Sunday, July 10, 2016

"They Expressed Their Contempt for the United States"

A quarter century ago we intervened in chaotic Somalia to avert mass starvation and stayed to see if we could help put together some sort of governance. Jihadis roam the landscape and governance is far off. Our forces in Djibouti watch and strike the jihadis.

The two pillars of the Somalia mission (AMISOM: African Union Mission to Somalia) to stabilize Somalia and keep jihadis in check are getting ready to come home:

The growing American operational involvement in AMISOM is occurring as two of the largest troop contributing countries, Kenya and Uganda, openly question whether to continue supporting the peacekeeping operation or exit and leave a tremendous security gap in in the fragile country. Taken together, both factors could lead to a future where American involvement in Somalia greatly resembles Iraq and Syria, with the United States military carrying out operations rather than merely supporting them.

We still haven't found a way to lead from behind this mission, yet still suffer from the original mission because we accepted a lot of refugees from Somalia since then.

Which is a community that generates volunteers for the jihad out of proportion to their numbers (tip to Instapundit):

If Minnesota’s Somalians were a city, they would be Minnesota’s third-largest, after Minneapolis and St. Paul. Their numbers grow every year. In September 2015, the House Homeland Security Committee released a study of Americans seeking to join ISIS as foreign fighters. Minnesota, it turns out, sends more aspiring fighters to Syria and Iraq than any other state.

No good deed goes unpunished, eh? Even if it takes a generation to take a whack at us.

Which doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy about that whole Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thing.

Do check it out regarding the trial of jihadi wannabees:

Perhaps most shocking to me was what utterly ordinary members of the Minnesota Somali community the defendants and their friends appeared to be. So far as I can tell, Somali culture is alien and hostile to the United States. Many among the local Somali community considered the defendants to be persecuted innocents entrapped by the government. It would be unduly charitable to characterize the attitude as willful blindness.

The initial article speculates that we'd have to increase our fire support to keep the smaller number of friendly troops effective. If we'd have to do that anyway, why not provide that level of support now to the Kenyans and Ugandans? Maybe they won't leave if they get that kind of support.

A quarter century after we sent troops to feed the people of Somalia, we still have our military occupied trying to stabilize that Third World heck hole; with the bonus of hostile refugees and their offspring sitting in our country, some all too eager for revenge for the crime of saving them.