With so many other higher profile conflicts going on, the US invasion of Uganda has mostly stayed out of the press. Still, every once in awhile we get a new glimpse of the operation, aimed at capturing Joseph Kony, the leader of the Christian militant faction the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Six months in, the US adventure has spread into several countries, with the slow and deliberate march of a power apparently intending to stay for quite a long time. And as usual, they’ve accomplished nothing.
“The presence of the Americans has not changed anything,” noted the head of the Catholic diocese in Obo. “We just see the Americans driving or walking in town. We don’t see what they are doing to catch Kony.”
Regional military officials are also expressing annoyance, saying they expected to have US drones overhead and a massive satellite presence that would flush Kony out in short order. So far, they’ve had nothing but ground troops.
The slow, plodding march into Central Africa is one of the more confusing aspects of US foreign policy, but the belief among African officials that the US deployment was going to be quick and easy suggests they haven’t been paying close attention to the rest of the world.
They most certainly have accomplished the main goal. Establishing a permanent or at least semi-permanent US troop presence in several nations across a broad stretch of sub-Saharan Africa. Kony was always Goldstein/Snowball, the fig leaf of justification for the expansion of the imperial dominion.