I got to thinking after I read a news story about the latest attack by the US in Somalia….and it made me ask the question in the title.

US Africa Command announced that it launched an airstrike in Somalia on March 10 in support of the Mogadishu-based government, marking the second time the US bombed the country this month.

AFRICOM said the strike hit a target in the vicinity of Ugunji, a village about 44 miles southwest of Mogadishu.

The command claimed its “initial assessment” found three al-Shabaab fighters were killed and no civilians were harmed, but AFRICOM is notorious for undercounting civilian casualties, and US military operations in Somalia are shrouded in secrecy.

The last strike AFRICOM reported in Somalia took place on March 2, and the command claimed it killed two al-Shabaab members. It’s unclear if AFRICOM reports all US airstrikes in Somalia, as the CIA could also be carrying out covert drone strikes.

(antiwar.com)

After reading the news I thought back to something I read a couple of days ago about our fixation on Somalia….

The Pentagon has known of fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa for nearly 20 years but has nonetheless forged ahead, failing to address glaring problems, according to a 2007 study obtained exclusively by The Intercept.

“There is no useful, shared conception of the conflict,” says the Pentagon study, which was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and has not previously been made public. “The instruments of national power are not balanced, which results in excessive reliance on the military instrument. There is imbalance within the military instrument as well.”

The 50-page analysis, conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a private think tank that works solely for the U.S. government, is based on anonymized interviews with key U.S. government officials from across various departments and agencies. It found America’s nascent war in the Horn of Africa was plagued by a failure to define the parameters of the conflict or its aims; an overemphasis on military measures without a clear definition of the optimal military strategy; and barriers to coordination between the military and other government agencies like the State Department and local allies like the Somali government.

Who Could Have Predicted the U.S. War in Somalia Would Fail? The Pentagon.

The US military hypes the threat of al-Shabaab due to its size and al-Qaeda affiliation, but it’s widely believed the group does not have ambitions outside of Somalia.

If so then why waste the ordinance?

Speaking of AFRICOM….their record is not something to be proud of in any way.

Africa–“We Are Here To Help”

Please stop wasting money and time on things that are not that important.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”