I was a little concerned about Libya. I hate our use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and most everywhere else. But I’m with Tbogg on this one– the LRA is a murderous cult, and if sending 100 guys into the jungle to hunt them down and wipe them off the planet works, I say why not make it 200 and get it done faster. I’m not sure people fully understand the evil that we will be addressing (this isn’t the LRA, but this is basically what they do):
There’s simply no question whether this is the right thing to do. IF you still are not convinced, watch this. Or this:
The only question we should be asking is why it took so long.
cleek
hope it works. quickly.
Shade Tail
I wasn’t sure at first, because I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But now that Shithead Limbaugh has trashed it in his (hopefully) inimitable way, a lot of my doubt has been cleared away. Go get ’em, boys!
JPL
Hopefully, they can offer their support to capture the cult leader and then come home. I’m not big on sending our military all over the world but this does seem like a just cause.
BTW..It’s football time.
Samara Morgan
Does the LRA have a mission statement?
i havent been able to find one.
Nemo_N
Are you guys sure there won’t be eternal “LRA number two’s” getting killed after this one mission?
Short Bus Bully
Sometimes evil is just evil and the only way to remedy it is by killing a motherfucker.
Hopefully this doesn’t turn into something out of The Dark Knight where they have to burn the whole jungle down.
joeyess
Tbogg At Balloon Juice!
Matt
The best part of this is watching all the teahadis decide that since the LRA luvs Jeebus that we should be SUPPORTING them.
Dougerhead
I know very few will agree with me, but I think a good case can be made that there has been too little western military intervention throughout Africa the last twenty years. So much senseless bloodshed the last twenty years. I wish some of it could have been averted with more help from NATO or the UN. That’s why I can’t be pacifist or full-fledged non-interventionist in the end.
lacp
Of course we shouldn’t be killing them. They’re not Muslim.
Dougerhead
@Samara Morgan:
Lanny Davis is helping them develop one.
Samara Morgan
LOL! this is uber-hlarious. coming from you?
the answer is …..it wasn’t in Our Interest. like Rwanda.
FlipYrWhig
What if some of them were American citizens?
Ben Cisco
@Matt: Yup, nothing like watching the Talivangelicals (R) coalesce around a bunch of transparently evil sumbitches and act like the REST OF THE WORLD is the problem. Heckuva job, dumbasses.
FlipYrWhig
@Samara Morgan: One of Benen’s recent pieces quotes Limbaugh reading (approvingly) something like a statement of LRA principles.
salacious crumb
I am with Obama on this. My biggest gripe with US and Europe has been that they never did anything to help black Africans and protect them from murderous thugs killing and raping people..Im with Obama on this one..I still disagree about his venture on Libya (and the verdict has yet to be out on that one)..but this was a good decision.
We will see if he attacks Iran next to win the election…
The Sheriff's A Ni-
That’s enough of that, John. We’re taking away your America First button.
Samara Morgan
@Dougerhead: who is lanny davis?
oh.
i still dont get it.
Davis X. Machina
They don’t have a lot of oil. Hence the 100 US troops. Libya is a major world oil producer, there we put in tens of thousands of them.
Quaker in a Basement
Right here is the White House’s full strategy, released per the bill passed unanimously by both houses of Congress. It’s a bit of a long slog, but if you really want to know what the US is doing there, this is what you need to know.
Any comparison between this an Libya is entirely bogus. Khadaffi had an army and all the levers of power at his disposal as head of state. Kony is a renegade criminal wanted by the ICC. He’s running across borders in central Africa with a band of about 300 fighters.
geg6
And Rush Limbaugh is coming out as a supporter of these disgusting murderers. Calling Obama an enemy of Christians. Fuck, have any of these people ever read the life and words of the guy they call the Messiah? I don’t recall him advocating for the murder of adults and the kidnapping of their children, but I grew up Catholic and became an atheist, so I may have missed that part. You’d think I’d have come across that when I took that Bible as literature class in college, though.
Donut
@Doug @9
I’m only going to disagree with the 20 year time frame. For gods’ sakes, Westerners have been fucking up Africa since the 16th century. I am always suspect of American military actions on that continent. There is ALWAYS much more than meets the eye. Hopefully this one will be quick. I think long term Libya is going to be headache for future presidents, and we are going to be fucking around with Libya for a long time to come. Egypt, too.
Samara Morgan
@FlipYrWhig: or Noble Rich White Christian
MissionariesYachting Enthusiasts?Samara Morgan
@Donut: lol. Egypt is Beeg Problem for America NAOW.
ABL
Dayen’s post was an embarrassment. The manner in which the wackjobs went on the attack against TBogg was insane.
TomG
Someone I know from Facebook linked to a news article showing that Gary Johnson favors intervening against the LRA – apparently as a criticism of GJ (he knew that I like Gary). My response was basically, “all candidates have something you’d find objectionable. The fact that Gary J. is in favor of this intervention is definitely not enough to dissuade me from supporting him. Try again.”
Shawn in ShowMe
C’mon Cole, you were more than a little concerned. You said unequivocally that we had no business being there.
Fortunately for us, Obama is in regular consultation with the Oracle at Delphi.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina #19:
We had tens of thousands of troops in Libya? Source, please.
Cacti
The LRA is about as much a threat to our national security as the WNBA.
Why not just call this one a humanitarian intervention. Because unlike Libya, this time it would actually be true.
Ash Can
@Dougerhead: If by “very few” you mean “any sentient being who’s been paying the least bit of attention,” then, um, yeah.
Professor
@Dougerhead: Maybe you do not listen to news outside the USA. There were British troops in Sierra Leone. There were French troops in Senegal and Guinea. These interventions were in the early 2000.
Samara Morgan
@Shawn in ShowMe: actually, he said we had no INTEREST in being there.
heres why i cant find a mission statement.
there isnt one.
Professor
@salacious crumb: Did Obama put American troops in Libya? This notion escapes me. I thought it was an undertaking by NATO and financed by the members of NATO.
Mooser
In order to know if this 100-man punitive expidition will be sucessful, we need to precisely determine the black-white ratio involved. That is, does one US Army guy equal 10 LRA soldiers or 100 LRA soldiers. Of course, we can dismiss any 1-to-1 comparisons out of hand.
There is no denying, however, the versatility of our US soldiers! 100 men, and they will do all the fighting and all the logistics, and all the cooking and security! Just 100 men, think of it!
SiubhanDuinne
The jokes just write themselves sometimes.
Mike G
The most interesting part of this event is watching the lizard-brain 27%ers mumble “Uuuhhhh…Christian good, Muslim bad” and expose themselves further as idiots in support of a murderous African warlord.
