PrintApril 3, 2007
American Thinker makes headlines in Africa
A blog item in American Thinker has made headlines in Zimbabwe, the once-prosperous African nation led by extreme leftist Robert Mugabe, notorious for expropriating white farmers and giving their land to his supporters. Formerly a food exporter, Zimbabwe in recent years has been rocked by severe food shortages.
The government-controlled newspaper The Herald, published an article prominently featuring AT:
UNITED States President George Bush has approved the formation of a US army to permanently operate in Africa, a move viewed by many as part of a wide plan to increase American hegemony on Africa. [emphasis in original]
The army called the US African Command, was approved by Mr Bush on February 2, 2007 and US$50 million was last week injected in the project that should see the army being fully operational by 2008.
Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moellar, previously the special assistant to the commander of US Central Command is heading the transitional team tasked to establish the army.
In yesterday's report, The American Thinker said: "The goal is to have Africom fully operational by the end of fiscal 2008, and that establishing the command will not adversely affect operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Also, Africom will cost about $50 million in fiscal year 2007, and costs for 2008 are still being evaluated."
The American Thinker, also reported that "Adm. Moeller was now at European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, planning for the activation of the command, which will hopefully, be physically located on the continent."
Actually, our blog item was based on President Bush's announcement, which was prominently hyperlinked. And it was published almost two months ago, not yesterday, as the article has it.
This reaction from African socialists brings up an opportunity to understand a little known tidbit of the history of Africa and the US. We abandoned Sub-Saharan Africa in the early 60s due to the build-up in Vietnam. Special Forces had been operating there to prevent a socialist/USSR takeover, but had a more pressing requirement in SE Asia, so they withdrew. (This is novelized in a couple of W.E.B. Griffin's The Brotherhood of War series, The Aviators and Special Ops).
British SAS attempted to fill the void, and were moderately successful until commitments to Northern Ireland and the Central Front in Europe ultimately reduced their presence also.
It was a masterful strategic maneuver on the part of the Eastern Bloc: Get the West to commit to one area and then mass forces in another country in order to force our prioritization of manpower and resources elsewhere. The average American has little or no idea that the Cold War was a real global war with deadly battles and real casualties, even though it was fought largely with proxies and special operations forces - ours and theirs. Vietnam was, of course, the obvious exception.
Hence, the end of the Cold War brought about a power vacuum in strategic locations once fought over by the East and West, such as Somalia. Its position at a chokepoint on a critical waterway led Bush '41 to mount Operation Restore Hope to prevent Iran from closing this waterway. Bill Clinton later withdrew our forces, and we were forced to play catch-up after 9-11 by establishing Coalition forces in Djibouti.
Our efforts paid off with the successful Ethiopian operation to seize Mogadishu a few months ago, but fighting continues off and on in the capital, so the situation is not fully resolved.
The African Command is long overdue and is a vital part of the long war against global terror. The attention paid by the government-controlled Herald tells us we are on the right track.
