011 the U.S. invaded, albeit in a small way, the Central African Republic, because, well, big countries can still do stuff like that in Africa. Now, in December 2012, we’ve evacuated our diplomats and civilians because the invasion failed and chaos reigns in yet another place the U.S. muddled. Happy New Year!
Obama sent some 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help battle a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. American troops deployed to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The troops were combat-equipped to “fight only in self-defense,” a dubious statement given that as armed troops they are stomping around someone else’s country. That sort of calls for an armed response by the homeboys, and thus the need to self-defend, yes?
FYI, The Lord’s Resistance Army are a bunch of terrible thugs who have conducted a two-decade spree of murder, rape and kidnapping. They have not, however, attacked the U.S. They live really far away from America.
Anyway, like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and pretty everywhere else the U.S. has bumbled into, things are not working out in the Central African Republic. Another 50 U.S. troops have deployed to the African country of Chad to help evacuate U.S. citizens and embassy personnel from the neighboring Central African Republic’s capital of Bangui in the face of rebel advances toward the city. Obama informed congressional leaders of Thursday’s deployment in a letter Saturday citing a “deteriorating security situation” in the Central African Republic.
For those keeping score at home, this all tracks the growing US military presence throughout Africa (Admitted: Uganda, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti, currently some 5,000 personnel), complete with complex special ops, US troops on the ground engaged in “training” and occasional combat, along with the sad, usual accidents involving prostitutes and naughty boys that follow our military worldwide, most recently in Mali.
Bonus: As part of our ongoing public service, Where’s Hillary?, we note that the elusive still-recovering SecState had no comment on the evacuation of her diplomats from the Central African Republic.
Extra New Year’s Bonus: While the primary US engagement in Africa continues to morph into a military one, China’s dominant relationships on the continent are economic.
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JVC said...
1From what I’ve heard via radio news reports, we’re now on target for a March do-or-die decision as to what happens with the federal budget next.
If the “Only remaining superpower” is getting by on interim agreements that last months or weeks… how are we not headed for rating agency downgrading but in reality… the long awaited crash.
It’s inevitable and it’s inbound. The EU is held together with paper and glue. The US prints the money. China is makes and is garbage.
Plan on having a vegetable garden at your house and not driving a whole lot.
With that crash, going over a real “Fiscal cliff”, all this nonsense with our dalliances in exotic, third world locales will come to a grinding halt, at long last, and the American century, give or take, will be over.
Amen.
01/3/13 2:33 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
2JVC: Progressives should check our genealogy to see if we have a distant cousin or uncle with farm land in the center coast and start to connect with those people. We may be forced to find a way to work with the rural proletarians if we want to eat. Little backyard gardens aren’t going to help.
01/3/13 3:27 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
3Amen.
01/3/13 3:43 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
4Question. Can anyone define American “interests” for me.
Thanks
01/3/13 3:55 PM | Comment Link
teri said...
5Sure, pitchfork, if it smells like money, it is an American interest. If it smells like someone else’s money, it is irresistibly interesting. If you have to wade through a pool of fossil fuels to get there, it is not only interesting, but heavenly. If you get to kill someone as you wade through the pool, it then becomes a “necessary and strategic” American interest and requires the use of “projected power”.
We are the most heavily armed kleptomaniacs in the known universe. Karma will be a bitch.
-Teri
01/3/13 9:09 PM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
6I’m going to have to second Teri on the Karma thing even though I’m not into Karma. I would LIKE it to be the operating ethos of the known cosmos. A fantasy at best.
01/4/13 3:56 AM | Comment Link
JVC said...
7Re surviving financial crises, over-extended US foreign policies and EMP’s… Yea, I actually live on the Central Coast, if that’s what JP is implying, we’ve got a temperate climate, lots of oak & lot’s of meat. The “gardens” will be communal as only with the aid of community is anyone going to get through what I believe is coming our way & I think “Karma” fits the bill quite nicely. In the not-to-distant future cities are not going to be the place to be. US foreign policy, establishment values and the editorial opinions of the NYT’s have been irrelevant since at least the Clinton administration. Andrew Bacevich most succinctly expresses the current state of affairs and waving the US stick is about all we have left as the legs of diplomacy and economic carrots have all but been exhausted. Peter’s book is just one more indictment of a nation gone off the rails. Like the old bumper sticker from at least the 1980’s… Think globally, act locally.
01/4/13 8:40 AM | Comment Link
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