Bloomberg published a story on Wednesday that cited anonymous sources who said President Trump is looking to withdraw hundreds of US troops from Somalia, a war the administration has significantly escalated since 2017.
The sources said the Pentagon has begun drafting plans for the president, and discussions have involved Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the US currently has 700 troops in Somalia. Mostly special forces who train Somalia’s army. Most of these troops were sent to the African country by President Trump, according to the Bloomberg story.
The US is engaged in Somalia as part of its war against the militant group al-Shabaab. In 2017, President Trump loosened the rules of engagement for the drone war and his administration has dropped a record number of bombs on Somalia.
In 2019, the US conducted 63 airstrikes in Somalia, the most in a single year. The first seven months of 2020 saw more US airstrikes in Somalia than were conducted during both the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, combined.
The war in Somalia is extremely underreported, and it is tough to know how damaging it has been to the civilians on the ground. US Africa Command usually claims its airstrikes only kill militants and only occasionally have to admit to civilian deaths if there is enough outcry.
Somalia’s inclusion into the War on Terror was precipitated by a successful experiment with anarchism that brought the region closer to peace than it’s been in centuries. The Islamic Courts worked. The Xeer justice system worked. Anarchism works.
It works only for people with plenty of money, who use the unprotected population to work for starvation wages. Nobody to turn to, no justice. The courts you mentioned introduced some semblance of order, but we did not like it. Any resistance to imperial soldiers is met by drones. Anarchy is a human nightmare — human rabbits to experiment with.
But if we succumb to corruption that is already swallowing us — and do not get a grip on our institutions that are supposed to serve US — not politicians and bureaucrats — we can get there.
Bullshit. My neighbors in the Amish community are poor, peaceful, and live completely outside of the state. There are tribes across the planet that do and have uninterrupted for thousands of years. No other political system in existence has that kind of track record. If it’s kept small and community based it works. Ask someone who actually lived under the Courts, they’ll tell you. The state is the nightmare. No social structure in the history of mankind has killed more people and destroyed more life. Hitler, Pinochet, Stalin, Trump, Biden, all exist because the state has provided them with the machinery to rule.
Hmm. It is not as simple as that. Amish live within a country that is tolerant. They did fight for their rights peacefully up to Supreme Court.
You are ascribing vile behavior to state as an institution — not understanding that vile behavior cones with empires and the countries empire empower into nastiness. This is like determining we need no local governance , no legal system, and live without any protection whatsoever in a free for all world. No thank you.
States, governments, laws are people dependent. The first thing is to prevent ever any empire from emerging, that would set in motion the same familiar pattern of vassals, us vs them, money grabbing by the center, until it cannot hold any more.
The new global system has bern outlined by Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is based on real sovereignty— Star Trek type. No meddling, no preaching no dictating. Let everyone partake in world economy or discourse as it suits them.
Countries — cultures, systems if governance — need to grow at their own pace. Disputes will not involve empires to take advantage of conflict to have favorites and demonized.
We need to grow as mankind as frankly, we are still thinking in imperial mode, trying to find a shelter in the chaotic world.
Growing as mankind would entail abandoning the Westphalian Model nation-state.
The Westphalean Model wasn’t so much an invention as a codification of political reality at the end of the Thirty years War.
The Thirty Years War was essentially a turf war between ruling families who were all for borderlessness as long as they were in charge of the whole.
Correct, the Westphalian Model was intended to reduce the length and cost of turf wars between criminal gangs, aka states, leaving them more leisure to rape and pillage the peasants. At coming up on 400 years old, the scam certainly hasn’t worked out well for the peasants and for that matter didn’t really ameliorate the turf wars either. It’s pretty much fail all around.
Yet, the Westphalean State arose as a way to end war.
The interregnums of peace, allowed prosperity such that the perception arose that peace was the normal and preferred state of being. The old empires themselves, had to reshape themselves into nation-states. Empires not naturally suited to nation-statehood, failed and were broken up. Weaker communities, were forced into unnatural state associations that didn’t work and were also prone to failure.
States are led to war, but this is an organized process and peace movements may emerge to oppose and thwart warmongering.
400 years later, a new generation of power elites chafe at nation-state restrictions. As they foster the breakdown of the nation-state, we have more and greater wars. The greatest nation-state, the United Sates, presumes to launch forever wars – at the shadowy behest of far more minor European nation-states.