These are the descendantsof the tools (or maybe the same people) who had the US supporting all kinds of totalitarian, torturing scum around the world during the Cold War, anybody who could edit the phrase “anti-communist” into their manifesto inbetween murders.
Cassidy
JUST LIKE BUSH!! JUST LIKE BUSH!!!! SOYLENT GREEN!!!!!!!!!! JUST LIKE BUSH!!!! YOU KNOW I”M SERIOUS BECAUSE I HAVE CAPS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!
ppcli
I’m with you on this. As I’ve mentioned before, I have friends who were on Dallaire’s staff in Rwanda. They managed to save tens of thousands of people with about 500 soldiers, most of them poorly trained, and many of them not wanting to be there. (Though many, especially the Ghanaian contingent, distinguished themselves with their bravery and commitment. And if the Senegalese Mbaye Diagne had been white, there would already be a half-dozen movies about him.) Plus only small arms, vehicles constantly breaking down and cannibalized for parts, and hardly any gasoline. A couple thousand well-armed, disciplined soldiers could have saved hundreds of thousands.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud:
Libya’s got tons of oil, and the West intervened — there has to be tens of thousands of US soldiers there. It stands to reason. No source needed for reason.
I save enormous amounts of time and effort by viewing current events through the prism of ideas and concepts I acquired thirty-forty years ago. Getting hold of new ones is so time-consuming.
So like many people of my age I just use the old ones — and save so much time that I’ve acquired two new languages, and mastered a couple of instruments with the time I’ve saved. And my raised-bed gardens are the envy of my neighbors. Plus, I’m recycling.
I’ve got to go prep my raised beds for winter now…
Cassidy
@Mooser: It’s approx. one Special Forces Company. If I remember right that’s 4 ODA’s, a command team and support personnel. Said ODA’s also have a Air Force Combat Controller as a permanent team member. With said CC comes things like Ac-130’s an Close Air Support.
Samara Morgan
@Dougerhead: here is why we are going now.…i think.
The US just got a crushing humiliation on Syria when chna and russia veto’d, and the pali question doesnt good for the powerless hyperpower, so maybe those 100 guys are just baksheesh.
why do we need 100 combat troops to take out 300 LRA guys?
the LRA sounds more like a drug cartel hopped up on jeebus than a terrorist organization.
can you be a terrorist organization without any agenda or goals?
Chuck Butcher
I’m a bit … flumoxed … by the argument about drones, particularly the part where it irritates a tanker. One of the major factors in weapons developement has been to put the user at distance from the target. From bow and arrow to drones or sniper rifles that was the goal.
A sniper rifle is more discriminating than an airplane that goes “boom” but that plane is a shit load more discriminating than an artillery shell or iron bomb. I can see arguments over where or why a drone is used, but about it as a weapon all I see is hypocrisy. That is from someone who in general terms sees military force as a failure and horror.
Ash Can
@Quaker in a Basement:
Sounds like a lot of people are going to be getting phone calls from Limbaugh. I wonder if any of them will publicly recant their votes.
scott (the other one)
The tale of Huckabee’s son and the dead dog.
soonergrunt
This, frankly, is one of the dumber things I’ve read in the last couple of days. And having spent time reading the threads over at FDL, that’s really saying something.
It’s a distinction without a difference. Do you really think the people we kill (or their families) give a fuck about whether it was a drone instead of an SF guy?
Either Americans killing other people is bad or it isn’t. What kind of a mind gives a shit about how it’s done once decision is made?
hrprogressive
I more or less stopped reading FDL a couple months ago because while I have certainly disagreed with Obama on a lot of things, I don’t have full-bore Obama Derangement Syndrome like they do…
That being said, I caught this on a headline a couple days ago, and basically said to myself “Take ‘im down”.
I don’t realistically see how anyone who is pro “saving innocent lives” can think this isn’t 100% justifiable.
Really I saw the comments in TBogg’s thread against David Dayen, and I have to admit I thought Dayen was better than that…
Samara Morgan
@Chuck Butcher: and soonergrunt….well….drones dont work in kinship saturated conflicts like in AfPak, but they probably worked ok in Libya because we were on the same side as the insurgents for once.
As a counter insurgency tactic drones majorly sukk ass, because they create a minimum of two hostiles for each one killed…negative influence propagation along both social and consanguineous networks.
THE
Like it or not drones and other robots are the future of war.
Today there are thousands of them.
Within a few decades, as they get smarter and smarter, there will be millions of them.
singfoom
I feel for the people who have suffered at the hands of the LRA and the situation there sucks, but at this point, I’m against all American military intervention anywhere unless we have a clear security threat to the US that we need to take care of.
They are not a threat to us.
gnomedad
@Samara Morgan:
Does Al Qaeda have goals outside of caliphate fantasies and body counts?
amk
Come on cole, you were nose-led by fdl crowd over Libya. I have read your typical knee-jerk reactions here.
So the libruls at fdl & dkos freaking out about lra and yelling ‘impeach him’ yet ?
Chuck Butcher
@Samara Morgan:
Killing people creates negative “vibes” in the families/tribe of those killed. Getting innocents or other types of collateral damage makes it worse. It doesn’t matter a damn bit if the tool is a drone or a sniper rifle or a smart bomb or dumb shell/bomb. There is no fine discrimination in military killing, it matters not the least that the target is a “good father” or doesn’t want to be there, it is the target. A sniper scope makes no distinction, it is simply a means of acquiring the target, though collateral damage is less likely and more limitted.
While I’m not a pacifist it is my first reaction. I refuse to glorify warfare or see it as anything other than a horror show. I also refuse to tell myself lies about the human race and pieces of it absolute determination to need killing.
Dougerhead
@Professor:
I didn’t say there had been none, just too little. Also too, yes, I am more ignorant of news outside the US than I should be.
gaz
@Samara Morgan: Yes.
Rape, Torture and Murder. Particularly children.
See wiki, FFS.
Anyone who doesn’t know who/what the LRA is is woefully ignorant.
Joseph Kony and his murderous army of traumatized and vicious child soldiers must be stopped. They make the horrors of nazi germany look like a kindergarten playground spat.
lacp
Anybody know why African Union troops aren’t doing this instead of US ones? They don’t seem to have a problem sending soldiers to Somalia. LRA needs to be disappeared, but I’m not sure Americans should be the ones making that happen.
And Congress does need to step up and clarify when (if ever) the President can unilaterally order military action – but they won’t. They much prefer vague legislation accompanied with winks and nods so they can do the plausible-deniability shuffle if a military operation goes sideways. I don’t like the unitary executive theory, but it’s up to Congress to put the brakes on it.
