Somalia -- A forgotten US mess?

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Sunday March 06, 2011 · 10:58 AM PST

2011/03/06 · 10:58

There are tens of thousands of media stories and blogs about the post-9/11 wars we entered into in Afghanistan & Iraq, but I never see a mention of our destabilization of the ICU in Somalia and its aftermath. Now thousands are fleeing again as it looks like Kenya is gearing up for an invasion as the TFG warlords intensify fighting the Islamists around the capitol.

Anyone remember how we inserted Dyncorp mercs into Somalia, bribed Ethiopia to invade Mogadishu in 2006, set up the same warlords we loved before as the "transitional" government, constructed CIA rendition camps on Kenya's border and illegally detained Somali refugees as the fled the violence so the CIA could decide who was al Qaeda and who got to cross to safety? Sure been a whole slew of stories over that adventure, huh?

Seriously, are there many other "countries" besides Somalia that functionally have no national government? Western Sahara and maybe the Congo? The TFG is a joke and controls less than 10% of Somalia's territory, the rest considers itself autonomous or at war with the hand-picked US leadership.

I know the US has tossed aside quaint ideas of sovereignty, declaring war through Congress and following international laws on jus in bello, but are we so ADHD we can't even remember we re-opened some pretty brutal wounds in that country just to catch a few al Qaeda operatives?

Oh yeah, they have pirates. Arrrgggh!

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Iran & the Jasmine revolution

Dicot

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Wednesday March 02, 2011 · 11:34 AM PST

2011/03/02 · 11:34

I'm glued to PBS's Tehran bureau, al Jazeera and whyweprotest.net these days, waiting to see if the heady scent of jasmine-laced freedom is strong enough to bring the bloody, inhumane rule of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei crumbling down, like so many other dictatorships in the region have been lately.

For America, this would be a Gorbachev moment -- a bitter enemy transformed suddenly into a potential friend & trading partner, or at the very least, a less hateful enemy. Yet as I watch the videos and read the stories of the Green Movement's supporters being brutalized, of it's main leaders - Mousavi and Karroubi - being illegally jailed, and of a Persian diaspora hopeful, yet poorly organized, I have to wonder if the world is missing a fantastic opportunity to support the same efforts that are succeeding in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, but are failing in Iran?

I'm sorry to say I don't have any answers, just unanswered questions about why we can't find some way to support Iran's Green movement without it hindering these brave peoples' cause. I'm here in L.A., home to the largest Persian population in the world outside of Iran, yet I can't see any organized support for the weekly protests the Green Wave is mounting in the streets and on the rooftops of Tehran and across Iran. But maybe I'm missing it, as I don't speak Farsi. But I do ask that someone come up with a winning strategy that the world outside Iran can support, before Mousavi and Karroubi are executed and this unbelievable moment in history has passed.

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