I'm sorry, people can get mad at Bill Clinton if they want but he was right to get American troops out of Somalia after the incident in Mogadishu.

Sometimes you just have to get the hell out. What these people need is humanitarian intervention. They have much a greater need for the Red Cross, the U.N. and other humanitarian institutions than they do the United States government.

The Central Intelligence Agency has to stop trying to always fund internal coups against any government that doesn't necessarily view us favorably. They've had a disasterous record of doing this over the past 50 years.

Why don't they dedicate their assets and effort in Afghanistan, and the border regions. Find Bin Laden, break up the terrorist cells, use some of this money to help village elders at the local level, build infrastructure and get out.

The dividends would be much higher and the CIA, for once, would actually be doing its country a service rather than simply laying the framework for yet another disasterous war in some far-flung corner of the globe where we half-heartedly support a pro-U.S. but corrupt government we don't fully understand.

Leave the Somalis and the Ethiopians alone, quit unjustly jailing their people with no cause and no contact with the outside world, and invest the resources in humanitarian relief.

That would be a much more productive model.

Quote:

"The United States could change those perceptions by demanding higher standards of its foreign partners and cutting off aid to abusers. It otherwise risks fueling the very problem -- anti-American militancy -- that it seeks to solve. For starters, the U.S. could demand the release or fair trial of any rendition victims still stuck in Ethiopian custody."

Until we shut down Gitmo, we're in no position to ask anybody shit.

by pointing to it's own?

The book "I Didn't Do it For You" is a fascinating history of Eritrea and spends a lot of time covering its relationship with Ethiopia. This sounds like yet another continuation of most of the western world's policy towards Africa: Use it for what little strategic advantage we can, ignore the human cost of our interventions, act surprised when it comes back to bite us.

Yet another reason for a young man or woman, who now has nothing to lose, to seek vengeance against the most identifiable target for their rage, the United States. We will never win our conflict with insurgent/terrorist forces as long as they can easily recruit new members. We are making it way too easy for them.

From the war

On error?

The average American responce is:

Yeah

Whatever....

this kind of thing is very common and didn't start with the arrival of the dreaded imperialist monster, aka America.

That the United States is reviled by many of the people with whom the author talked is not that unusual. We should be very careful when involving ourselves in other people's conflicts and if we do our behavior should be held to the highest standard. But at the same time, if these same people who condemn the United States were offered free immigration to the United States, they would take it in a heartbeat.

More or less a colonial empire. Making lots of noise about "the little guy" and human rights at home while trashing them and commiting all sorts of horrors in other, less advantaged countries to keep our wealth and power intact.

. . . but NGOs are only effective when there is a degree of stability and relative security. This hasn't been the case in about 90% of Africa for a couple decades now.

It's really time the U.S. government learn to stay out of places like this and let the NGOs do their job -- libertyson

and didn't start with the arrival of the dreaded imperialist monster, aka America."

-- The Screaming Steam Hammers of Hate

Been to Africa then? India? I thought not.

This "kind of thing" wouldn't have happened in this case without the Screaming Steam Hammers of the American military juggernaut providing the heavy iron.

The average American response is:

Yeah

Whatever...

Just South Africa, Namibia, Cote d'Ivoire. Lived there in the late 80's early 90's.

You?

"But at the same time, if these same people who condemn the United States were offered free immigration to the United States, they would take it in a heartbeat."

Really? Someone would trade the lives or their entire family for immigration to the United States?

Clearly these "people" don't have the same respect for human life as we do, right pal?

The writer, who did a fine job on this adaptation ends with an assessment of the responsibility of the U.S. and ascertains that U.S. government is at worst "complicit" in the atrocities perpetrated on innocent victims. He writes: "To be sure, the United States is not the main culprit when the Kenyans unlawfully render suspects or the Ethiopians torture them. But when U.S. officials interrogate rendition victims who are being held incommunicado, the United States becomes complicit in the abuse." What utter nonsense is this apologetic view. The writer goes on to acknowledge the U.S. government's role in financing, training and participating in these atrocities, but determines that this merely makes the U.S. administration complicit.

There is a term that this writer is perhaps unfamiliar with or is failing to recall, and that is "client state." This is not an isolated case of the U.S. providing the finances, knowledge and means to carry out such atrocities. Furthermore, this "war on terror" is the U.S.'s obsession and excuse to continue its imperialistic activities. If the nations that the U.S. equips to carry out it's purposes (and with a wink and a nod over looks the) torture and massacre their own opponents, so be it. The U.S. has repeatedly demonstrated it's indifference to such crimes, devastation and murder.

And nor has the U.S. administration cared that this further escalates and fuels the negative sentiment and anger of the worlds' peoples toward the U.S. and puts them more at risk of retaliation. This is why the U.S. is a failed state. It is run by a bunch of thugs who care not about even it's own citizens.