Samara Morgan
@Mooser: right now in A-stan ~30k talibs are asswhupping 100k american troops plus an additional 250k NATO, contractor and Karzai forces.
they may have seriously underestimated.
amk
@lacp: fdl===> that way
Samara Morgan
@lacp: link
Joey Giraud
@ soonergrunt: What kind of a mind gives a shit about how it’s done once decision is made?
You might not see it, but there are respectable ways to kill and cowardly, despicable ways to kill.
Sitting in an office in Langley VA, pushing a button to kill someone on the other side of the world is the most cowardly and despicable way ever invented.
Chris
@Quaker in a Basement:
I’m going to go read that now, but whatever the official reason I’d say one of the real reasons (at least one of them) is simply the fact that the Ugandans are one of several African governments that’s been helping Somali warlords fight islamists… and we’re just returning the favor.
Having troops in South Sudan, a new nation just beginning to get on its feet, also has the additional benefit of telling North Sudan “they’re with us, asshole, so watch your step.”
gocart mozart
@joeyess:
Seconded!
ChrisNYC
@lacp: That’s who the US troops are advising — African Union troops and the Ugandan Army.
Samara Morgan
@gaz: why?
there are three hundred of them.
are they coming here? there are worse and bigger and badder things going on in wide wide world.
its like the FGM MUST BE STOPPED! thread.
but Obama does nothing without a reason. Somehow its in America’s “interests” to take out 300 jeebushumper gangbangers on the otherside of the world.
i think its baksheesh to grease the skids for some UN dealmongering on something we care about, but thats just me.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
You have never understood this no matter how many times I have explained it to you.
Drones are not weapons of COIN. They are weapons of attrition war. The logic is that we can mass produce robots faster than the enemy can train human combatants.
There is another error in your thinking that I have recently understood. The overwhelming majority of drone mission are not strike missions — they are intelligence gathering, using various classes of sensors.
The real power of drones is the information networks they feed data into.
After that it doesn’t really matter if you use a manned aircraft or a drone to follow through with the kill. Strike missions are rare. Intel missions are many-times-a-day events. They are becoming constant as US starts to use blimps and other long-persistence platforms.
PGE
As I suggested a thread or two down, that’s “chief North American apologist and propagandist for the Lords Resistance Army, Rush Limbaugh,…”
gocart mozart
@Davis X. Machina:
If by tens of thousands you mean zero, than you are correct.
gaz
@Nemo_N: Pretty sure. It’s mostly just Kony and a couple of his confidants running the show. Most of the people committing the day to day atrocities of the LRA are children who Kony has tortured, traumatized, and enlisted. I doubt Kony has taken any under his wing. Rather, he uses them and throws them away.
And most of the people that would join up have already had their hands cut off by him and his minions anyway – so they can’t exactly hold an AK…
I think people are confused about the LRA. It’s not an actual military org, or even a political one.
People seem to want to compare it with murderous military regimes. While it seems like one at first blush, it’s not.
It’s probably more comparable to Chuck Manson and his followers. Only, make the followers children, torture them, and give them some brown-brown and an AK. + Joseph Kony is probably more vicious than chucky was and way more willing to get his hands dirty.
Basically – take him and his 4 or so generals, imprison, kill, or whatever them – and it will be done.
That’s not to say there won’t be another warlord with a different army to take their place, but at least it won’t be the LRA, and Kony.
PhoenixRising
@singfoom: Thanks for clarifying at the “we” you are a part of excludes African kids.
I’m in a bigger “us” than that. Whether these victims, Rwandans or Khmer teenagers, my “us” includes those who have no other recourse. I live each day with an actual orphan of one of the many conflicts that “we” were too fatigued and philologically righteous to send 450 Marines to settle down while a local political crisis resolved itself.
My dad killed people and broke stuff in a jungle for an intangible (our interests) that was lesser to him, at the end of is life, than protecting innocents from crazies with weapons.
lacp
@amk: ??? My impression of the fdl piece (particularly the commenters) was it was all about ObamaHitlerWorseThanBush. My problem is with a Congress that finds it convenient to slough off its responsibilities, regardless of who the president is. Unless you were referring to something else.
gocart mozart
@FlipYrWhig:
The mission statement was all “The LRA is for peace, justice, freedom and cute puppies” It may not have been completely accurate.
Stephen1947
Back in the last century there was this guy, Jonas Savimbi, running around Angola committing buttloads of atrocities, trying to become head of state. He was Jesse Helms’s favorite person of color, and was lionized by Jeanne Kirkpatrick when she represented USA at the United Nations; he also got meetings with St. Ronnie. The big difference between him and LRA dude is that he was more effective in his blood-letting and misery-spreading. Limbaugh no doubt loved him too.
Samara Morgan
@Joey Giraud: well….droning is actually good for some things.
letting Americans drone your civilian populations is profoundly destabilizing for american client states in an Arab Spring environment. so then the client (like Zardari in Pak and Saleh in Yemen) can be forced to forced to play their GWOT trump card and and hand over an al-awlaki’s or an OBL’s geo-location in return for dialing back the droning .
Then the population subsides back to mangeable status.
Samara Morgan
@THE: see my comment above ^^.
Chuck Butcher
@Joey Giraud:
As opposed to … halls of Congress, White House, Corporate Board Room/media cheerleanding outfit?
You are a twit. Firing an artillery piece/naval gun or dropping a bomb or other assorted death by distance weaponry is scarcely up close and personal. Going back to swords and maces would make things pretty damn personal, especially if the King had to go along.
Linnaeus
I think, as a general rule, it’s a good idea for citizens to view military interventions with a skeptical perspective, given how our nation (and other great powers) have tended to employ such interventions. That said, I’m not especially troubled by this move and I’m willing to see how it plays out further.
gocart mozart
@Samara Morgan:
Dictatorship is so much easier isn’t it Samara?
James
Teh firebaggers are on the side of John McCain aka Senator BombBombBomb Iran on this one:
AFP: Obama risks miring US in an African war: McCain
Strange bedfellows. The extreme loonie left meets the extreme loonie right over yonder around the bend.
gocart mozart
@Samara Morgan:
Are you saying that Rush just completely made it up out of whole cloth? I am shocked.
WeeBey
Are there people here who really don’t think Libya was, at least in part, a humanitarian engagement? I mean, really?
You’re free to not support it, but you don’t need be insane.
soonergrunt
@Joey Giraud: Dude, I’ve looked down the barrel, both ways. Hence the ‘grunt’ part of soonergrunt. Dead is dead.
I’d be pretty surprised to find that anyone, anywhere in the world consoles themselves with the fact that their son was killed by a rifleman and not a machine.
