With Pentagon officials offering the first details on the Niger ambush incident, they also revealed details about the ongoing US war in Niger, including the revelation that there is an ongoing US war in Niger. Nobody seems to have known about it.
Especially not those whose job it is to know. Senate Armed Services Committee members confirmed they were “stunned” by the revelation, and had no idea that the US had upwards of 1,000 ground troops operating inside Niger.
Gen. Joe Dunford presented this military operation as being targeted at an ISIS affiliate inside Niger, and the suggestion is that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Afghanistan is serving as the legal justification.
Perennial hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed comfort with this, saying it is the military’s job to decide who the enemy is, and Congress could defund the war if they objected. This is both not the way US wars are supposed to be launched, and obviously a problem since Congress didn’t even know the war was going on.
This is adding to the push to repeal the AUMF as well, or to replace it with something more specific that at the very least wouldn’t be used 16 years after the fact to start a war without telling anyone about it.
Officially, where US troops are deployed is supposed to be a matter of public record, though the Trump Administration has been increasingly averse to doing so with any precision, and the most recent figures show over 27,000 US troops deployed overseas to unspecified locations.
Perfectly reasonable to have a war without talking to Congress. After all, the first Americans heard about World War 2 was about the time the D-Day landings took place. Before that, there was really no need to inform them.
Next war, the notification might well read something like this. “Hey. We’ve been fighting in country x for eight years now. P.S. We lost.”
Typical clandestine wars … a timeless strategy for Pox Americana. The US has brought massive carnage to just about every other continent… Africa is wide open for expanded Perpetual Wars
And at some point the whole world will gang up on us and we’ll be done!
We make no contribution to the welfare of the world, we don’t produce and export anything other than arms!
Very gratifying to finally see some negative media attention to the ever expanding U.S. military intervention around the world.
Why? All media and talk does is assuage the masses with a benign outlet for complaint, one that has no actual repurcussions.
Pretty soon, crowds of refugees from Niger will arrive in American neighborhoods. We owe it to those who were on “our side”.
Tim’s shocked – shocked to find wars going on. Sixteen years later.
One day it will be announced ‘the military’ is tax-funded corporate entity outside the direct control of government.
“Stunned”? It still wasn’t enough of a blow to wake Senator Graham up from his permanent stupor. What are the chances Graham would have de-funded the war he wasn’t allowed to know about? More likely he would pre-fund a war we haven’t even considered starting yet.
The Congress has totally abdicated and given up their war-power authority during the Administrations of many Presidents. Their “shock” is a political stunt.
Stunned by G.Bush initiated Obama embraced Africom mission to create chaos and mayhem while protecting the US special interest in Africa? Natural resources, recruiting Mercenaries for the US endless Proxy wars, keeping China from expanding it’s influence in Africa, assassinate unwanted and or proven to be a threat to US agenda in Africa so call dictators and/or tyrants….
I Imaging these brain dead paid for politics senators will be shocked by the US Africom most recent agenda full out war by 2023.
One benefit of electing a work-shy “delegator-in-chief” is that it has highlighted our many structural shortcomings.
This includes State legislatures and Congress in general and the US Senate in particular loosing the ability to do anything, effective or otherwise. A steady diet of lobbyist cash and pre-digested ALEC legislation has stripped them of the ability to function.
The Niger incident is just one more example of the MIC taking advantage of this.
Very very well written and poinant comment. We need more like you & less of these know nothing elected hacks selling their votes to any & all… with no regard for those that elected them….!!!!!!!
As well as upgrading elected representatives, the system itself needs to be “repealed and replaced” with something that could make a start towards Lincoln’s goal of ” government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” It looks pretty well perished to me, right now.
The French, who have been in Niger for more than 30 years must have really started ‘losing it’.
This is what happens when you have 2 governments!!! It seems that the “shadow” is fully in charge!
P.S., Am I the only one, along with the widow, who found it strange that she couldn’t view his body.even a single hand or foot?!!! WTF!!!