200 years ago, everyone called terrorists by another name: pirates
- Washington Post
For most Americans, every event is new and unprecedented in the world. That's because most American's grasp of history is deplorable.
An embarrassingly large percentage of Americans are completely unaware that this isn't America's first global war with terrorism. To make matters worse, a large percentage of the public that is familiar with our first global war on terrorism is under the false impression that we won a clear victory.
And now Somali pirates have dared to take an American hostage.
Given the level of concern and outrage in the media and on the blogs you would never know that America is more responsible for pirates in Somalia than anyone else.
"There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror."
- U.S. consul William Eaton wrote to the Secretary of State in 1799
"We were taught, in the schoolbooks, that the United States in its first real war had cowed the dastardly Barbary princes. This was not so."
- author Donald Barr Chidsey
The Bashaw of Tripoli shall deliver up to the American Squadron now off Tripoli, all the Americans in his possession; and all the Subjects of the Bashaw of Tripoli now in the power of the United States of America shall be delivered up to him; and as the number of Americans in possession of the Bashaw of Tripoli amounts to Three Hundred Persons, more or less; and the number of Tripolino Subjects in the power of the Americans to about, One Hundred more or less; The Bashaw of Tripoli shall receive from the United States of America, the sum of Sixty Thousand Dollars, as a payment for the difference between the Prisoners herein mentioned.
America is hardly a blushing virgin in the arena of pirating. During the American Revolution the new government authorized privateers to operate against British shipping. More than 300 British merchant ships fell victim to these legal pirates.
George Washington himself was an investor in a privateer operation. Banker and tobacco baron Robert Morris owned several privateers during the war. During America's colonial days corrupt governors openly exchange safe haven to pirates for a piece of the action.
But this is all ancient history, right? It can only teach us that trying to stop pirates with a naval blockade is doomed to fail. If there's one thing we've learned about Americans in the last couple decades is that we are "smarter" than everything history can teach us.
So what does this have to do with Somalia? Nothing much.
To learn how yet another foreign policy crisis has come back to bite us in the a**, you have to go back to January 13, 2006.
The elephant in the living room
I've been writing articles about Somalia for about three years, and almost no one on DKos, or any other blog for that matter, has bothered to care.
No one cared when the CIA started funding the same warlords that killed American soldiers in 1993.
No one cared when that same CIA funding of Somalian warlords, that had been killing and raping women for over a decade, caused a popular backlash by Islamists that forced our warlords to flee to waiting American warships.
No one cared when those Islamists then eliminated Somalian pirates from the Horn of Africa and brought peace to Mogadishu for the first time in 15 years.
"The streets in Mogadishu were full of women and kids," says Eric Laroche, the head of the UN's humanitarian operations in Somalia. "The kids were playing soccer."
There were 72 functioning hospitals in Mogadishu when the islamists controlled the city. Now there are only two. The Mogadishu airport and harbor were opened up to commercial use for the first time since 1991, and the price of an AK47 had fallen to less than half due to lack of demand.
However, the Bush Administration had heard that the ICU was full of al-Qaeda terrorists. Where did they get that information from? Why the very same warlords that the ICU just chased out of Somalia (the same ones that killed American soldiers in 1993).
So the Bush Administration decided that the ICU had to go. Somalia couldn't be allowed to have peace in our time.
Less than two weeks before the invasion, mid-December 2006, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer publicly declared that "The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by al-Qaeda cell individuals, east Africa al-Qaeda cell individuals." The claim was dubious and the Assistant Secretary of State provided no evidence. Horn of Africa specialist Ken Menkhaus notes that the Islamic Courts "movement as a whole was far from an al-Qaeda front. Only three foreign al-Qaeda operatives were said by the US to be in hiding in Mogadishu, a number far lower than those suspected of residing in neighboring Kenya."
"May God help us cos the world won't."
"What is certain is that we have taken a group of the world's most destitute, desperate, and brutalized people, and brutalized them some more."
- Matthew Blood
On Christmas Day 2006, tanks from christian Ethiopia rolled into Islamic Somalia. The invasion was unprovoked, but was financed and directed by America
Ethiopia was not acting alone. The US had given its approval for the operation and provided key intelligence and technical support. CIA agents traveled with the Ethiopian troops, helping to direct operations.
During the invasion the Bush Administration had refugees renditioned into other countries where they were tortured and "disappeared".
Meanwhile our military was busy bombing refugees in the hopes that some of the ones we killed were actually hostile to America beforehand.
There was only one problem. According to local Somalis, and confirmed by western diplomats and aid officials in Nairobi, none of the dead was connected to the Courts. Instead, a group of pastoralists gathering around a fire to keep the mosquitoes away had been killed.
About ten thousand civilians have been killed in the fighting since the 2006 invasion and the Ethiopian troops have resorted to methods even worse than al-Qaeda terrorists.
NAIROBI, Kenya - Amnesty International has accused Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia’s UN-backed government of killing civilians by slitting people’s throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.
The same can be said for the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG). This so-called government was a creation of an international body, elected by former Somalia warlords chased out of Somalia by the ICU, or by other warlords, that was never voted on by the people of Somalia. It's creation was heavily influenced by Ethiopia, Somalia's long-time rival that has no interest in a strong Somalia.
Now that the American-financed Ethiopian troops have pulled out of Somalia, the puppet government is on the verge of collapse. They are even taking rebel groups into the government.
Worse Than Darfur
While all this American-sponsored and funded killing was going on, the largest refugee crisis in the entire world was building.
The number of people in Somalia in need of emergency food aid is likely to rise to about 3.5m in the coming months, the United Nations has warned.
Somalia faces a worse situation than Darfur, Mr Bowden says.
We've all seen the commercials, the news articles, the Hollywood actors, and the politicians voicing their outraged about the genocide in Darfur.
Why the vast difference in levels of outrage? Because unlike Somalia, we aren't responsible for the disaster in Darfur.
"The scale and the magnitude and the speed at which the humanitarian crisis right now is deteriorating is very alarming and very profound."
- Cindy Holleman, World Food Program
The largest concentration of refugees anywhere in the world lies about 15 kilometers outside of Mogadishu, where 200,000 people live in the most squalid of conditions. The largest refugee camp in the world lies just across the Kenyan border.
Yet most of the rest of the world pretends that nothing has significantly changed there. Aid to the region is only a tiny fraction of the amount of aid going to the Darfur refugees. However the real crime is the almost complete lack of news media coverage in America. This is unforgivable considering how this humanitarian disaster is a deliberate orchestrated product of our government.
Even progressive blogs have ignored this ongoing horror.
"Of all the situations in Somalia, today is the worst. There is no food, no medicine, no education, no jobs, no hope. People are dying every day. It is a slow genocide. We are hopeless now. Hopeless."
- Dr Hawa Abdi, Médecins Sans Frontières
So what does this have to do with Somalian pirates? Well, remember how the ICU virtually wiped out the pirates on the Horn of Africa?
The resulting chaos from the American-funded invasion has allowed the pirates to return. And make no mistake, those pirates are being funded by local warlords. Some of whom I believe were receiving CIA funds just a year or so ago.
Now that you've been educated about the situation, you can now return to being "outraged" by the actions of the pirates against us "innocent" Americans who never did anything wrong. Or maybe you might just want to see pictures of pooties.
Anything to avoid acknowledging how our nation has caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.