James
@Joey Giraud:
In fact, trouble yourself to watch the links so generously provided to you. I’d venture to observe that there are more cowardly and despicable ways invented to kill people. I’ll respect you enough to consider your statement nothing but emotional hyperbole, but it’s appalling nevertheless.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@soonergrunt: I believe the phrase is “skin in the game.” You know, like only rich people have skin in the game when it comes to the economy. Having people close is supposed to make it more personal, therefore we wouldn’t be attacking as often and we would be more careful when we do. Plus I suspect there’s the belief that it’s harder to move a person in and out of a territory, making it more accountable. I wonder if John did all of his fighting hand-to-hand with a knife.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@THE: Which is why I want my Mech, though I would settle for Iron Man’s armor.
Samara Morgan
@gocart mozart: well…..easier for us. Mubarak made nice with Israel, kept the population from burning the Israeli embassy etc., and kept the islamists from pogroming the Copts at America’s behest.
But the lids blown off the pressure cooker now.
29 years of pressure.
gaz
@WeeBey: I for one, was and still am conflicted about our Libyan engagement (mostly not the fact that we engaged, but how Obama made the case, and expanded executive power)
I have no reservations about intervening to crush the LRA. They torture children and make them eat their siblings. They cut off peoples lips ears and hands. They have no actual political goals (though Kony may claim otherwise), and no cause, other than to cause human suffering and horror. Therefore, they will never stop, unless stopped by force.
It’s that simple, really. Kony is a wanted serial killer, with a cult of personality and a penchant for atrocity that would turn Josef Mengele’s stomach. He’s a *bad* man (TM).
He needs to be dead. good and dead. I don’t generally believe in murdering other human beings, but this man is one of the most evil people the world has ever seen. I shit you not. He simply needs to be dead.
Chuck Butcher
@soonergrunt:
This sort of person can’t seem to realize that a soldier’s job is to make the other guy pay for being him and stay healthy while doing it. They’ve watched too many fucking movies and don’t seem to understand that “call Arty” is farther up the list than doing hand to hand in a building or that a sniper team would rather a drone was doing it at hundreds of miles from support.
Words like “cowardly” are real easy when you don’t have skin in the game.
Cacti
@James:
aka Senator “100 years in Iraq is fine with me”.
gaz
@singfoom: It’s not a military intervention. The LRA is not a military outfit. They are a band of murderous criminals lead by a serial killer w/ a cult of personality.
It’s strictly a humanitarian intervention. We’re not toppling a regime. We’re trying to bring one of the worst serial killers the world has ever seen, to justice.
Joel
Tbogg went on the goddamn warpath there. Justifiably.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Dougerhead: Word.
James
@Cacti:
“We are all Georgians now!”
IN fact, has John effin McCain ever been right on anything? If so, I can’t recall.
So it’s teh firebaggers, McCain, and Rush Limbaugh. As I said, strange bedfellows.
BTW, here’s a link to the law Congress passed in 2009 authorizing this action:
Text of S.1067 as Enrolled Bill: Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 -… OpenCongress
My contribution to the discussion.
Cacti
@gaz:
Really?
Worse than a systematic, multi-national, ethnic cleansing and extermination program that wiped out 12-17 million people?
General Stuck
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I agree with this
DoctorK.
I’ve been working on LRA issues for several years now. Just for the record, here’s a taste of what the LRA has done to their victims over the past twenty years.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2010/03/29/trail-death-0>
PIGL
@ppcli: thank you for this.
Joel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): If this were true, how come war/murder was so common in the middle ages and rennaisance period? (Acknowledging that you did not advocate the position you described).
soonergrunt
@Chuck Butcher: I’ll say this–I ALWAYS thought it was a hell of a lot better to call air support, or artillery/mortars, or yes, even drones when possible because they got the enemy just as dead, and were a lot less likely to get me and my Soldiers killed or wounded than the direct fight.
Yevgraf
Joseph Kony can be the new Mumia – far left and far right can join hands in brotherhood and denounce Obama for doing anything about him beyond having him arrested and given a sepulchural toned sixties era leftist activist defense lawyer to intone at interminal lengths on the evil imperialistic authoritarianism of Obama…
mikefromArlington
When do the “Kiss me, I’m LRA” shirts go on sale at FDL?
Those deranged children sure pick some winners to come to the defense to. I can’t wrap my head around them twisting themselves into knots trying to turn this decision into a negative on Obama.
gaz
@Cacti: Yep.
How about abducting 3 million children and forcing then to kill their parents and eat their siblings.
How about millions more tortured and murdered – fetus’ cut out of women’s wombs, and eaten by other children – at gunpoint.
And the millions of ADULTS murdered too, along with the ones they left behind, with no hands, no lips, and no ears.
If you think the holocaust was worse on the Jews than Kony is on his countrymen, you are simply ignorant of the facts.
Kony is worse than the third riech. If he had the kind of power and reach that the Nazi’s had at their peak, the genocide would have been unfathomable.
Chuck Butcher
@soonergrunt:
when the greatest hazard in your life is a paper cut…
gaz
Yes. I said Kony is worse than Hitler. Deal with it.
I’m acutely aware of the child soldier problem in the Congo, particularly with the LRA and RUF. I have friends in the Congo right now, doing missionary work – attempting to rehabilitate some of these child soldiers.
I’m well aware of Joseph Kony and the LRA. They are pure, unadulterated evil. It’s not often that humanity sees these people. And hitler for all of the bullshit, didn’t do the things to children on nearly as wide a scale as Kony does. Hitler was evil, and sick and fucked. Kony is even worse – and he explicitly targets children. Explicitly. Plus he tortures. Explicitly. As a matter of policy. Explicitly.
The only thing that made Hitler stand out was he had a country and an army. Heaven help us if Kony ever got that kind of power. His sadism is even greater than that of Nazi Germany.
gogol's wife
@joeyess:
YESSSSS
Cassidy
I’m not sure I see how debating who’e the most genocidal asshole is getting anywhere.
nancydarling
@Chuck Butcher: I just skimmed the comments. What people don’t seem to realize is that every war in recorded history has had more civilian casualties than military. Now that people can see what every soldier sees in living color on their teevees, their sensibilities are shocked! If you can’t stand to think about what happens or see it, then devote every fiber of your being to ending all fucking wars forever—good luck with that.
To this day I am ambivalent about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I suspect it saved more lives than it destroyed—we were already fire bombing Tokyo. Invading the Japanese mainland would have killed more civilians than the bombs did. On the whole, I think the A-bombs were probably a net plus and I don’t think we incurred some karmic debt by using them. The bombing of Dresden was a different story.
Yeah, soldiers sometimes go rogue and do horrible stuff, but mostly they are just trying to stay alive and make it home. If the drones help them make it out alive, then I’m for them.
gaz
@Cassidy: True that. It was a response to someone, who responded to me about Kony’s sadism making Mengela blush.