Therefore, the nation state is not the enemy of liberty but the redoubt of liberty where liberty can gain the upper hand in the local population.
The nation state was a partial success. The nation-state provided a structure for peace against the proclivity and preference of trans-national power elites to incessant war. Without nation-state bubbles, there likely would have been no foundation for the Enlightenment and what would later become known as libertarian principles.
Life, liberty and property founded on the individual is much easier to achieve on a nation-state scale, not a sprawling empire. While nations-states like the U.S. are an exception, most nation-states cannot afford big government and so have to be more tolerant of economic and civil freedoms.
Freedom of movement within states, including of visitors, is taken for granted within most states. Multi-ethnic nation states don’t always succeed, but many exist, such as Switzerland.
State-ism is a problem, when a state presumes to be an empire trammeling the borders of individual sovereignty and sovereignty of other states. The problem, however, is not the nation-state, but the trans-national warmongering power elites that drove the old pre-state empires.
The future of liberty, remains the nation-state, in a community of like-minded nation-states in check-and-balance harmony with one another.
The only other model is rampant stateless imperialism where borders don’t matter as a social self-discipline, as they didn’t for Europeans in the New World during the Age of Discovery.
Have you lived under Islamic Courts rule ?
I’ve seen interviews and polls from refugees who did and they’re still pissed. Why do you think Al-Shabab is so popular in Somalia? They want revenge.
The USA paid the Ethiopian army to help invade and conquer Somalia. It is one of the seven Arab nations on General Clark’s hit list.
“In 2017, President Trump loosened the rules of engagement for the drone war and his administration has dropped a record number of bombs on Somalia.”
But still not a new war. Whew!
Well, its not.
Somalia has been a hot zone for well over a decade.
Being tired of no new wars is a ridiculous position for a supposed antiwar.
My neighbor was there during the Blackhawk Down incident. Its a lawless, nasty place of Warlords. Ilan Omar should return there and spend her time trying to improve her own corrupt country instead of trying to impose Somalia on US.
You are commenting on the wrong board.
A google search will help you reach other brownshirts.
Too many ‘allies’ use the United States for their own ends, and unfortunately too many Americans let their fellow Americans get sent off to war for that.
Time to say no to wasting blood and treasure and end the foreign wars gravy train.
“Being tired of no new wars is a ridiculous position for a supposed antiwar.”
What a ridiculous thing to say. I’m tired of fools backing someone who escalates the old wars and then pretends that guy is anti-war after he de-escalates his own escalation.
Trump is also pulling out of Somalia, or did you miss that?
Seems you need things to be bad and getting worse to validate your ego and justify a non-productive worldview.
Trump’s failure to end wars sooner, if at all, may have been frustrating, but antiwar poseurs who needed Trump to fail, are far worse.
“Trump has also mentioned the possibility of pulling out of Somalia, or did you miss that?”
Fixed, no charge.
Its the pattern; the MIC gets one chance to fix things, and when they can’t, pullout is on the table.
Somalia can’t be fixed. Trump wants a pullout and will keep pushing that. It won’t quietly go away as long as he’s President.
Somehow, you don’t get that Biden wouldn’t consider pullout a public option. The Democrats only talk of ending the Forever Wars because Trump forces them to say something to that effect, yet you act like the Democrats are the less likely liars.
No I didn’t miss that. Trump escalated in Somalia and dropped a record number of bombs there, more than Bush and Obama combined. Did you miss that? One thing he has promised to do and the other he actually did. He also decided not to attack Iran for retaliating after he initiated the reasons for Iran to retaliate.
“Trump’s failure to end wars sooner, if at all, may have been frustrating, but antiwar poseurs who needed Trump to fail, are far worse.”
What’s even worse is people who are cult members with blinders on.
The Trumpian cult will be over in four months or another four years. We do have an exit strategy.
Hipster progressivism, will keep going and going as long as they have some human tragedy to posture over.
no, trump only claims that he wants to withdraw any troops.
President Trump is bringing troops home from all over the world. When Obama took office we were in two wars. By the time he left we were in seven.
Yes, Trump is bringing home troops from all over the world — troops that he sent there, escalating every war he inherited from Obama. If he gets more aggressive, he might get the troop levels in Syria, Afghanistan et al. back down to Obama levels by the time he leaves office.
We need zero troops in Africa.