This will be a very brief diary.
An Al-Qaeda affiliate, known as Boko Haram, has attacked yet another school in Nigeria. I know there are people who try to assure us that there is no reason to fear harm from terrorists, but I do not believe there is a good factual basis for such an assertion.
This diary is not about whether or not there exists a confederation between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda. I believe Boko Haram is now part of the Al-Qaeda franchise.
This is not a diary about drones, torture or the long history of CIA misdeeds. I merely wish to question the notion that paranoia, not real incidents, is the driving force behind the United States' policies concerning terrorism. I believe there are good reasons beyond dueling statistics why we are not in a position where we can act only reactively.
More after the orange thang.
The children at the Government Secondary School in Mamudo in northeast Nigeria were slaughtered using a combination of bullets and fire. Yes, fire. Many young children were burned alive.
According to The Telegraph:
At the regional morgue, Musa Hassan, 15, recalled the horror of listening to the death cries of his fellow pupils.
“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me,” said 15-year-old Musa. He put his arm up in instinctive self-defence, and suffered a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand.
He said the gunmen came armed with jerry cans of fuel that they used to set light to the school’s administrative block and one of the hostels.
“They burned the children alive,” he said, horror showing in his wide eyes.
There are some 28-42 said to be dead but hundreds more are still missing and unaccounted for.
This is an ongoing and brutal insurgency that has created a refuge crisis in the neighboring countries of Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
This attack is not the first:
An estimated 10,000 pupils have been forced out of state schooling by the groups’ hit-and-run attacks, which have intensified since the start of the seven-week-old military offensive.
Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a school in Maiduguri last month, killing nine students, and a similar attack on a school in the city of Damaturu killed seven just days earlier.
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I understand there are multiple hotspots commanding attention around the world at the moment, but I do think that Nigeria is important to U.S. interests and to the stability of that part of the continent. I highlight this latest incident to refute the notion that terror strikes are rare and the death toll from them less than the frequency of death from lightning strikes.
Now that we had the sad incident in Boston, as well as similar incidents in Paris and London, I would suggest that we are not close to being able to ignore what remains of the al-Qaeda franchise.
We certainly need to stop pushing the meme that terrorism< lightning strikes unless we are saying not to count children in foreign countries burned to death because they are receiving a western-styled education.
Here is the report that is frequently cited to question whether terrorism is a real threat or not. Note how only U.S. citizens are counted. I also question the ability to accurately collect reliable data on incidents of terror. If women, children, men in a small town or village have their hands hacked off, or are raped, or kidnapped by raiders or mercenaries would we know or count it?
By the way:here are the stats for death by lightning strike.
I believe we are no longer in a pre 9/11 world. The days of sitting by and watching countries fail and people subjugated by jihadists are over. If we learned nothing from our too-long occupation of Afghanistan it should be not to wait until the s**t hits our fan.
I do not believe that there is any amount of data, evidence, or "proof", that is going to dissuade some people from agendas that have nothing to do with formulating U.S. terror policies and response.
Wow, ok, apparently some folks are hug-up on the nature of the relationship between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda. I fail to see how that matters to these dead Nigerian children and their teachers, or to whether or not a destabilized Nigeria is germane to U.S. terror policy and , but I will add some links in hopes that they will help cotribute to the discussion and address the concerns of those who have been kind enough to leave comments.
I have also reworked the first sentence i hopes that it will help the conversation not lose focus of dead children, their teachers, and thousands of refugees.
I have already given a link to The Telegraph above, but just a cursory google turned up some other links:
From Vanguard.
From the BBC.
From Time.
There are many more links detailing the relationship so do not be shy about checking out these reports. If there are issues with the reporting or labeling I'm sure those concerned with help us in understanding them and let me express my appreciation upfront.
Edit:Disagreement about whether or not the United States should maintain only a reactive stance towards terrorist groups is welcomed. That is the point of the diary. Personal attacks on me or those wanting to comment on the point of the diary are not welcomed.
I have included examples of comments that I believe are off-topic and do not exhibit the civility we should all strive to maintain:
your knowledge of international terrorism is... (8+ / 0-)
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ukit, PhilJD, xxdr zombiexx, BigAlinWashSt, corvo, chuckvw, TJ, quill
limited. Best not try to use incidents you don't understand to further your agenda it hurts your agenda.
I sing praises in the church of nonsense, but in my heart I'm still an atheist, demanding sense of all things.
by jbou on Sat Jul 06, 2013 at 05:39:56 PM CDT
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and
Please . . . get with the program . . . (6+ / 0-)
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BigAlinWashSt, jbou, PhilJD, chuckvw, corvo, ask
Al-Qaeda is our ally in Syria . . . we give them guns and "humanitarian" aid (some CIA direct, but mostly through our Saudi intermediary) to do pretty much the same things.
Fake Left, Drive Right . . . not my idea of a Democrat . . .
by Deward Hastings on Sat Jul 06, 2013 at 05:33:42 PM CDT
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If you came here to take pot-shots, please stop and leave. I do not want that for this diary.