I’m glad hitler is dead and gone, and the 3rd reich is relegated to a bad memory and only celebrated by crazies.
Kony and the LRA need to share this fate. Yesterday. 20 years ago, in fact.
gaz
@Dougerhead: totally agreed. in the words of another commenter:
word.
=)
General Stuck
I don’t have a problem killing the enemy in a declared war within a reasonable area of operation. And certainly don’t have a problem with drones providing close air support on a hot battlefield, where the enemy can have eyes on to their location.
And I don’t really have a terribly big problem with these drones targeting AQ, and it’s leaders on a non hot battlefield, or where troops are not being actively engaged. I think what Cole is getting at, and me and others, is the impersonal use of these things, with at times very shoddy rules of engagement for targeting bad guys that turned out too many times to be civilians and not the enemy, since these things have been flying,
Now maybe if they hadn’t existed, manned aircraft would be used instead, but my sense is that the lack of any so called ‘skin in the game’ loosens up some inhibitions to conduct warfare, where it may well have been not conducted.
And conducted based on shaky local intel from dubious sources. I look at this like the death penalty. Once an occupied dwelling has been targeted, all these folks inside have been given a death sentence. And the rationale should be beyond a reasonable doubt, especially in a counter insurgency war, where it matters discerning who dies, and who doesn’t. Like not killing, or at least lessoning the likelyhood of killing folks on your side of things.
And I have noticed the past two years, far less killing of non enemy personnel than was before. But the general fears of warring by remote control becoming more of the rule than the exception into the future, remains. And you won’t convince me, that silly humans with this capability, won’t abuse it on folks they don’t like. Where they wouldn’t have otherwise bothered. I would think most folks would have at least some qualms about this development.
Lysana
@gaz:
This. I have no problem with our helping the troops over there dispose of that piece of filth. When you’re the biggest dog in the yard, helping the smaller dogs against the bullies is a fair use of your power. This is also why I supported our helping NATO in Libya after the Arab League asked for it to happen.
Karen
Aren’t the C Street “The Family” nutters involved with Uganda? Like the “death to gay people” law. And being involved with Ugandan and other dictators? Are they involved with the LRA?
FlipYrWhig
@Yevgraf: Jim Jones comes to mind — just about to the bitter end he had a lot of friends in lefty/hippie/utopian circles, and even in officialdom.
cyntax
@soonergrunt:
You should consider reading Wired for War; as a veteran who fought in the Gulf War, I’m finding it pretty interesting:
I’ve seen a number of stories where civilians on the ground characterize the use of drones as “cowardly.” Dead is dead, but between the unintended civilian deaths and the inability to combat drones directly, I think there’s a huge difference. And from everything I saw while I was in, an SF sniper doesn’t inadvertently kill a whole bunch of women and children trying to get his target.
I’m not saying you’re wrong for using drones, DIVARTY, and whatever you can to make sure your men come home–that’s your job–but I think it’s important to know what the perspective looks like when you’re not fighting with all those assets.
FlipYrWhig
@Karen: I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where Limbaugh was coming from, latching onto some poorly-remembered tidbit having to do with Ugandan Christians being the good guys, and having the ol’ synapses misfiring.
Jenny
What’s wrong with drones? They’re cheap and have a low carbon footprint. I wish the rest of the military was cheap, with a low carbon footprint.
gaz
@FlipYrWhig: Personally, I think it’s simpler than that.
The Limbaugh Rule:
Given multiple possible positions on any given issue, Limbaugh will always take the most vile, indefensible position.
It’s a gag. I’m half sure that Limbaugh knew precisely who the LRA were, but saw a way to work it into his schtick.
I posit that in 20 years or so, Limbaugh will write another horrid book. The subject will be the idiocy of his enablers. PT Barnum was an amateur. Limbaugh is post humously showing the man how grift is really done.
See his 6 maybachs. He didn’t get them by not understanding his audience. Or the issues. He knows what he his doing.
Jay
When we saw that then-candidate Obama brought anti-genocide hawk Samantha Power onto his team, some of us hoped for some kind of military presence in Darfur. Perhaps it is covert. I hope so.
Still, it is possible to at once recognize the evil of Joseph Kony, root for his swift demise, and agitate for a more coherent Africa policy from this President. The FDLers don’t get this. It’s really that simple.
I’d be interested to read what you all think this means for POTUS’s Africa policy as a whole.
You Don't Say
@FlipYrWhig: Limbaugh says anything to portray Obama and whomever else he opposes as evil, stupid, corrupt, whatever is the emotion of the day he wants to tap into. He does not misremember or misunderstand or not have enough information. He says whatever he knows he can get away with with his listeners, and he can get away with a lot.
G
uganda is a place that makes me living a half world away want to sleep with the lights on. you have the US preacher backed kill the gays people there (Maddow periodically does a story on that) you have the LRA people, and you have the witch doctors that murder children in order to get rich…
at least the BBC reports that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15255357
“Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer,” the pastor says.
“They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business.”
The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes.
According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29.
The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.
Pastor Sewakiryanga disputes the police numbers, and says there are more victims from his parish than official statistics for the entire country.
The work of the police task force has been strongly criticised by the UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign.
It says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.
[…]
Shawn in ShowMe
@General Stuck
Of course they will. That’s a given on practically every episode of Star Trek. And of course the supporters of the Federation will just respond that the Klingons are worse.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Joel: I don’t believe that viewpoint is correct. The point of most weaponry is to kill as many of the opponents as possible while sustaining as few losses on your side as possible. If you’re amoral or immoral about war, then it doesn’t matter what weapon you use. In our case, the people sending drones into war, and those piloting them, had better have some level of morality even if they are sitting thousands of miles away.
John Cole
I’m really not sure I care how we kill bad guys. My problem is the intelligence we use to determine whether they are bad guys, the fact that we kill a lot more innocents than bad guys, and that our seemingly indisciminate drone warfare is creating a helluva lot of new enemies.
I mean, if you are comfortable with the CIA using drones to bomb the shit out of the world with little to no oversight, rock on. I’m not.
FlipYrWhig
@You Don’t Say: @gaz: Fair enough. But it’s vile even by Limbaugh standards to seize upon the LRA to smear Obama.
wrb
I’ve had no luck convincing my sweetie that Africa would be a nice place to holiday.
FlipYrWhig
I raised this issue earlier, but, seriously, if the LRA had at least one American citizen in it, would this be a harder call for anyone?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@cyntax: It’s probably because the right word wasn’t on their lips, but “cowardly” in this case doesn’t fit. The drone overhead in the story was probably gathering intelligence, but the enemy who goes running when he hears a drone because he’s afraid he might get killed doesn’t really get to use the word “cowardly”. And a drone that kills civilians because the wrong target was attacked is no better or worse than a pilot who misses a target. I’m also pretty sure that early pilots were also called cowardly for not being down into the fight.
