Jeremy Scahill, writer for the famously liberal magazine The Nation just published a brilliant piece on the Obama administrations secret and illegal war operations in Somalia — a country which has been effectively stateless for two decades. Scahill’s piece, The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia is being largely ignored by most major news outlets but he did a great interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
From the Morning Joe interview:
This drone bombing campaign of countries off stated battlefields began in 2002. The Bush administration bombed Yemen in November of 2002 targeting an alleged Al Qaeda leader. The Obama administration has dramatically increased the drone attacks around the world. In Yemen, we’ve done cruise missile strikes, drone strikes, now we’re hitting regularly in Somalia. On July 6, there were 3 U.S. strikes; June 23rd, another U.S. strike inside of Somalia. A lot of liberals used to say “the world is a battlefield” was the bush doctrine. President Obama hit harder in more countries with special ops forces from the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA than bush did. He has made possible a continuation of these policies that I think McCain would not have been able to push through because there would have been push-back through some semblance of an anti-war movement. There’s no anti-war movement that has any voice in this country anymore. Obama has legitimized and normalized, and attempted to legalize policies a lot of people were saying were immoral and illegal under president Bush.
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Wait, I’m confused – does this mean that republicans and democrats actually do the same thing? [/sarcasm]
Actually no, this means that “there’s no greater republican than a democrat and there’s not greater democrat than a republican”
This is a corollary of “only Nixon can go to China” i.e. only the “righty” president can expand welfare to unprecedented levels and only the “lefty” president can go to war with the world
The cult of party politics disgusts me.
I cant but help to feel that way to at times. Especially when nothings seems to be done.
Glenn Greenwald documents how the government-controlled media serves to both ignore and then disparage anyone whom attempts to report on these types of stories:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/15/somalia
Just when they were getting good and stateless and slowly progressing……..Sad, sad….
I thought it was kind of sad that one of the moderators kept referring to the Somalia issue as another “undeclared war”. I don’t believe we have had a “declared war” since WWII.
The U.S. moving its operations to a “sovereignty haven?” The irony is too much.
I find it interesting that the prisons are run by the Somali National Security Agency, not by any tribe or common law grouping. Looks like the propped up national government (with no real power) is still trying to increase its influence through foreign hostiles such as the US and UN.
i agree with the writer opinion…..
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