For the second time in the past week, US forces carried out an airstrike in Somalia on Tuesday, killing one person who the US is accusing of being a member of al-Shabaab. They credited the Somali Army for providing targeting information.
The attack was the 60th strike of the year in Somalia, near the town of Dujuuma. US officials made a point of calling the unnamed slain man a “terrorist,” and emphasized that no civilian casualties happened.
The statement, like most out of AFRICOM, seems designed primarily to preempt any question about legality of strikes in Somalia, giving the impression that the attacks are coordinated with the Somali government and have a war on terrorism relation.
Whether accurate or not, the US strikes in Somalia are not seen to have a substantial impact in the situation on the ground, and locals have repeatedly complained that the US has killed civilians in past attacks, something the US generally denies.
Who remembers the start of the US interference in Somalia in 2006 by POTUS Dubya, which infuriated the UN? He threw out the only group that had managed to govern without excess violence.
My recollection is that the start of the US interference in Somalia was at least as early as 1992 under Dubya’s dad.
It heightened somewhat early in the Clinton administration. I remember I was on a counter-narcotics mission out along the California/Nevada border. First all of our helicopters got taken away because Hillary was visiting San Francisco and they were needed for security. Then we got them back. One night I was at the E-Club and saw the Rangers’ bodies being dragged through Mogadishu. A few days later it was time to return to home, but the C-130 we had scheduled to fly us had been taken for the Somalia thing, so they had to find commercial flights for ~60 Marines. Fortunately, that resulted in a night out on the town near Naval Air Station Fallon, and a nice lady walked up to me at the casino and told me she was taking me home with her. Which she did.
Ah, those were the days.