Chris
@Karen:
No. The “kill the gays bill,” as it’s colloquially referred to, was proposed by the Ugandan government – e.g. the people the LRA are fighting. Much better for the Christian Right to approach these guys than the LRA, after all, they’re the ones in charge.
To the best of my knowledge, the LRA has no ties to the Christian Right – in fact, their biggest foreign backer for years has been the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum. Rush just heard about Obama fighting something called the “Lord’s Resistance Army” in Uganda, vaguely remembered something about heroic Christians in Uganda fighting gayness, and spouted off from there, it seems. So basically what FlipYrWing said.
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): People who shot cannons were called cowardly by soldiers on horseback.
gaz
@FlipYrWhig:Agreed. The only question here is, did Limbaugh actually jump the shark at this point?
It’s hard to get any more vile and disgusting than this. Even for Limbaugh. Short of live-blogging child rape during his next sex-tourism junket, I don’t know how he will top this next week.
Bill E Pilgrim
How is this one hard? I mean I wish we’d get the mechanism by which people declare war, or not, or whatever in god’s name we’re doing more transparent or you know, existent, but if this Democratic President is going to be continuing and even escalating drone attacks and the overall misguided and really stupid and counterproductive “war on terror” started by the most evil President we’ve ever had (deep breath), then actually putting some resources toward saving civilians rather than including them as collateral damage seems like a pretty easy one to get behind. Somalia comes to mind, in which we actually were acting out of non-oily motives for once and of course the right went nuts.
If the whole thing is going to be straightened out tomorrow about who declares what and when, then fine, wait until the next day. Back in the real world though, if Obama had to wait for Republicans to agree to anything before acting, acting would never take place.
I just wish he’d acted this way more domestically, and no, I don’t mean declaring actual war on the Republicans. Tempt him though they may.
Sorry I’ll include punctuation next time.
wrb
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The side frustrated by advances in technology have always called it cowardly.
The French knights at Agincourt called the English cowardly for fielding solders who were not of noble blood and for using longbows instead of engaging hand-to-hand.
dmbeaster
What General Stuck said at 108. The issue isn’t about cowardly or whether or not drones have uses – they are clearly very useful. But as counter insurgency, their use frequently seems to devolve to a more precise version of carpetbombing. We have the same problem with airstrikes killing wedding parties, so its not just about drones. It a general problem with this type of conflict.
gaz
@wrb: Botswana is overwhelmingly, a pretty nice place. Esp for Africa…
gaz
@FlipYrWhig:
Not me.
wrb
@gaz:
Sure sounds nice in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@John Cole:
Number of countries whose borders were entered – that I know of – by the US without direct consent from Congress or the UN: two.
Attacked with drones: Yemen
Attacked with human forces: Pakistan.
And it was the attack into Pakistan that had less warning than the one in Yemen.
FlipYrWhig
@gaz: Not me either, but we heard a lot of pointed arguments to the contrary around here a few weeks ago.
cyntax
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well, it’s their perspective. It’s kind of hard to say if it’s right or wrong word; it’s how they see it. And the perspective seems to be that if you’re going to come here to my country to kill me, bother to come–and risk–yourself. Don’t send a drone or robot.
But the other point is that, right now, you’re a lot more likely to get the right guy if you have an SF team on the ground as opposed to some of the other methods we use. Which points up part of the difference between this and other interventions. That, and the very unopen-ended nature of the what we’re trying to accomplish.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): (The timer says I can edit, but not the button) I wanted to add I was talking about in the past two years, and places we attacked.
gaz
@wrb: It’s actually nice. And sure Alexander McCall-Smith does paint a nice picture of it in his books, as you say. While maybe not 100% accurate and representative of Botswana entirely, it’s accurate enough. Botswana is a decent place. + He’s spent a great deal of time in Botswana himself, so it’s not like he’s making shit up out of whole cloth. Suffice it to say, that his stories of Botswana, while fiction, are at least informed by reality, even if presented extra-rosily in his light and good humored stories.
Martin
I think one problem people are struggling with – is how much the old nation-state-as-primary-threat situation has changed. I know this is all kinds of blasphemy, but since the rise of the UN, of the ability to wipe entire nations from the face of the earth with the push of a button, and the ability to ship cheap plastic shit from one side of the planet to the other and sell it for $.49 and still have everyone from retailer to shipper to manufacturer turn a profit, the motivation for nations to be aggressors has massively diminished.
Go back a century and if you wanted to expand your border, your neighbor better well have some close-by allies or you could just go and kick their ass with minimal repercussions because it was going to be 6 months before someone like the US could even get a plane there to drop a hand-held bomb on your ass. Now we can put B-2s over your head in 18 hours and simply make you vanish. That, you know, changes behaviors and stuff. And it didn’t need to be the US doing it – the Soviets developed enough of the same capability to matter, up until the Soviets no longer existed themselves.
Truly, the aggressive threats on the planet are getting smaller, and they’re moving increasingly out of the state structure – because they can no longer operate there. We don’t have any kind of mechanism for dealing with this – anywhere. We’re making this shit up as we go and the UN, etc. doesn’t have any better idea what to do.
The reason why we didn’t deal with a lot of these threats before is that they simply hadn’t ranked high enough. I think it’s fairly encouraging that things are heading in the direction they are – I’d gladly trade out nation-state actions like Libya for Iraq, and I’d gladly trade out drone strikes in Yemen or Pakistan for Afghanistan, and if we can effectively use drones to wipe out LRA, I say do it and don’t look back.
FlipYrWhig
@Martin: I was just reading about the original sect of Assassins — time was, there was very little differentiating a loosely-affiliated group of killers in the hinterlands and a “tribe” or “nation.” Maybe some of these seemingly up-to-the-minute threats are more pre-Westphalian, or never touched by Westphalian notions in the first place.
opal
@John Cole:
Not saying you’re wrong, but can anyone link to reliable stats on this?
Jenny
@John Cole:
Again, with the drones.
Why is it people don’t object when it’s a F-15 dropping a laser guided bomb, but if it’s a unmanned aircraft doing the same thing people pee their pants.
And apparently you don’t know, Cole, but CIA operations actually have more oversight than military operations. Under a quirk in current law, the president has to sign a finding and notify congress when using the CIA in a capture or kill mission. But the president doesn’t have to do that when using military assets. It’s odd, to say the least, but it’s true: CIA commando opts have legislative oversight, but JSOC doesn’t.
