Al Shabaab seizes town from Somali government:
The Islamist group al Shabaab seized a town northwest of Somalia's capital from government forces on Sunday, the latest small center taken by the militant group trying to topple the country's Western-backed government. Ref. Source 3w.
I was in Somalia when we broke the back of the famine imposed on the population of Somalia by a bunch of would be lords… AKA faction and tribal leaders. Somalia is a strange place. The Government is almost non-existent and power rests in the hands of a bunch of thugs who lead gangs of brutes who inflict their will on the majority. This is truly a place where the wolves thrive at the expense of the sheep.
Well, having the protective instinct I have, call me a wolfhound, I always thought our mission over there was a noble one. We didn't go there because they had any natural resource or industry we needed. We went there because people were staving and it was caused by a civil war. There was food, it was just rotting in warehouses controlled by petty lords who refused to distribute it to the people most in need in case they needed it for the little army.
We got the food where it needed to go and that was a good thing. Where we went wrong was getting ourselves involved in their civil war. Much like in Syria, civil wars are usually the worst wars when it comes to brutality. You can look to ours to see it's true. Sherman's march to the sea where he destroyed farms and the infrastructure of Georgia and South Carolina and Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah are fine examples how ruthless a civil war can be. In Somalia they used food as a weapon, and that isn't the first time that has happened.
Once we broke that practice, we should have declared mission complete and left with the warning we'd be back if the petty lords manufactured another famine. Rather, mission creep set in. It came from where it usually comes from, the political side of things. This was started under the first President Bush and continued under President Clinton, I can't remember where mission creep first started. I seem to think it was under President Bush and it sped up under President Clinton. Either way, it should never have happened.
Now, we have a country that is barely a country with a government that doesn't even have full authority in the capital city. This is a country ripe for terrorists to train in and to even take large areas of land. Which is why we have people there again, boots on the ground, killing the really bad wolves before they can come here to the US or to an ally and cause death and destruction.
You are correct. We should have never got involved with the civil war in Somalia. Getting the food distributed was the goal and leaving after that was the idea plan but like always you have these people in Washington who feel that they can save the world in their own view even at the expense of our troops.
Death toll rises to 189 in Somali truck bomb attack. Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo declared three days of national mourning and donated blood Sunday in the wake of Saturday's blast, which destroyed multiple buildings in the capital of Mogadishu. Ref. USAToday.