another fine mess

I love looking at the news, but not for the purposes of being educated and informed objectively about what is going on. However, in this zest for information, I am often reminded that there is a substantial corpus of information that is weeded out by a small group of zealots that tends to rub me the wrong way. Case in point is the war on terror and the purposeful focus on Iraq and Afghanistan. Although these are mentioned, it is really not known about the third front in this effort, the war the US is conducting in Somalia.

Since it has been known that Al-Qaeda has been operating in Somalia, For the record, the Kenyan, Ethiopian, the United States in concert with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia have been fighting the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces since December of last year.

Historically, Somalia wars were between factions and warlords. However now, there is a discernable difference between the parties involved in the fighting. The main participant is the U.S. military, which has been providing financial support to the fighters such to become an organized resistance groups against bands of Islamic fundamentalists in central and southern parts of Somalia.

To date, the current administration (White House and State Department included) do not confirm that they are supposedly at war with Al-Qaeda groups in Somalia. A recent Newsweek report confirmed that “-gunship attacks as well as AC-130 aerial assaults” occur “on a daily basis” and that the U.S. Military has “deployed American commandos to hunt down remnants of Islamic hard-liners, both from the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower offshore, and across the land border from Kenya in the south.”

The Bush administration is aware of all of this; however, we citizens of the U.S, as a whole are not. This should not be unexpected since the Bush administration has launched operations all across the Muslim world. Now, it is just in Africa and against Union of Islamic Courts, which controls the majority of southern Somalia.
So what does this say? Number one, read newspapers from outside of the US if you desire accurate information of our actions worldwide. It also shows us how as a nation, we have started a war between Ethiopia and Somalia (two of world's poorest countries) in an effort to fight terror which will likely result in the destabilizing of two African countries. Nothing good can come of this for Africa or the US, but that does not seem to matter, because if this war continues, it will likely incur serious harm to U.S. interests in Africa – another fine mess you have gotten us into.