I guess the war on terror isn't over.
American forces carried out an air strike against jihadis in Somalia:
The US military conducted an air strike against Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shabaab jihadists on Tuesday, the first since President Joe Biden took office, the Pentagon said. ...
In March, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that any planned strikes against jihadist groups outside Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq were now submitted to the White House before being carried out.
Drone strikes multiplied during Trump's term, going from 11 in Somalia in 2015, to 64 in 2019 and 54 in 2020[.]
It has been six months since an American air strike there. Are there so few jihadis that it is a waste to kill them? Is it too hard to find jihadi targets via our aerial surveillance and local allies without American forces on the ground to judge the information? Is it too hard to get prompt--or any--White House approval for strikes?
I wasn't happy about the Trump or Biden decisions:
What did I say about this decision to bug out and fight terrorists from outside Somalia?
Yes. You may recall that I noted that both Trump's decision to pull troops out of Somalia and Biden's decision to require White House approval strikes there would harm our ability to kill jihadis. If The AFRICOM Queen was sailing off the coast, as I wrote about in Military Review, we'd be in a much stronger position.As I wrote in that post about Trump's decision:
Without American special forces on the ground in Somalia with our local allies, our drone strikes seeking to kill jihadis could actually be counter-productive. People forget that without old fashioned meat sack sources on the ground, the high tech strike systems could just be a means to kill the wrong people for the wrong people.It is only April and already we have a "limited intelligence understanding" of the environment.
I recently noted some second thoughts about the issue (quoting Military Times):
Gen. Stephen Townsend said during the European Union Defense Washington Forum [that] it’s a lot hard to train, advise and assist Somalian forces from afar.
Is this air strike a one-off? Or is the refusal of our fanatical Islamist jihadi enemies to recognize our decision to "end" the war on terror having an effect on our leaders?