Jay C
@Dougerhead:
Nope, FWIW, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
gocart mozart
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39293_Rush_Limbaugh_Defender_of_the_Lords_Resistance_Army
The above comes from a speech by one of its leaders
James Obita. Also this from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Resistance_Army
MikeJ
@gocart mozart: That second quote sounds like Michelle Bachmann.
gocart mozart
@MikeJ:
Sadly, yes.
Jenny
I glad you guys weren’t around in 1941 protesting FDR for creating the OSS, assassinating Yamamoto, building the Bomb, dropping napalm on women and children in urban cities, imprisoning American citizens for their race, and hanging Nazi saboteurs.
Well, at least bloggers don’t worship FDR as a beloved liberal icon. Oh, wait..
soonergrunt
@John Cole:
I would submit that is a different question, or perhaps a different aspect of the question. And no, I’m not comfortable with this happening with little to no oversight, if that is in fact what is happening.
I am perfectly comfortable with some guy sitting quietly in an office, not stressed out by lack of sleep, adrenaline, fear for his life or the lives under his charge, hunger, and the elements looking at a screen, confirming with his equally non-stressed supervisor that the person or structure on the screen is the assigned objective, and blowing the shit of it.
As for the intelligence issue, that isn’t much different from the same problem that ground troops have, unfortunately. The more things change…
Jay C
@Stephen1947:
Major difference, dude: Jonas Savimbi, atrocitaire as he may have been, always cloaked his violent activism in one form of political cover (In UNITA’s case “anti-communism”) or another: Joseph Kony is just another crazed African religious-nut-warlord-bandit. Too bad for him Uganda isn’t communist….
Martin
Basically we run everything through some kind of risk/reward equation when decision making. Drones are effectively without risk. When you wipe out that side of the equation, then every drone strike looks like a good idea.
In terms of financial vs human cost, the US is among the most tilted toward avoiding the latter (at least, in terms of US human cost). Drones have no US human cost. No matter what happens, the deployment base is hundreds or thousands of miles out of harms way, and the drone operator safely in the US.
Every military advancement that has made warfare ‘cheaper’ has been met with the same moral resistance: “If you throw the equation out of balance by making one side too cheap, will we be able to add moral weight to restore that balance?”. It’s a very valid concern, particularly in a nation where Bush/Cheney can get elected. There’s even a Star Trek episode about it.
soonergrunt
Off topic, but apparently, The Rapture (for those that believe such) has been rescheduled for this coming Friday:
I’m up for some Post Rapture looting, so if you think you won’t be here Saturday morning, please leave your address in the following comments, and leave your front door unlocked Friday night. KTHXBAI!
Dream On
@WeeBey: I do not.
Jay C
Wow! Progress! Only 38 cases (i.e. “only” 7 a year) since 2006!
Somehow, the fact that they have to have something called an “Anti-Human-Sacrifice Police Task Force” in the first place leads me to think they have a ways to go, yet…
Martin
@John Cole:
We’ve always killed more innocents than bad guys. Always. That long predates modern warfare and is millennia old.
The better question is “Do we achieve a lower collateral damage ratio doing this necessary task than previously?” And I think the answer is yes, we do. In fact, I think we achieve a lower collateral damage ratio than almost any other military on the planet is capable of.
I think the question that ultimately boils down to is ‘Are the bad guys worth getting at any collateral damage cost?’ And I think that’s a valid question case-by-case. So let’s take the most recent case: Did Gaddafi meet that standard? I don’t think so, or else we would have done it sooner. However, the people of Libya felt he did, and once they started down that path, we had no way to undo it – we couldn’t stop the uprising. Which leads to the second issue: Knowing there is going to be collateral damage here (we can’t stop that part), do we have a moral obligation to use our abilities to minimize that damage by agreeing to help? That gets a lot harder. If we don’t jump in, you could have vastly more civilian casualties. Clearly that’s worse, even if the result here contradicts the first decision. It’s a really difficult difficult decision.
To his credit, Obama early in his campaign clearly pointed out this type of problem when supporters were challenging his support for ongoing funding in Iraq. That there are two kinds of decisions you often deal with – those that initiate something, and those that change the course of something which already exists. And you can reach different conclusions for each. For example, if your wife wants you to attend a wedding that you don’t want to go to, you can say for the record, I oppose this, but if you wind up going against your wishes, you damn well better carry through as though you did want to go. We do stuff like this all the time, but politics, and political activists in particular, really can’t cope with that kind of conflicting views. They can’t tell the two situations apart, which is unfortunate, because things would probably be vastly more rational if they could.
Martin
@Jay C: No, they do good work. I’ve been running the Anti-Blonde Sacrifice to a Giant Gorilla Task Force for years, and I’ve warned them to stay off my turf. For the record, no reported cases since 2006, but I’m staying vigilant.
My mom runs the Anti-Virgin Sacrifice in a Volcano Task Force. We had a summit recently and I can report that they’ve had no reported cases since 2006 either. She travels frequently to Hawaii, Italy, Japan etc. for research. She welcomes donations.
WeeBey
@Dream On:
Really? What was our motivation, then?
I mean, fuck, foreign policy is complicated. There are always tons of different, intersecting interests. But you honestly don’t think a huge motivating factor for our support of a NATO air operation was to prevent Quaddafi from wiping out the rebels?
FlipYrWhig
@Martin:
Yup. There’s a certain mentality that proceeds as though every attempt to make the best of a bad situation validates, and perhaps furthers, its original badness.
Martin
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I sometimes have to remind some people that not all decisions are reversible through future decisions. Once we had invaded Iraq, we couldn’t un-invade it by defunding it.
Freddie
I see absolutely nothing that could possibly go wrong with committing ground troops to a war torn and politically unstable third world nation.
Luckily we will only kill the bad men.
suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Great minds, etc etc etc.
J. Michael Neal
@WeeBey: I think that, far and away, our biggest motivation for participating in the Libya intervention was that it was something the Europeans wanted to do, and Obama decided that this was one of those cases where it was best to go along.
Now, I think that the European motivations could be interesting to analyze, but Obama’s were pretty banal.
hamletta
Freddie? Get bent.
opal
@Martin:
They have the luxury of focusing on a handful of issues with little regard to how politics actually works in this country.
Which, as always, goes back to a certain degree of communal reinforcement.
WeeBey
@J. Michael Neal:
‘Twas certainly a factor, I concur. But going along to go along is not the primary factor.
I mean, yes, it helped us make nice with the French. But that’s not what drove the decision.
the noodler
jc, thanks for the vote of support on this. And i want you to know that it bj is a window up on my unclas side here at comnavaf (whilst i work nato ly ops) but too bad theres no balloon juice on sipr. And tha lra is a nasty bunch. Ciao from napoli.
Ruviana
@joeyess: and Gocart Mozart and Gogol’s wife
Right from the Tbogg comments:
“I’m thinking someone needs to MOVE TO BALLOON JUICE.
Or someplace else where douchebags don’t predominate.”
Maybe John could work on that…..
Joey Giraud
If you can’t find it in you to kill with your bare hands, face to face, be a coward and push a button.
What a shithead you are.
soonergrunt
@Joey Giraud: You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
And if you had any brains at all, you’d be completely grateful for that.
opal
@Ruviana:
I have fond memories of Tbogg making a fool of Dan Collins in an epic thread that went the distance.
Nowadays, FDL would just apologize to Protein Wisdom.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@ABL:
TBogg’s post was an embarrassment. The manner in which this wackjob went on the attack against FDL responses was insane.
.
.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, U.S. war criminals, and those who shield and harbor them, should be brought to justice in the same way by some other altruistic country, according to balloon-juice.com.
.
.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
You are such a deficient creature in every way that it’s hard to fathom.
opal
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
.
.
>Defends FDL like he has dog in fight
.
.
Anya
@wrb: Do you and your sweetie know that Africa is a continent and not a country?
Felanius Kootea
I can’t believe Limbaugh would try to defend Joseph Kony and the LRA. A man who targets all-girls boarding schools, has his troops rape the students and turn them into new fighters for the LRA once they’ve broken their spirits. I remember reading about a young girl that he refused to release because her mother (not captured) was outspoken about the evils of the LRA. He made sure she was brutalized and didn’t get an education; she was eventually rescued and returned to her family seven years after her initial capture with three or four children. She wasn’t yet 18.
Felanius Kootea
Also here’s info on the Ugandan nightwalkers – young children from small villages who have to walk miles away from their families every night to a safe space in a larger town where they can huddle together to avoid being captured and used as fresh recruits for the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Felanius Kootea
@wrb: Umm there are 54 countries to choose from in Africa – South Africa has great vacation spots, Botswana is great, the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania draws a large number of tourists, there are highly booked tours up Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, there’s the island of Zanzibar, Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular tourist draw as are the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia (which saw Christianity before much of Europe did) and Goree Island in Senegal.
Actually, scratch all that. Please keep your sweetie away from Africa. Probably best for all concerned.
Chris
@Felanius Kootea:
Remember the contras? The guys who mined civilian harbors, killed and raped nuns, blew up health care clinics, executed children and killed, kidnapped and tortured civilians, and the only thing conservative pundits had to say was “they’re the spiritual equivalent of our Founding Fathers, maaaann!”
I’m not AT ALL surprised at the “if they’re on our side they can do no wrong” ethic, that’s par for the course at this point. All I’m surprised with is the man’s intense fucking idiocy at thinking the LRA is “on our side.”
Anya
I wonder if Barbara Walter will include Rush Limbaugh in her “10 Most Fascinating People” of 2012, she can then ask him about how some where offended about his defense of the LRA
@Felanius Kootea:
LOL
gocart mozart
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
If a gang of psychotic tea partiers go on a rape and murder spree, I’ll be right with you on that.
gaz
@Anya: What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Many people that holiday in africa (using west africa as an example) visit many countries – many of them are tiny – particularly the more stable ones, like Ghana, Senegal, etc.
Or go to east Africa to go to national parks (some of which straddle two countries – but I leave examples as an exercise to the reader)
But of course you have to go criticize someone for something they *didn’t* say to try and make people think you are smart.
How’s that working out for you? ;)
gocart mozart
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
I am also fine with Dick Cheney and GWB being tried on foreign soil at the Hague. Any other questions?
Chris
@gaz:
I endorse this message.
@gocart mozart:
I also endorse this one. Not that it’ll ever happen, but I wouldn’t mind if it did.
There’s other cases like that too. I remember when Osama Bin Laden got whacked and people said “we shouldn’t violate Pakistan’s sovereignty that way.” And I tried to imagine being in Pakistan’s shoes, and the closest analogy I could come up with was, if Nicaraguan assassins entered the U.S. and whacked Oliver North the same way in retaliation for all the terrorism he formented in their country, would I give a damn? Answer’s no.
El Cid
FWIW, a longtime scholar of the Ugandan / LRA war argued on the BBC that the most damage to the LRA would be to deprive them of the child-kidnapped army they depend on.
And that the strongest way to do so was to give these kidnapped child-warriors some safe space to escape to.
The LRA is desperately dependent upon child soldiers to survive.
She argued that a frontal military strategy was more likely to kill a lot of children. I don’t think there’s a suggestion that she was somehow naive about the nature of the LRA.
gaz
@El Cid: I think the idea has merit, and I’d love to know the name of this person you speak of.
Also, there are some groups (operating out of the DRC that are trying to provide haven and rehabilitation to these soldiers).
I wonder how she suggests that Kony is to be stopped from raiding villages and taking more children by force?
Once they eat their family members, their village doesn’t want them back. About 25 years, and 3 million children later, the havens would have to be quite large and ubiquitous in the region I’d think.
Still, as I said, I’d like to know more about this person you cite, it sounds like she has some interesting things to say on the topic.
Anya
@gaz: When you state that a whole continant is off limits to your sweetie in a thread about genocidal cultists, you do not have to be smart to figure out what was implied.
Blogreeder
Didn’t Vietnam start with only 100 armed advisers too?
mclaren
The LRA is a “murderous cult” because it indiscriminately murders children and women at random, viciously, without regard for even the most minimal common human decency.
Meanwhile, the American JSOC assassination squads are not a “murderous cult” even though they indiscriminately murder children and women at random, viciously, without regard for even the most minimal common human decency.
But I’m just ranting and raving, like General Stanley McChrystal:
Sure.
Right. The American military isn’t a “murderous cult,” but the LRA is.
Keep telling yourself that, Cole.
Joey Giraud
@soonergrunt.
So, you’re on the side of the cowards then? A real hero, eh?
Back at ya, “buddy.”
gaz
@Anya: And most of the continent *is indeed a shithole*. see Mozambique (they eat babies, FFS).
It does not mean that someone was conflating the continent with a country. It does mean that they have reservations about visiting the continent. There is a difference.
I’ve forgotten more about africa than you will ever know. And as far as the continent goes, it *is* a dangerous shithole, with a few bright points.
Take your ill-informed sanctimonious hippy bullshit over to FDL where you can serve as a valid caricature of a dumbass DFH who knows jack shit and likes to think they are smarter or superior to others – absent facts or evidence.
toujoursdan
@soonergrunt:
Actually, Camping says the entire universe will come to an end next Friday. There won’t be anything to loot.